Enlisting the Taliban in the Fight Against Polio

Children shouldn't die or suffer paralysis from polio, and they don't have to, thanks to the effective and easily-administered polio vaccine. The rationale for mass inoculation seems obvious, but even the prevention of childhood diseases can become a fraught political issue in a war zone. In Afghanistan, keeping polio at bay means working with the Taliban, the Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Afghan volunteers in the south and east of the country go door-to-door, village-to-village, carrying the standard vaccination toolkit, but something else as well: a letter from Taliban leader Mullah Omar sanctioning the vaccination campaign. The fight against polio has brought the Afghan Government, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and at least one Taliban faction together in a fragile coalition to save children's lives as the war drags on.

Afghanistan is one of just four polio endemic countries left in the world, and most polio deaths in the country occur in areas controlled by insurgents, where public health workers employed by the government previously faced routine threats and physical violence.

Acting as a neutral intermediary between the United Nations and the Afghan Government on one side and the Quetta-based Taliban on the other, the ICRC secured the Taliban leader's approval of the vaccination campaign. In 2008, Omar penned a letter ordering his fighters to cooperate with public health teams and urging villagers in Taliban-controlled areas to have their children vaccinated. Almost immediately, vaccination teams were able to enter dozens of previously out-of-bounds villages and teams that considered pulling out for security reasons opted to stay.

Once a month, parents allow volunteers appointed by the Taliban and sponsored by the Afghan Government and UN agencies to administer an oral polio vaccine to their children. Unlike the one-time dead virus polio vaccine children in the developed world receive, the vaccine given to Afghan children contains a weakened but still live strain of the virus. The reason is simple: through the waste-contaminated water supply, other members of the community are inoculated as well.

Afghan lawmakers and Western diplomats concede that seeking insurgent approval for the anti-polio drive acknowledges the Taliban as authorities in the roughly one-third of the country under their control. "It's a pact with the devil," one senior Western diplomat told the WSJ. "But it's a pact in order to save lives."

Photo credit: United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan