The Glade 4.0

Pakistanis have viewed polio vaccination campaigns with suspicion after the CIA's use of a fake vaccination program last year to collect DNA samples from residents of Osama bin Laden's compound to verify the al Qaeda leader's presence there.

Red Cross, Red Crescent and the white flag

Modern laws of war, such as the 1949 Geneva Conventions, also include prohibitions on attacking doctors, ambulances or hospital ships displaying a Red Cross, a Red Crescent or other emblem related to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It is also prohibited to fire at a person or vehicle bearing a white flag, since that indicates an intent to surrender or a desire to communicate.

In either case, persons protected by the Red Cross/Crescent or white flag are expected to maintain neutrality, and may not engage in warlike acts; in fact, engaging in war activities under a protected symbol is itself a violation of the laws of war known as perfidy. Failure to follow these requirements can result in the loss of protected status and make the individual violating the requirements a lawful military target.

GUNMEN have shot dead a woman working on UN-backed polio vaccination efforts and her driver in northwestern Pakistan, officials say, raising to eight the number of people killed in the last 48 hours who were part of the immunisation drive.
The attack on the woman was one of five that took place on polio workers in northwestern Pakistan on Wednesday. One male polio worker was critically wounded, while the others managed to escape unharmed.

The recent killings prompted the UN's public health arm to suspend work on the vaccination drive in two of Pakistan's four provinces on Wednesday, a major setback for a campaign that international health officials consider vital to contain the crippling disease but which Taliban insurgents say is a cover for espionage.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. Suspicion has fallen on the Pakistani Taliban because of their virulent opposition to the polio campaign, but the group's spokesman, Ahsanullah Ahsan, denied responsibility in a telephone call to The Associated Press.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is endemic. Prevention efforts have managed to reduce the number of cases in Pakistan by around 70 per cent this year compared to 2011. But the recent violence threatens to reverse that progress.

Militants accuse health workers of acting as spies for the US and claim the vaccine makes children sterile. Taliban commanders in the troubled northwest tribal region have also said vaccinations can't go forward until the US stops drone strikes in the country.

Insurgent opposition to the campaign grew last year after it was revealed that a Pakistani doctor ran a fake vaccination program to help the CIA track down al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, who was hiding in the town of Abbottabad in the country's northwest.

The number of attacks this week on polio workers is unprecedented. They came as the government started a three-day vaccination drive on Monday targeting high risk areas of the country, part of an effort to immunise millions of children under the age of five.

The deadliest of Wednesday's attacks occurred in the northwestern town of Charsadda, where the female polio worker and her driver were gunned down, said senior government official Syed Zafar Ali Shah. Gunmen attacked two other polio teams in Charsadda and one in the town of Nowshera, but no one was hurt in those attacks, he said.

Earlier in the day, gunmen shot a polio worker in the head in the city of Peshawar, wounding him critically, said Janbaz Afridi, a senior health official in surrounding Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

On Tuesday, gunmen killed five female polio workers - three of them teenagers - in a series of attacks in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province, and a village outside Peshawar. Two men who were working alongside the women were critically wounded in those attacks. A male polio worker was also shot to death in Karachi on Monday.

Maryam Yunus, a spokeswoman for the UN World Health Organization in Pakistan, said the group's polio staff have been pulled back from the field in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh and asked to work from home until the vaccination campaign ends Wednesday.

Officials in Karachi temporarily suspended the vaccination campaign in the city after the shootings on Tuesday, but the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government ploughed ahead, not wanting to be cowed by the violence.

Several dozen polio workers and human rights activists protested against the killings in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, on Wednesday and demanded security for the field staff.

The Pakistani government and the UN have also condemned the attacks, saying they deprive Pakistan's most vulnerable populations - specifically children - of basic life-saving health interventions.

Polio usually infects children living in unsanitary conditions, attacks the nerves and can kill or paralyse. A total of 56 polio cases have been reported in Pakistan during 2012, down from 190 the previous year, according to the UN. Most of the new cases in Pakistan are in the northwest, where the presence of militants makes it difficult to reach children.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/19/world/asia/pakistan-polio-workers-attack/index.html



So we have put at risk the possibility of complete eradication of a disease (we are losing ground on this now), and put the lives of millions of people, primarily children, at risk so that we can find and kill one man.

This is inexcusable. In fact, if similar were done in battle, it would be a war crime. And for good reason.

Fine, you know what, go ahead and get polio and die or whatever polio does.

