ISLAMABAD: Sixty percent of Pakistanis said they would get the COVID-19 vaccine if it became available, global leader in market research, Ipsos, said in a survey published this month.
Since the coronavirus first broke out in Pakistan in late February, the country has recorded 443,246 infections, including 2,459 new cases in the last 24 hours, and 8,905 deaths, including 73 in the last 24 hours.
Worryingly, a Gallup Pakistan poll conducted last month showed 37% of Pakistanis would not get a vaccine once one became available. The Ipsos survey said 22% Pakistanis were against vaccines in general.
“To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following: If a vaccine for COVID-19 were available, I would get it,” Ipsos asked in its survey, reporting that 60 percent respondents said they would prefer to be vaccinated.
When asked what best described why they would not prefer to be vaccinated, 34% respondents were worried about side effects, 22% were against vaccines in general, 15% believed a vaccine would not be effective and 23% said they were not at risk of the coronavirus.
The survey also said 50% Pakistanis were unaware of ongoing vaccine trials.
Countering anti-vax sentiments is a worldwide problem, but in Pakistan it is more dangerous than almost anywhere else.
Dozens of people have been killed in attacks on polio vaccination teams over the years, and the fear and mistrust that spawns such violence has made Pakistan one of two countries, including neighboring Afghanistan, where the crippling disease has still to be eradicated.
Several times every year, polio vaccination drives aim to inoculate millions of children, but in some areas they are often met with refusals from parents who believe conspiracy theories about the vaccine.
In more volatile parts of the country, militants have attacked polio immunization teams, notably after a doctor was accused of running a fake vaccination campaign to help the US Central Intelligence Agency track down Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.
Yet the dangers of polio have been well known for decades, whereas COVID-19 is a new disease, and authorities have struggled to communicate the urgent need to stamp it out.
Cleric Qibla Ayaz, the head of the Council of Islamic Ideology, which advises the government on social and legal issues, told Reuters many of the conspiracy theories about COVID-19 were coming from Western countries, spread by social media.
"For now the majority of scholars have said the vaccine and other treatments are important... but there are always extremists as there are with polio," Ayaz said. "Given the kind of 'Westphobia' we have in Pakistan, it might be better to obtain a vaccine from Russia or China, instead of the US or UK."
60% Pakistanis say would get COVID-19 vaccine if available - global market research firm
https://arab.news/cf5zx
60% Pakistanis say would get COVID-19 vaccine if available - global market research firm
- -Ipsos survey says when asked why people would prefer not to be vaccinated, 34% were worried about side effects and 22% were against vaccines in general
- -Gallup Pakistan poll conducted last month showed 37% of Pakistanis would not get a vaccine once one became available
Walnut tree remains ‘under arrest’ for over a century, living symbol of colonial power in Pakistan
- British officer is said to have ordered chaining of the tree in 1898, a reminder of the absolute authority and psychological control enforced under colonial rule in Khyber Pass region
- Locals and historians say the shackled tree survives as a physical memory of the Frontier Crimes Regulation era, when even nature could be punished to discipline subjects and display power
LANDI KOTAL, KHYBER: In the military cantonment of Landi Kotal, close to Pakistan’s Torkham border crossing with Afghanistan and the mouth of the historic Khyber Pass, a single walnut tree stands bound in heavy iron chains.
It has been this way for more than a century, a surreal, almost absurd monument to the power structures and punitive imagination of the British Empire’s rule in the tribal frontier.
Black shackles still brace parts of its branches, giving it the appearance of a theatrical installation. To locals, it is a wound that never fully healed, a reminder that even nature could be punished when authority wished to show dominance.
Local oral histories trace the origin of this bizarre imprisonment to 1898, when a British officer named James Squid, allegedly intoxicated, believed the tree was moving toward him and instantly ordered it arrested. Soldiers carried out the instruction and the walnut tree has never been freed since.
Muhammad Sardar, the caretaker who oversees the site today, recounted the story as it has been passed down for generations.
“This British military official at that time was drunk and thought this walnut tree was moving toward him to attack him,” he told Arab News. “The officer ordered to arrest this tree, hence the soldiers had to obey the order and arrest this tree.”
Whether the event unfolded exactly as described is impossible to verify, but historians and residents agree on what the continued chaining represented: the unquestionable authority of colonial power.
A LAW THAT COULD BIND PEOPLE — AND TREES
Landi Kotal was one of the most militarized points of the British-controlled frontier, a strategic chokepoint along the Khyber Pass, a route armies, traders and empires have used for thousands of years. To control the region, the British introduced the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), a law that denied locals the right to appeal, hire lawyers or challenge government decisions. Entire tribes could be punished for the suspected action of one member.
The chained walnut tree is often interpreted as a physical embodiment of that era: a warning made visible.
Dr. Syed Waqar Ali Shah, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Peshawar, said the symbolism was deliberate.
“It was an assertion of their [British] authority, it was a symbol of their power. Right. It’s a funny thing as well, because it’s something which was under the influence of some intoxication,” he explained.
“The officer behaved or gave orders for the imprisonment of that particular tree under the influence of some intoxicants.”
Dr. Shah continued:
“It was something which was a symbol of colonial authority, assertion of their authority, of bureaucratic diplomacy, a symbol of their bureaucratic strength and power, and maybe some cultural encounter as well.”
He added that such displays endured because “it was a cultural link between the locals and the colonial power. So it was a reflection of that. But later on, they continued with it in the presence of FCR (Frontier Crimes Regulation) and regulations like this.”
Even once the officer sobered, the chains remained.
Dr. Shah believes that was intentional: psychological messaging meant to instill conformity and fear in people living under colonial law.
“Their objective and purpose was to make it a symbol of discipline for the masses. It was an exhibition of power, a sheer exhibition of power, a symbol that if we can do this to something which was inhuman … if they can deal with a tree like this, so the general public, they should be aware that discipline is very important.”
Landi Kotal’s older residents say their fathers and grandfathers retold the story long before Pakistan existed and long before independence movements dismantled the Raj.
Usman Khan Shinwari, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, said the story continues to live in households like a family inheritance.
“My grandfather would often narrate this story of the arrested tree,” he recalled. “My grandfather would say that it shows how the then rulers were treating the locals and what our ancestors had endured.”
Over a century later, long after the end of British rule and the formal abolition of the Frontier Crimes Regulation in 2018, the walnut tree remains exactly where it was chained, part spectacle, part scar.
Tourists sometimes come to photograph it. Others stand silently before it.
But for many in Khyber, it is neither attraction nor curiosity.
It is proof that power once flowed one way only. A tree could be punished, so people learned not to resist.
