The Taliban have banned polio vaccination campaign in North-western Waziristan as a protest against drone attacks. As a result, the health authorities have expressed fears over venturing into the tribal areas. Security officials meanwhile are of the view that there won’t be resistance in those areas of South Waziristan, where the army has driven out the militants and where a large number of displaced population has returned. The worry of the health officials of going into other uncharted areas is quite right. And so is their worry that the immunisation campaign has to be started within the week, lest the children should fall prey to the epidemic.While the aim is to save the lives of children reported to be numbering over 240,000, it has to be made evident to the retrograde segment that their attempts at scaring the people or the government into submission do not fit in with the tenets of Islam and humanitarian principles. As reported in the press, the warning has come from a commander who is busy fighting US troops in Afghanistan and hence is not anti-Pakistan as such; yet the drone attacks on which the ban has been hinged appears to be out of Islamabad’s power to stop. Proscribing inoculation merely because some score is to be settled with the US or the government is again an act of extremist proportions that would earn the Taliban more public anger.