Dr Shakeel Afridi, the doctor recruited by the CIA to conduct a fake vaccination drive to obtain possible DNA evidence of Al-Qaeda Chief Osama bin Laden, has been found guilty of conspiring against the state and sentenced to 33 years in jail and fined Rs 320,000, in default of which he will serve another three years. Dr Afridi, being from the Federally Administered Tribal Area, was tried under the Frontier Crime Regulations. This ruling has not just provoked a storm in the US Administration, but also the US Congress. The State Department spokesperson has said that it continues to see no reason for charging or holding him, and US officials planned to appeal his sentence, and get it either reduced or repealed altogether. There is also an attempt to spin this decision as a victory for OBL sympathisers, with the role of valiant CIA informant played by the unfairly implicated Dr Afridi. All of this is, of course, drivel. The simple fact of the matter is, that no matter what the cause, there is no country in the world, which will tolerate foreign spies operating on its soil.

Even more damning than the good Doctor's betrayal of the state which employed him as a government servant, is his absolutely criminal betrayal of his profession. His real treason will be remembered in the years to come by te parents of those children, who may suffer the horrors of the totally preventable disease of polio. Dr Afridi's fake vaccination campaign has set the cause of making Pakistan a polio-free nation back by years. The fear and distrust as a result of the news that the CIA had employed a Pakistani doctor to gather intelligence in the guise of fake immunisation, cannot be emphasised enough. Those who directed Dr Afridi to employ this cruel and dangerous method ought to hang their heads in shame, thinking of those young boys and girls whose lives they may have needlessly ruined forever.