Tag: Ashfaq Yusufzai

Vaccine Refusal, Floods Impact Polio Drive in Pakistan — Global Issues

A young child receives vaccine drops in Pakistan, but the region has experienced an upsurgence of cases because of vaccine refusal. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Nov 29 (IPS) – Vaccine refusal is impacting the eradication of polio in Pakistan.

Pakistan has vaccinated about 35 million children during its door-to-door campaign, but about 500,000 remained unvaccinated due to refusal by their parents, Jawad Khan Polio officer in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, recorded in 2022 so far.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, has reported all 20 polio cases. North Waziristan has detected 17 infections, Lakki Marwat 2 and South Waziristan 1.

Khan says that hesitancy against vaccination is not a new trend, as Pakistan has been facing this problem since the start of the polio-eradication campaign in the 90s.

Of the 17 cases reported in militancy-riddled North Waziristan, 12 were not vaccinated, while five were partially immunized.

Muhammad Shah, whose son was diagnosed with the polio virus in August, told IPS that he had been opposing vaccination because this wasn’t allowed in Islam.

“Our religion Islam says that no medication is permissible before the occurrence of any ailment; therefore, our people defy vaccination to fulfill their religious obligations,” he said. Shah, a religious preacher, says his son will soon recover from the paralysis.

He says he was unrepentant in refusing vaccination of his child and would continue to thwart efforts by vaccinators to inoculate the toddler.

North Waziristan district, located near Afghanistan’s border, has many militants who staunchly oppose vaccination.

“It was the hub of the polio virus till 2014 when militants ruled the area illegitimately as there was a complete ban on all sorts of immunization. The Taliban militants were evicted through a military operation in 2014, and parents started vaccinating their kids,” Sajjad Ahmed, a senior health worker, said.

According to him, polio vaccinations have decreased with the emergence of militancy in the area.

“In the last three months, three persons, including two policemen and one health worker, have been killed by unknown assailants during a polio drive in North Waziristan,” he said.

People are afraid to take part in the campaign due to fear of reprisals by Taliban militants, he said.

Dr Rafiq Khan, associated with polio immunization in the region, told IPS that parents refuse vaccination, arguing that it was a US and Western plot to render recipients impotent and cut the population of Muslims – a baseless argument.

“Alleged Taliban have killed about 70 vaccinators and policemen since 2012. Government deploys 25,000 policemen in each three-day campaign to ensure the safety of workers,” he said.

Khan said that militants are pressuring the people against vaccination, due to which parents weren’t willing to administer jabs to their kids below five years.

“We are also facing fake finger marking of kids. As a standard procedure, our vaccinators mark the thumb of the vaccine recipients with indelible ink so that we know how many children have been immunized,” he said.

However, the parents ask the vaccinators to mark their kids’ fingers without vaccination, he said. In this way, parents deceive the government.

“Now, we have started convincing the parents through community elders and religious scholars to create demand for vaccination,” he said.

The government has enlisted the services of religious scholars to do away with refusals against poliomyelitis.

Maulana Amir Haq, a pro-vaccination cleric, told IPS that they had been holding awareness sessions with people telling them vaccination is allowed in Islam.

“It is the responsibility of the parents to safeguard their kids against diseases and vaccination aimed to prevent the crippling ailments. There, parents should fulfill their religious duty and inoculate their sons and daughters,” he said.

He said that laboratory reports confirm vaccines given to Pakistan’s children are safe and don’t contain any ingredient to sterilise the recipients. The situation is changing because we now reach hardcore refusal cases and vaccinate them.

Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel said that it is crucial to understand that the only protection from polio is vaccination, and parents should protect their children against disability through free immunization.

“We want to wipe out the virus and safeguard not only our own kids but all around the world,” he told IPS.

Polio will keep haunting us until we interrupt transmission, Federal Health Secretary Dr. Muhammad Fakhre Alam said.

