BEFUDDLED official responses to the gravest of crises seem to be the order of the day but the latest challenge posed by the continued discovery of polio cases in Pakistan appeared to elicit a somewhat different response. Perhaps, because the initial response was presented in the media by two articulate women who seemed to have an understanding of the issues arising out of the World Health Organisation decision regarding travellers from Pakistan.

Both the Minister of State for Health Saira Afzal Tarar and the prime minister’s ‘focal person’ on polio Ayesha Raza Farooq sounded confident about what was needed to be done to respond effectively to the WHO move and listed concrete steps while appearing in the media.

An equally articulate spokeswoman of the Foreign Office, Tasneem Aslam, may not have been on top of the matter as it is hardly her domain but she clarified that what WHO had communicated were recommendations and these shouldn’t be misinterpreted as restrictions. Not yet at least, she should have added, but didn’t.

And herein can be found the major peril. Most of the social media discussion was centred on the concern of those who have booked holidays abroad to escape the searing heat in Pakistan as soon as the children’s school year ends.

The concerns of this category of traveller were soon addressed by special arrangements made by, for example, the premier private hospital in Karachi which was offering vaccination and certificate for a couple of thousand rupees.

With still several weeks to go before schools close for the summer the holidaymakers should have nothing to worry about even if they are in multiples of thousands as demand will ensure that an industry will sprout to cater to their needs in the coming weeks — such is the lure of profit.

However, the major concern is rooted elsewhere and nobody seems to have addressed it. It is OK to be smug about what WHO’s statement means for now. But what if the crisis escalates?

Pakistan’s biggest source of foreign exchange earnings by a mile are remittances from workers abroad, particularly the manual worker in different parts of the Gulf. We also know from experience that no matter how we romanticise the ummah, our love is often unrequited.

Therefore, those at the helm need to quickly assess the likely impact of a possible ban on travel without vaccinations and certificates on our workforce abroad, as a sizeable percentage of it returns home once a year or every two years for periods exceeding four weeks.

Perhaps, the answer may be to have vaccination areas in the arrival lounges of all international airports where the passengers can be administered the polio vaccine and issued certificates before they pass through Immigration and Customs.

Of course, officials can come up with better ideas but should keep in mind many workers may arrive at major airports in the big cities but head straightaway for their family homes in villages that may be hundreds of miles away. Their need must be met at no cost to them, and quickly.

The WHO official who made the recommendations earlier this week also said in a BBC interview that the strain of virus originating in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency has been found in neighbouring Afghanistan and as far afield as Syria.

This gives weight to the argument that while the Pakistani state may have officially abandoned the policy of backing jihad elsewhere following the events of 9/11, non-state actors have clearly not felt obligated to follow suit, with foreign fighters travelling freely in and out of our territory.

This isn’t a joke and needs to be handled now with extreme urgency. It’s time all state institutions stopped playing petty power games and came together on one page, not just in speeches but also in coordinated action.

The petty squabbles and grab for more and more power as demonstrated by civil-military tensions, assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, will be meaningless if militants are allowed to hold sway unchallenged. It isn’t merely a battle the soldiers fight on the front line. It is a battle for hearts and minds.

Yes, the greatest challenge is how to penetrate the toxic screen that seems to have shielded so many unfortunate minds from being receptive to sane arguments, to tolerance, to humanity.

It is a forlorn hope but one wishes one day we find unacceptable and revolting that a human rights lawyer is left unprotected and gets killed in cold blood for merely representing a university teacher accused of blasphemy after being threatened in court by the complainant’s faith-inspired lawyers.

One hopes that a zeal similar to the one in evidence to ‘sort out’ an errant media group also manifests itself in hunting down the killers of thousands of innocent Pakistani civilians and soldiers alike; to bring to justice swiftly the murderers of icons of hope such as Rashid Rehman.

Instead of chasing red herrings, the bravado of our men and women in uniform and the wrath of our democrats at the helm should be focused on one objective: eliminating this existential threat.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com