Homie don't want no help, homie don't get no help.

I'm more concerned about the impact of such a CIA program on real doctors and medics. Groups that might otherwise have respected them as neutral are now going to suspect and possibly take action against them.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

I think people have lost sight of the fact that because we did this we cannot wipe out polio which means future generations are at risk for it in perpetuity.

Do we know for a fact that this CIA program disguised themselves as the Red Cross or Red Crescent? If they did, then yeah that's bad because you're tarnishing the neutrality of those organizations.

I suspect, however, that they didn't and instead just setup their own immunization shops.

No, I suspect they did not say "Red Cross". Does this matter?

I think you missed the bold. You cannot go around disguised as a neutral doctor, and use your protected status as an advantage to carry out acts of war. I know this is a different situation, and it doesn't apply, but it is related.

And the bottom line is that our actions to get OBL have contributed to the killings of 8 medical workers, and the disruption of a vaccination program that has the potential to reach millions of innocents, and contribute to the possible eradication of the disease.

No, I suspect they did not say "Red Cross". Does this matter? Their actions have brought into question any vaccination program. Does it make it ok to pretend to be a neutral health care worker while conducting covert military operations?

I suspect that the families of the murdered nurses, and the kids who are not getting their vaccinations would not be understanding of the subtle differences.

You're right. It's a different situation, and it doesn't apply. Gathering intelligence is an act of espionage, not war.



"contributed"... "potential"...

Quit whining.

Yes, actually I do think it matters.

Because the Westboro Baptist Church is a bunch of assholes does that mean that one should assume that ALL Baptist churches are assholes?

This is frankly an example of ignorant religious extremists acting, well as they normally do. Irrationally and without regard to human life.

No, of course not. However, one of the primary challenges of working in third world countries is culture clash and mistrust from uneducated people. It doesn't take many bad decisions and/or dishonorable actions to spoil the well. A lot of westerners don't understand the harm this sort of activity can cause. For example, saying it matters that they weren't going around as "Red Cross" doesn't make any difference to a third-world uneducated man who just sees a western-supported vaccination program (by the way, the Red Cross isn't running the vaccination programs). Of course, there's also pricks like others in this thread who don't give a crap about what goes on in a third world country as long as it doesn't affect them.

This is bad tactics and this sort of action needs to stop. We'll do way more harm than good.

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

LMAO you are such a twit.

Oh, as for the rest of your name-calling, the fundamental fact is that some distrust of the red cross in certain parts of Pakistan isn't likely to have a meaningful impact on worldwide polio eradication. Pakistan, per your own article, is one of only three nations where the disease is not eradicated. Cases worldwide have dropped from 350,000 in 1988 to a low of 483 in 2001, and remained at a level under 2000 worldwide annually since then. Only 2 diseases have ever been eradicated, smallpox and rinderpest; the present level of polio occurrence is so close to eradication that complaints about a few missed vaccinations are positively absurd; the uproar will die down and vaccination will resume, probably in a few months at most. Eradication of diseases is chancy, and very difficult, and claiming that this event somehow makes a critical difference is just silly.

In fact, the only other countries where it isn't considered eradicated are Nigeria and Afghanistan. Gee, maybe the problem is extremism? Yes, it probably is, because way back in 2005 some idiot in Nigeria was issuing Fatwas claiming the polio vaccine was a conspiracy to sterilize Muslims. Never mind that Nigeria is not where we thought Bin Laden was, nor is it anywhere near Afghanistan or Pakistan, that didn't stop him from doing this anyhow.

As for your whining about the families of the aid workers, that's the exact argument Monte used to make. Again, no one gave them a veto over national policy, nor you for that matter. You're entitled to your opinion. That does not change the fact that you're a Monday Morning Quarterback who can sit on the sidelines moralizing, with no responsibility to come up with a better tactic that would be similarly effective in collecting the intelligence. No, it's just a "bad tactic" that "needs to stop". You don't have any better ideas, and don't have a clue how to come up with any, and it doesn't matter anyhow because the deed is done and likely the tactic can't be used again anyhow because people are onto it now.

So frankly, I'll take being a "prick" in the eyes of a pompous jackass over being that pompous jackass who just wants to wag his finger and tell people "that's naughty, no using those meany meany tactics", when he really has no better ideas, nor the first clue as to what would be needed to formulate a better idea. That's ok though, this is the internet where outrage substitutes for ideas.