On August 31, a 16-year-old boy was diagnosed positive for polio in Waziristan, which shows how robust Pakistan’s virus detection network is because it highlights that we can identify polio cases in children outside the usually expected age, he said.

National Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig, expressed concerns about the spread of wild poliovirus as millions of people in the country are displaced by recent floods.

“The scale of the current calamity is absolutely devastating. As part of the polio programme, our network of health workers is here to support in every way we can, but I am deeply concerned about the virus gaining a foothold as millions of people leave their homes and look for refuge elsewhere,” he said.

The province of Balochistan and parts of southern Punjab, and 23 districts of Sindh were unable to hold a vaccination drive as floods swept away homes and villages around the country. Despite the extreme climatic conditions, polio teams reached children in all accessible areas, he said.

Neighbouring Afghanistan is facing the same problems; however, it has detected only two cases this year.

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Afghan Refugees, Medical Visitors Bemoan Treatment in Pakistan — Global Issues

Action taken against stall-owners at the Refugees Bazaar in Peshawar. Afghan refugees say they are unfairly targeted by the authorities. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Aug 15 (IPS) – Afghan refugees living in Pakistan face a host of problems, ranging from seeking medical treatment to shelter, business, police harassment and violence. Many of those affected have been there for four decades.

“Whenever we go to the local hospitals for treatment, we don’t get good services. As a result, we bank on unqualified doctors who charge a lower fee, but the treatment they provide us isn’t up to the mark,” Jamila Bibi, 48, told IPS. She lives in the Khyber district near the Torkham border with Afghanistan.

Bibi says she developed a gynaecological problem, but the local hospital denied her treatment.

“Later, we took a loan from our relative and went to a private hospital, but my condition had worsened. Doctors removed my uterus and sent a specimen to exclude cancer as the cause of the complications,” the bed-ridden mother of three said.

Most wealthy Afghans prefer to visit Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, to seek treatment in private hospitals. Many facilities in their home country don’t offer quality treatment because of ongoing conflicts that have plagued the area since 1979.

Afghans living in Pakistan and those seeking treatment and who want to visit Pakistan aren’t satisfied with how they are handled at the border and in the country.

“We reached the border on June 15 to undergo surgery for bilateral kidney stones in Peshawar, but the police kept us waiting for three days. When they cleared our documents and we reached the hospital, we were told that both (of my wife’s) kidneys had been infected and we had to stay for a month to cure the infection,” Muhammad Sattar, a Kabul resident, said.

Sattar, a carpet dealer, says doctors said his wife could have been operated on sooner had she arrived earlier, preventing the spread of the infection.

Dr Umar Amir, who deals with Afghan patients at the border, said that on an average day, 120 patients were allowed to come to Pakistan after checking their medical documents. “There is no delay in processing their documents,” he told IPS.

Pakistan is home to 3.3m registered refugees, most of who arrived after the Soviet Union’s invasion in 1979.

“One million (32 per cent reside in 54 refugees village, and 68 per cent in urban areas across Pakistan,” UNHCR’s spokesman Qaisar Khan Afridi told IPS. In addition to its dedicated refugee programmes, UNHCR has been supporting the Refugee Affected and Hosting Areas (RAHA) initiative, which aims to mitigate the impact of the protracted refugee presence and promote social cohesion between Afghan refugees and their Pakistani host communities.

Since its launch in 2009, the programme has helped over 12 million people (85 per cent of beneficiaries are Pakistanis) across the country through some 4,300 projects worth more than USD 200 million.

Through RAHA, UNHCR has been strengthening the capacity of existing government hospitals and educational institutes.

“We don’t have any option except staying in Pakistan as Afghanistan is in ruins. We cannot go back due to extreme violence, lawlessness, and lack of economic activities,” said Muhammad Suhail (34). A scrap collector in Peshawar’s Karkhano Bazzar (Industrial Market), he says they were looked down upon by host communities.

