Pakistan: Four Killed After Suicide Bomb Targets Polio Campaign

Facts

• A Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) suicide bomber crashed into a police escort for a polio vaccine team near the southwestern city of Quetta, Pakistan on Wednesday. The attack killed four and wounded more than 30 others, including 15 police officers.
• Among the dead were three family members and a police officer who perished after the blast toppled the polio truck into a ravine and impacted a nearby car. The attack occurred just two days after a national polio vaccine drive began Monday.
• The TTP took credit for the attack, saying, "This attack was carried out after the announcement to end ceasefire, and was planned to take revenge for the death of Omar Khalid Khorasani. Our attacks will continue." Khorasani was a TTP leader killed by a car bomb in August in Afghanistan.
• Militants falsely claim the vaccine drives are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. Pakistan nearly eradicated polio in 2021, when only one case was reported but 20 new cases have been reported this year.
• Gunmen killed a polio worker in March while she was returning home from an earlier vaccine drive, and in January last year, gunmen also killed a police officer guarding a team of polio vaccine handlers in the nation's northwest. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the last polio-endemic countries in the world per the World Health Organization.
• The Taliban takeover after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan has emboldened Taliban allies in Pakistan despite the government agreeing to a permanent cease-fire with the TTP in May.

Sources: Reuters, Abc, Al Jazeera, and Times of India.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Atlantic Council. Pakistan has been left to fend for itself after the Taliban's recent takeover of Afghanistan. In order to conduct genuine negotiations with the TTP, Pakistan must do so without directly engaging the Afghan Taliban — while discreetly working to ensure the Afghan Taliban drops its support for the TTP. Unfortunately, it's up to Islamabad to walk this unfair tightrope and build diplomatic and military safeguards to ensure these heinous attacks end.
• Narrative B, as provided by First Post. Pakistan's current dilemma stems from its decades-old dream of establishing Muslim rule in neighboring India. The radical militant groups it nurtured in the 90s to fight a proxy war in Kashmir have turned into the Taliban and TTP groups seen today. Simply put, Islamabad is reaping the extremism it once desperately wanted to sow in its neighbors.