Ever since the CIA used a vaccination ruse in its hunt for OBL, health workers have been combatants in Pakistan's war with the Taliban
KARACHI—These days, policeman with AK-47s don't look out of place during a polio immunization campaign in Pakistan. Neither do elite counterterrorism forces staffing impromptu neighborhood checkpoints, while health workers conduct vaccination drives.
On a February weekend in Karachi, camouflaged paramilitary soldiers cordoned off a neighborhood known as Gadap Town, shut down two lanes of traffic, and refused entry to all non-residents. Motorbikes were temporarily banned, because of the frequency with which militants use them in drive-by shootings. No advance notice had been given that polio immunizations would take place in this neighborhood on this day for fear that it would attract bombings or shootings.
That people couldn’t plan in advance to get their children vaccinated was just the price of keeping everyone alive.
Earlier, in January, suspected Taliban militants had shot and killed three health workers in a nearby neighborhood while they were administering oral vaccine drops to toddlers. As a result, the immunization campaign was temporarily suspended until security could be tightened. Even with the protection of security forces, health workers were wary about the possibility of another attack.
“I've never seen security so tight and the situation so precarious,” said Sadia Shakeel, who conducts neighborhood outreach for polio immunizations at the Gulshan-e-Iqbal Resource Center. “There's a real sense of unease here.”
The full article continues at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/04/29/swat_md_pakistan_taliban_polio on Foreign Policy’s website.