Most of the refugees do odd jobs. He said they work as vendors, in tandoors (bread baking), rickshaw-driving, fruit, and vegetable-selling.

Only a few wealthy refugees, who own shops dealing in gold, crockery, grocery, cloth and general stores, are happy, and they even send money back home to support their relatives.

“We arrived here in 1988 and have a well-established business of cloth. We have employed 33 Afghans and have no issues with local police and host community,” Said Rehman (62) said. “My three sons and two daughters are married, and their children study in Pakistani educational institutions on seats allocated for Afghan refugees.”

Rehman disagreed with the impression that Pakistani were hostile towards Afghans. “Some residents were friendly, and others weren’t, but can we blame all the local people for disrupting the Afghan’s lives? Many of our relatives have married local men and women,” he said.

In Refugees Bazaar in Peshawar, Afghans say they face harassment from municipal authorities.

“Every day, the officials come and arrest our shopkeepers, which has badly harmed our businesses,” Ghulam Rasool, a cloth merchant, told IPS. Afghans own 95 percent of the shops at the bazaar which specialise in Afghan cultural goods.

“We purchase clothes from the market and get them stitched in Afghan style. We feel convenient in negotiating prices with the Afghan shopkeepers selling cosmetics, foot wears, fruits, meats and so on,” Shaheen Begum, a house woman, told IPS.

“In Pakistani shops, we face difficulties due to language barriers,” she said. “We often find the market closed due to raids by local authorities.”

Municipal officer Javid Khan said that many Afghan shopkeepers and vendors encroach on roads and were arrested for violating the laws. But the vendors were freed when they assured the authorities they would abide by the regulations.

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International Relief Effort After Deadly Afghan Earthquake Displaces Thousands — Global Issues

Pakistani medics treat Afghan quake survivors on the border of the two countries. More than 1000 were killed and thousands displaced after the 5.9-magnitude quake hit the Paktika and Khost on June 22, 2022. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Jun 24 (IPS) – Survivors of the deadly earthquake that hit Afghanistan’s Paktika and Khost provinces told of their losses while being treated in hospitals in neighboring Pakistan after a 5.9-magnitude quake killed at least 1000 and displaced thousands more in the early hours of June 22, 2022.

The Taliban-led government has appealed for assistance, and its neighbor Pakistan was the first responder, sending aid and treating injured people.

A resident of Khost province Abdur Rahim, a daily wager, brought his nine-year-old daughter, Samia Bibi, to the North Waziristan’s hospital. She has a head injury.

Rahim told IPS that they were asleep when the earthquake started.

“My wife and two sons died on the spot, and my daughter sustained head injuries. I ran out after feeling the tremor, and within seconds the roof of our home collapsed,” he said.

A weeping Rahim said he was able to retrieve his daughter from the debris.

“Now, she is improving after getting medication. Doctors will operate upon her when she improves some more.”

Zahoor Shah, from the same province, said all his family members were still under the debris of his mud house, which fell due to the quake. He miraculously survived.

“We were all sleeping and heard the noise made by our house collapsing. I was sleeping near the door, therefore, received fewer injuries,” he said, lying in hospital with fractured legs and hands.

He lost his 38-year-old wife, his son, aged ten, and two daughters, 17 and 18.

Shah, 45, a prayer leader, said that he was thankful for the Pakistani medics.

Pakistan sent humanitarian aid to the Afghan victims, including blankets, tents, and medicine, the Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office said in a statement.

Pakistan ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, urged the international community not to link assistance for the disaster-hit nation with political concerns.

“The humanitarian assistance should not become a victim of geopolitics. UN’s humanitarian principles, including the principles of neutrality and impartiality, must be upheld,” said Akram in New York, according to media reports.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Health said about 30 of Pakistan’s tribespeople, who had gone to adjacent Khost province for business, were also among the dead.

“In line with the government’s directives, we have alerted hospitals to receive injured people from Afghanistan in North Waziristan district located on Afghanistan’s border,” he said.

