Afghanistan's decadeslong fight to eradicate the crippling polio virus has suffered a new blow after the Taliban suspended a national vaccination campaign.
The hard-line Islamist group informed UN agencies of its decision just before the start of the immunization drive in September, the world body said on September 16. The Taliban has denied halting the vaccinations.
Afghans have expressed fear that any suspension would represent a major setback to eradicating polio, a childhood virus that leads to deformed limbs, paralysis, and even death.
Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan are the only countries in the world where polio remains endemic.
"This is very worrying for our children," Mari Amiri, a mother of four who lives in the northern Takhar Province, told RFE/RL's Radio Azadi. "They are the future of our country."
Noorullah, a resident of the capital, Kabul, criticized the Taliban's decision to "limit access to such a vital means for preventing a dangerous disease."
"Instead of addressing our problems, they are creating new ones," Zuhal, a woman who lives in Kabul, told Radio Azadi.
Rising Number Of Cases
The Taliban's suspension of vaccinations comes as the number of polio cases rise in Afghanistan.
The World Health Organization (WHO) says it has detected 18 new poliovirus cases so far this year, a significant increase compared to 2023, when six cases were recorded.
The Taliban's Health Ministry on September 17 denied that the group had suspended or delayed the polio vaccination drive.
An Afghan health-care worker gives a polio vaccine to a child in the western city of Herat.
In a statement, ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman said the Taliban was trying to implement the vaccination campaign "through the best possible means available."
But a polio worker in the eastern province of Nangarhar, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the polio-immunization campaign in the region was suspended because local Taliban officials were "demanding tax from aid organizations." The worker's claim could not be verified by RFE/RL.
The Taliban has previously been accused of attempting to divert or manipulate aid distribution as well as imposing taxes on humanitarian groups and their activities.
During a nationwide campaign in June, a house-to-house vaccination strategy was used for the first time in five years in a bid to reach more children.
But in the southern province of Kandahar, a stronghold of the Taliban, less-effective site-to-site or mosque-to-mosque vaccination campaigns were used, WHO said.
Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication at WHO, told the Associated Press that the organization was holding discussions with the Taliban over "shifting from house-to-house polio vaccination campaigns to site-to-site vaccination in parts of Afghanistan."
'Impede Or Influence'
In recent decades, Afghanistan's battle to eradicate polio has been thwarted by militant attacks and anti-vaccination propaganda.
Some radical Islamic clerics and militants have claimed that the polio vaccine is a Western conspiracy to harm or sterilize children.
Anti-vaccination propaganda has been fueled by a distrust of Western governments who fund vaccine programs, including after the CIA reportedly staged a fake hepatitis-vaccination campaign in 2011 to confirm the location of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- living in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad -- where he was killed by U.S. SEALs.
Insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan have even kidnapped, beaten, and assassinated dozens of vaccinators or their armed police escorts in recent years in a bid to stop local anti-polio campaigns.
A woman polio worker conducts a door-to-door to vaccination campaign in the western Afghan city of Herat.
Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's late founder, in 2007 issued a decree in support of polio vaccinations.
But Ashley Jackson, the co-founder of the Center on Armed Groups, says the vaccinations have long been a source of contention within the Taliban.
"The Taliban cannot go against a decree from its founder," she said. "But they can try to impede or influence how vaccinations are carried out."
Jackson added that there is a "feeling, especially with house-to-house vaccinations, that vaccinators ask invasive questions and might have ulterior motives."
She said the Taliban's recent suspension is a setback, but "both sides will find some compromise that allows them to resume," as has happened in the past.
The polio vaccination campaign is seen as a boon for the cash-strapped Taliban government.
Vaccine campaigns employ thousands of health workers in Afghanistan, which is grappling with mass unemployment and rising poverty.
"Many within the [Taliban] government see this external funding as an essential form of support for the struggling health sector," Jackson said.