Attacks on door-to-door polio teams and their police guards have become so predictable, just like the government’s glaring inability to stop them, that simply carrying on like this not only does very little to end the virus in the country but also provides ready cannon fodder for the enemy. Once more a police officer guarding a vaccination team has been martyred in Khawasi Banda area of Jarma near the Indus Highway; the second such incident in the same area in less than four months. And once again all the security machinery can do is cut a sorry figure as it tries to explain that dozens of officers have been mobilized to hunt down the culprits, etc. It’s shocking that despite all the trouble the government still choses to react to attacks every time, without bothering to relaise the need to be a little more proactive. The reason that these attacks occur, after all, is that most residents, especially in northern parts of the country, have been thoroughly brainwashed by religious extremists into believing that what everybody calls polio vaccination drops are indeed a cunning conspiracy by the enemies of Islam to make our next generation infertile; and other such ridiculous theories. And while it is necessary for the long arms of the law to catch everybody responsible for the attacks on polio teams, this matter also requires subtle handling; which will have to begin with a formidable narrative from the government. Until and unless it puts its foot down, and takes steps to reverse some of the brainwashing, this problem is not going to go away. It’s precisely because we haven’t tackled this issue correctly that Pakistan remains one of only two countries in the whole world that haven’t yet been able to get rid of the polio virus. And since the other country is Afghanistan, which has effectively been going through hell for almost five consecutive decades, their predicament is a little more understandable than ours. The government must do whatever needs to be done to solve this problem once and for all; and do it before it sends more innocent people out to their slaughter. *