Pakistan received eight injured people on June 23 from the Khost province for treatment in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the number of people crossing the border for treatment rose daily.

“We have imposed an emergency in the hospitals in North Waziristan district located close to Khost province, the epicenter of the earthquake, and have called in all medical staff,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s health director Dr Ikramullah Khan told IPS.

In addition, Pakistan sent a team of 61 doctors and medical supplies to the affected areas to treat the people.

“Most people required medication for diarrhea, dysentery, and gastroenteritis due to dehydration,” he said. “Ambulances are standing near the border to transport the patients to hospitals. It is an ongoing process as we would provide continuous relief to the needy people.”

Seventeen-year-old Rozina Begum lost her parents and two brothers.

“I was shifted to this hospital by rescue workers. Many say that my parents and brothers are alive, but I don’t believe because I saw their dead bodies with my own eyes,” Begum said.

She said she was to be married in a few months, but now she lay hospitalized at Khalifa Gul Nawaz Hospital, Bannu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, near North Waziristan. Doctors are expected to operate on her for multiple abdominal injuries within the next few days.

“She is not fit for surgery. We are giving her antibiotics to prevent infection before her surgery,” Dr Kashmala Khan said.

She said that they had already received 30 bags of blood from local donors. Most of the injured people required blood.

“Local people are giving cash and serving food and drinks to the patients. They are donating blankets and clothes as well, “Khan said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted: “The earthquake in Afghanistan is a great tragedy, adding to an already dire humanitarian situation. We grieve for all the lives lost, and the hardships Afghans continue to face. The US is working with our humanitarian partners to send medical teams to help those affected.

The Taliban in Afghanistan has appealed for international support.

Taliban’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told IPS from the capital Kabul that they had appealed for international assistance because providing food, shelter, and medicines to those affected by the natural disaster was challenging.

“We welcome UN agencies and international organizations’ donations and help for the people. We have already allocated one billion Afghanis (over 11m USD) (to disaster relief), but we are unable to deal with the situation,” he said.

Rasool Ahmadzai, who works with World Food Programme, said they faced hardships reaching the area because of inclement weather and rain.

“Rescue workers find it extremely difficult to remove the debris and retrieve the bodies. Still, we are re-enforcing efforts to provide food and save the people from starvation,” Ahmadzai said.

Most mud-built homes in southeastern Paktika province were destroyed, and he said it was difficult to reach the victims.

“Displaced population also require shelter, and UNHCR is working to donate the needful, but the task isn’t easy,” he said.

He elaborated that the roads were in shambles, and mobile phones were not working, hampering rescue work.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the agency was “fully mobilized” in Afghanistan.

“My heart goes out to the people of Afghanistan who are already reeling from the impact of years of conflict, economic hardship, and hunger. I convey my deep condolences to the families of the victims and wish a speedy recovery to the injured,” Guterres said.

After an Afghan foreign ministry spokesman said the Taliban would welcome international help, US President Joe Biden directed USAID and other federal government entities to assess how they could respond.

Salahuddin Ayubi, a spokesman for the Afghanistan interior ministry, feared the death toll was likely to rise “as some of the villages were in remote areas in the mountains and it will take some time to collect details.”

Ayubi said that most of the houses had been reduced to rubble, and bodies swathed in blankets could be seen lying on the ground.
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New and Old Afghan Refugees Make the Best of Life in Neighbouring Pakistan — Global Issues

A man sells poultry in Refugees Market, Peshawar, on 17 June. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Jun 23 (IPS) – “We came here in 1979 after Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. My children and grandchildren have grown up here and they don’t want to go back to that war-ravaged country. I go there occasionally to mourn the deaths of near and dear ones,” says Muhammad Jabbar, 67, a former resident of Kabul, capital of Afghanistan.

Jabbar, who sells dry fruits in Muhajir Bazaar (known as the ‘refugees market’), in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, said that he hadn’t been able to convince his family members to visit their country due to the endless violence.

