The Surge - Wired Science:
The border regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan are wracked by violence, and their rural hinterlands are largely under the control of a diverse array of militant groups. The Taliban in Afghanistan have been mostly cooperative with the polio campaign—in the south of the country, where their writ is strongest, they even help point out areas missed by vaccine teams—but in 2012 Taliban leaders in Pakistan began banning vaccinations in their areas, condemning the campaign as an American plot. They also started targeting campaign workers for assassination: Since the ban started, 22 people have been killed in attacks on vaccine teams.
Here in eastern Afghanistan, the influence of the Pakistani Taliban is strong. In Lal Pura, six villages—representing 200 of the district’s 1,100 households—have been off-limits to polio campaign vaccinators for the past two years. Pakistani militants have been living nearby, and they refuse to let the vaccine teams in. The result is a pocket of unvaccinated children and a reservoir for the virus—one that threatens to spread to the entire region if unchecked. Indeed, seven months earlier, one of the few cases of polio paralysis in the country was reported here.