Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan are prone to a large outbreak of polio if they do not reform their immunization drives. The story of the two-year-old Hanifa from Balochistan’s Pashtun-dominated Killa Abdulla district is shocking and disturbing. A year ago, her father Abdus Salam turned back polio vaccine workers from his doorstep. In February this year, doctors diagnosed the little girl with the polio virus. Because of an ignorant decision by her father, Hanifa will suffer for the rest of her life. Her parents are now running around frantically to find a cure for their daughter’s illness, but chances of extricating and salvaging her limbs from the deadly virus are distant. There were 25 reported cases of polio in Balochistan last year. Of them, 13 were in Killa Abdullah. At least 11 cases resulted from parents’ refusal to administer anti-polio immunization drops. Similar refusals in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province led to the arrest of over 700 parents in the first two months of this year. Nearly all of these reluctant parents consider the polio vaccine a western conspiracy to sterilize their children. They believe it will cause impotency and promote immoral behavior in their children. They have been told by clerics and religious militants that the polio vaccine contains monkey, donkey and lion meat and brains. Such propaganda gained considerable currency after it was reported that the CIA used Pakistani doctor Shakeel Afridi and paramedics employed by Save the Children to find and kill Osama bin Laden under the cover of an anti-polio campaign. Militants have since campaigned violently against polio vaccination. UNICEF says as many as 71,131 caregivers refused vaccination last year, with over 250 polio virus cases across Pakistan, compared to 63 a year ago. The field staff also encounters stiff resistance from parents and caretakers, who refuse to cooperate with mobile teams. More than 55 polio workers and accompanying guards have been killed in Balochistan...

The brazen trading of votes and money surrounding the recent round of Senate elections deserves a dispassionate debate. It has not only exposed the ruling elite’s selfish propensity to buy a seat in the Upper House but also kicked up a critically important question: is the Senate meant to protect smaller provinces from the so-called “tyranny of the majority” as argued by James Madison, the fourth president of the United States (1809–17), or is it a debating club largely for the kith and kin of the ruling elite and their affluent friends who can throw money bags at their voters? Let us see what motivated the founding fathers of the United States to suggest a bicameral legislature. They, including Madison, envisioned the Senate to be a wise stabilising force, elected not by mass electors, but selected by state legislators. Senators would be more knowledgeable and more deliberate, as was the assumption. The Upper House was designed to shield minority federating units/provinces from the oppression of the majority. Bicameral legislatures are linked primarily to their federal political structure and are supposed to ensure that smaller states within a federation or union are not overshadowed by larger states, which may have more representation in the other House of the legislature. It is also supposed to guard against an encroaching centre. Contrast this with the Senate of Pakistan. The motive behind the creation of the Senate was also to give equal representation to all the four federating units since the membership of the National Assembly was based on the population of each province. Equal provincial membership in the Upper House, thought the authors of the 1973 Constitution, would offset the provincial inequality in the National Assembly. Where is that spirit? Has the Senate acted as a pivot of wisdom? Has it protected the rights of Balochistan? Have its members and the mainstream political parties upheld their constitutional obligations? Well, by indulging in buying...

Much has transpired in Pakistani society since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, ten weeks ago. The brazen assault that left 152 dead, mostly children, demonstrated once again the appalling penchant for violence among extremist groups in Pakistan and provided a rationale to galvanize a divided, irresolute, and discordant nation. With the exception of a few extreme right-wing organizations and political parties, the civil military leadership, the political establishment, its bureaucracy, as well as the general public all agreed on the need to eliminate terrorism from Pakistan. For that end, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif laid out a 20-point agenda, titled the National Action Plan (NAP), in a televised address on December 24, 2015. The plan detailed steps the government would take to systematically eradicate violent extremists and their ideology through a combination of concerted military campaigns along with sweeping, punitive legislation. So began a paradigm shift in Pakistan, with the civil-military leadership ostensibly united in their discourse with a public now willing to disavow terrorism once and for all. In perhaps the most surprising sign of a monumental change in focus and ideology among the uppermost echelons of power in Pakistan, private funding of extremist activities from Saudi Arabia—a state most in Pakistan turn a blind eye to—was recently called into question by the foreign office. Additional steps to deter funding for terror include the registration of millions of mobile phone SIM cards, systematically documenting known financial supporters of terror, tracking the highly nomadic and geographically dispersed Afghan refugee population, and curbing online presence of terror networks. “There shall be no distinction between good and bad Taliban,” said the prime minister before the All Parties Conference shortly after the massacre, referring to a major change in a decades-old policy of providing tacit state benefaction to certain terrorist...

Much has transpired in Pakistani society since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, ten weeks ago. The brazen assault that left 152 dead, mostly children, demonstrated once again the appalling penchant for violence among extremist groups in Pakistan and provided a rationale to galvanize a divided, irresolute, and discordant nation. With the exception of a few extreme right-wing organizations and political parties, the civil military leadership, the political establishment, its bureaucracy, as well as the general public all agreed on the need to eliminate terrorism from Pakistan. For that end, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif laid out a 20-point agenda, titled the National Action Plan (NAP), in a televised address on December 24, 2015. The plan detailed steps the government would take to systematically eradicate violent extremists and their ideology through a combination of concerted military campaigns along with sweeping, punitive legislation. So began a paradigm shift in Pakistan, with the civil-military leadership ostensibly united in their discourse with a public now willing to disavow terrorism once and for all. In perhaps the most surprising sign of a monumental change in focus and ideology among the uppermost echelons of power in Pakistan, private funding of extremist activities from Saudi Arabia—a state most in Pakistan turn a blind eye to—was recently called into question by the foreign office. Additional steps to deter funding for terror include the registration of millions of mobile phone SIM cards, systematically documenting known financial supporters of terror, tracking the highly nomadic and geographically dispersed Afghan refugee population, and curbing online presence of terror networks. “There shall be no distinction between good and bad Taliban,” said the prime minister before the All Parties Conference shortly after the massacre, referring to a major change in a decades-old policy of providing tacit state benefaction to certain terrorist...

Much has transpired in Pakistani society since the attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar, ten weeks ago. The brazen assault that left 152 dead, mostly children, demonstrated once again the appalling penchant for violence among extremist groups in Pakistan and provided a rationale to galvanize a divided, irresolute, and discordant nation. With the exception of a few extreme right-wing organizations and political parties, the civil military leadership, the political establishment, its bureaucracy, as well as the general public all agreed on the need to eliminate terrorism from Pakistan. For that end, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif laid out a 20-point agenda, titled the National Action Plan (NAP), in a televised address on December 24, 2015. The plan detailed steps the government would take to systematically eradicate violent extremists and their ideology through a combination of concerted military campaigns along with sweeping, punitive legislation. So began a paradigm shift in Pakistan, with the civil-military leadership ostensibly united in their discourse with a public now willing to disavow terrorism once and for all. In perhaps the most surprising sign of a monumental change in focus and ideology among the uppermost echelons of power in Pakistan, private funding of extremist activities from Saudi Arabia—a state most in Pakistan turn a blind eye to—was recently called into question by the foreign office. Additional steps to deter funding for terror include the registration of millions of mobile phone SIM cards, systematically documenting known financial supporters of terror, tracking the highly nomadic and geographically dispersed Afghan refugee population, and curbing online presence of terror networks. “There shall be no distinction between good and bad Taliban,” said the prime minister before the All Parties Conference shortly after the massacre, referring to a major change in a decades-old policy of providing tacit state benefaction to certain terrorist...