The latest in that series of events was the takeover by Taliban militants in August 2021, which has further heightened Jabbar’s fears that even he may no longer be able to visit his native land. At the same time he acknowledges that Pakistan is now the family’s home and calls the local people ‘friendly’.

This South Asian nation is home to 3.3 million registered refugees and more than double this number of unregistered ones who have fled neighbouring Afghanistan. Most of them run small businesses or do petty jobs and send remittances to their family members who remain across the border.

A vegetable seller in the same market, Hayat Shah, says business is so good that he and his family never think of returning. “We are very happy as here we live in peace and earn money for our survival. In Afghanistan, people are faced with an extremely hard economic situation. My two sons and a daughter study here in a local school,” says Shah, 49.

“We arrived in Peshawar in early 1992 when our home was bombed by unknown people. My parents and two brothers died,” he adds.

An awareness session with Afghan women in Akora Khattak refugee camp, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, 16 June. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

Shah and his family live in Baghlan Camp in Peshawar, one of 3,500 refugee families in the camp (though UNHCR now calls camps ‘refugee villages’). There are 54 refugee camps across Pakistan — 43 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — housing 32 per cent of refugees. More than two-thirds of refugees live in urban areas, where they are legally permitted to work, according to UNHCR.

Most Afghans interviewed by IPS in the market, said they feel that Pakistan is now home. Ninety percent of merchants in the sprawling market are Afghan businessmen, who run clothing, fish, meat and fruit and vegetable shops. “Refugees bazar is bustling with Afghan women and men buying all sorts of stuff,” says fruit seller Ghafoor Shah. “This market is no different from any market in Afghanistan, where women clad in burkas can be seen shopping,” he adds.

Sultana, 51, says they visit the bazaar frequently to do bulk shopping for the Islamic festival Eidul Fitre, marriage ceremonies and other holidays. “We can find all type of articles we need in accordance with Afghan traditions. Us women can talk to Afghan shopkeepers and tailors easily in our own languages compared to Pakistanis, with whom conversation is difficult.”

UNHCR spokesman for Pakistan Qaisar Khan Afridi told IPS that the arrival of new refugees after the Taliban took charge in Kabul has created major issues.

“Over, 250,000 Afghans have reached here in the last 18 months — that’s just the registered refugees. The UN refugee agency is in talks with the host government to seek a solution to the problem of these people who aren’t registered in Pakistan yet,” he says adding, “Pakistan isn’t accepting new refugees,” he adds.

The UNHCR’s voluntary repatriation programme for refugees to Afghanistan has come to almost a complete halt. Only 185 families have returned since January this year, with each getting US$250 as assistance. About 4.4 million refugees have been repatriated since 2002.

Muhammad Hashim, a reporter for Shamshad TV channel in Jalalabad, told IPS that the Taliban aren’t allowing journalists to work freely and suspect anyone who was employed during the former government’s tenure. “I came with my wife and two daughters to Pakistan using back routes and now we’re trying to seek asylum in the US or any European country. Going back is out of the question,” he told IPS, awaiting registration outside UNHCR’s office in Peshawar.

Hashim, 41, says he survived a murder attempt a day before his departure for Pakistan and left so quickly that his belongings remain in Afghanistan.

Women journalists are sitting at home, he adds. Fearing prosecution by Taliban, hundreds of people who worked in the police or in offices under the former Afghan government have also rushed to Pakistan, he says. “Violence and lack of jobs, education and health facilities are haunting the people.”

Muhammad Abbas Khan, Commissioner for Afghan Refugees Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, speaks at a function marking visits of senior UNHCR officials to Padhana refugee camp, Haripur district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 17 June 2022. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

Schoolteacher Mushtari Begum, 39, is among the fresh refugees. “I did a masters in computer science from Kabul University and used to teach in a private girls school for eight years. Now, the women’s schools have been shut down and teachers and students are sitting in their homes,” says Begum, a mother of two. “We live with relatives in Peshawar temporarily and have run of money,” she added.

On 12 June the Pakistan government approved a policy under which transit visas will be issued to Afghan asylum seekers to enable them to travel to any country of their choice. At the same time, the federal cabinet said that Pakistan has always welcomed refugees and would continue to host them in their trying times.

Gul Rahim, who drives a taxi in Nowshera district near Peshawar, says he arrived here in 2002 and has been lucky to educate his two sons. “Pakistan has proved a blessing for me. In Afghanistan I wouldn’t have been able to raise my sons, who are now teaching at a refugee school and helping me financially.”

Afghan students take classes at the Padhana refugees camp, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan 15 June. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Fazal Ahmed, a local officer at the Afghan commissionerate in Peshawar, which oversees all refugee camps in the province, says they hold awareness sessions for refugees from time to time, on issues like violence and gender, health and education. “In over 30 refugee camps we also arrange skill development programmes, especially to enable women to earn their livelihoods.

“Sports activities are part of our programme, which we organize in collaboration with the UNHCR,” he says. Afghan students have also been admitted in Pakistani schools, universities and medical colleges, he adds.

However, all is not well. Many refugees complain of being harassed by police, a charge vehemently denied by authorities.

“We arrived here in February 2022 because of fear of reprisals by the Taliban. We have no documents because Pakistan isn’t registering new refugees and police often arrest us and release us only when we pay bribes,” says Usman Ali, who worked as a police constable in the former government in Kabul. Ali, 24, said his elder brother, a former army soldier, was killed by the Taliban in December 2021.

“To save my life, I rushed to Pakistan’s border in a passenger bus and ended up in Peshawar,” he adds.

Local government official Jehanzeb Khan tells IPS that Afghans are treated as guests. “There are isolated cases where Afghans are mistreated by local people but we take action when complaints are filed,” he says.

On Nasir Bagh Road, where Ali sells cosmetics goods from a hand cart, Police Officer Ahmad Nawaz told IPS that they arrest only those Afghans who are involved in crimes and are friendly towards innocent ones. “The Afghans commit robberies and even murders and go back to Afghanistan. We don’t harass Afghans (living here) because they are in trouble,” Nawaz adds.

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Pakistani Artists, Activists Fight for Refugee Status for Arrested Afghan Musicians — Global Issues

Local singers and instrumentalists joined rights activists and politicians in a protest against Afghan musicians’ arrest in Peshawar. They fear that there could be serious repercussions if the musicians are deported back to Taliban-led Afghanistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Jun 01 (IPS) – The arrest of Afghan musicians in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan has elicited protests from local politicians, artists and rights activists who demand their release and say they should be allowed to stay as refugees.

“Four musicians arrested by police in Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, for lack of visa and travel documents have been sent to jail and will be deported under the 14 Foreigners’ Act,” a police officer, Nasrullah Shah, told IPS.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan located on the border with Afghanistan.

Police arrested the artists on May 27. They had been performing on TV and radio for years in Afghanistan, but the Taliban government’s opposition to music silenced them. The group includes Saidullah Wafa, Naveed Hassan, Ajmal and Nadeem Shah.

According to Shah, they crossed into Pakistan illegally.

The musicians, however, insisted that there was a ban on music back home, and as a result, they faced economic problems.

“Since the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in August last year, there was an unannounced ban on musical activities, which has landed the singers and musicians in hot water,” Saidullah Wafa, one of the arrested singers, told IPS. Taliban are notorious for killing musicians, and they will murder us if we go back,” Wafa said. Before fleeing to Pakistan, he lived in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

He claimed that Taliban militants consider music against Islam and have killed many singers and others associated with it in the past. Fearing prosecution, we came to Pakistan to seek refuge, the 25-year-old said.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan has condemned the arrest and possible deportation.

“HRCP is concerned to learn that four Afghan nationals have been arrested by the KP police under the Foreigners’ Act 1946; the court has ordered they be deported. All four face significant threats from the Taliban government in Kabul,” it tweeted.

Local music journalist Sher Alam Shinwari, who writes for Dawn newspaper, said the seized Afghan musicians are refugees. He said they cannot and should not be deported to the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan.

“Afghan musicians, since they arrived in Peshawar and elsewhere in KP, have never been involved in any unlawful activities. Secondly, they have re-joined their relatives already living in refugee camps or rented homes in and around Peshawar,” Shinwari said.

Most have valid documents or ration cards, while some of them carried artists’ registration cards issued by local artists’ organisations, he said.

Deporting Afghan musicians to the Taliban is tantamount to throwing them to the wolves because the Taliban had murdered several artists in the recent past, Shinwari explained.

Families of most of the musicians were already living in Pakistan, and their deportation would be a human rights violation.

Rashid Ahmed Khan, head of Honary Tolana, an organisation striving for musicians’ rights, told IPS that the arrested musicians would be in danger if sent back.

“They were taken into custody by police without a search warrant, sent to jail and be handed over to the Taliban – which is an inhuman act. These famous artistes moved to Peshawar last year when Taliban seized power in Afghanistan to save their lives,” he said.

On May 30, local artists held a protest demonstration against the arrest of Afghan musicians in Peshawar and urged the government to allow them to stay in Pakistan as refugees.

Politicians also joined the protest.

Sardar Hussain Babak, a local lawmaker, assured them that they would raise the issues on the floor of the parliament.

Some Afghan artists present at the protest said they had come to Pakistan for their safety and could not continue their profession in their own country.

They demanded police stop their action against the artists because they were guests in Pakistan and their lives were at risk in Afghanistan.

Local artists, including Saeeda Bibi and others, condemned the police action against the Afghan musicians and demanded their early release.

“Taliban have resorted to violence against the musicians, destroyed their equipment at different places, and shot dead people even participating in the wedding ceremonies in Nangrahar and other provinces of Afghanistan,” Saeeda Bibi told IPS.

“We have applied for bail of the detained artists with the hope to get them released at the earliest,” she said. “We have set a three-day deadline for police to stop action against the artists. Otherwise, Afghan and Pakistani artists would march on Islamabad and stage a sit-in until their demands were heard.

“We also appealed to UNHCR to take notice of the ordeal of Afghan artists so that they could live in Pakistan as refugees.”

KP Information Minister Muhammad Ali Saif told IPS that the artists should be prosecuted in terms of the law.

“We have been hosting 3 million Afghan refugees for the past four decades, which is the glaring example of hospitality. They will be treated as per the law,” he said.

There were no instructions to police regarding the arrest of Afghan musicians, and the court would decide about their deportation, he said.

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Pakistans Campaign to Contain Polio in Face of Vaccine Hesitancy — Global Issues

Authorities in North Waziristan district in Pakistan, vaccinate children against polio. With one case reported, intensified efforts to eradicate the disease are underway. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
  • by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar, pakistan)
  • Inter Press Service

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 12 (IPS) – Pakistan’s North Waziristan district authorities have launched an aggressive vaccination drive after a polio case surfaced after 15 polio-free months in the country.

The disease was detected in a 15-month-old toddler about 15 kilometers away from the Afghanistan border. This area was considered a Taliban militant’s hub until 2014.

The Taliban were against polio vaccinations, but immunization drives restarted after the militants were evicted in 2014.

The boy’s family says he had been vaccinated.

“The boy has been vaccinated in every door-to-door polio vaccination campaign, but even then, he developed the crippling disease. We aren’t opposed to polio drops,” says Naheedullah, the toddler’s uncle. “We are religious people but never defied vaccination.”

However, the authorities dispute the family’s version and say the newly infected child hadn’t received oral polio vaccines (OPV) because his family was among those they call “silent refusals”.

“Silent refusals are those whose families argue that their children below five years have been inoculated, but they remain unvaccinated,” Dr Shamsur Rehman, a health official in the region, told IPS. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18,349 children remain unvaccinated due to refusal by their families during the March 2022 campaign. This is down from 19,874 recorded in December 2021.

Vaccinators also face threats from the defiant parents – and as a result, often record the children as vaccinated to stay safe from reprisals. More than 50 people have been killed, allegedly by militants, since 2012 in various anti-polio drives, mainly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which remained a hotspot of the virus for many years, Pakistan’s oldest newspaper Dawn reported.

Religious scholar Muhammad Sami says polio vaccines aren’t allowed in Islam, and therefore, there is polio vaccine hesitancy. He said his group had “information” that the vaccination was a plot to “render the recipients incapable of producing children and cut down the population of the Muslims.”

However, others in the same area have a different opinion.

“We have been persuading parents to administer OPV to their kids as it is their religious responsibility to protect their offspring from diseases,” says Maulana Sagheer, adding that it was false information that the vaccines caused sterility and infertility.

Zulfiqar Babakhel, spokesperson for Pakistan Polio Programme, told IPS that the detection of this latest case of wild poliovirus wasn’t unexpected.  The Pakistan programme had anticipated this risk and put in place contingency plans to enable a rapid response, he said.

It continues to intensify its efforts to eradicate all remaining residual transmission of any strain of poliovirus.

“The ‘last mile’ has always proven to be the toughest phase of national eradication efforts in all countries. Although challenges remain, the programme is capitalizing on the momentum of recent success and continues to strive for zero-polio. This is the most critical time for the programme,” Babakhel said.

It is important to emphasize that the number of polio cases has been significantly reduced this year due to health workers’ unwavering commitment and communities’ and various stakeholders’ support, he said.

It is the third case of wild polio to be reported globally in 2022. Others were reported from Afghanistan and Malawi.

Pakistan had reported one case last year with onset on January 27, 2021, in Killa Abdullah district, Balochistan province.

Health Secretary Dr Aamir Ashraf told IPS that this was a tragedy for the child and his family. It is also regrettable both for Pakistan and polio eradication efforts worldwide.

“We are disappointed but stay undeterred. The case appeared in Southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where the poliovirus was detected late last year and where an emergency action plan is already being implemented,” he says.

“The National and Provincial Polio Emergency Operations Centres have deployed teams to conduct a full investigation of the recent case, while emergency immunization campaigns are underway to prevent further spread of the wild poliovirus in Pakistan,” he says.

Repeated immunizations have protected millions of children from polio, allowing almost all countries to become polio-free, besides the two endemic countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The next sub-national Polio vaccination campaign, expected from 23 – 27 May 2022, will target over 24 million under-five children.

The polio programme had identified Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa as the area most at risk after wild poliovirus was detected in environmental samples in the last quarter of 2021.

“This validates the programme’s concerns about virus circulation in Southern KP and strengthens our resolve to reach every child with the polio vaccine,” said the National Emergency Operations Centre (NEOC) coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig.

To address the challenges in Southern KP, the Government and global polio partners had already initiated an emergency action plan to address the challenges in this part of the province, he explained.

In 2020, the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa reported 22 cases, while no wild poliovirus cases were recorded in the area last year.

Substantial progress has been made recently, with most areas accessible to implement immunization campaigns, but deep-rooted problems and security concerns remain in a few places. Despite the challenges, the programme’s frontline workers continue to reach children with the life-saving vaccine.

The programme is capitalizing on the momentum gained last year and continues to strive for zero-polio. Parents must continue to vaccinate their children during every immunization round until they reach the age of five.

Pakistan remains one of only two countries globally with circulating wild poliovirus, together with Afghanistan. Polio is a highly infectious virus. Until this last epidemiological block wipes out polio, children worldwide remain at risk of life-long paralysis or fatality by the poliovirus.

IPS UN Bureau Report


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© Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service



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