[Sweet_Sunflower29]

Promed claimed that the Kurds might be misslabeling the illness. Now we have Urdu speakers doing the same thing? There is one English word known worldwide, Smallpox. I doubt very much that smallpox could be misrepresented. There are still people alive today on the planet that carry the scar of smallpox. No way that could be mislabeled, especially in countries like Pakistan, NE Iraq, and those in Africa. Those populations remember all to well smallpox.

Pakistani and Indian as well as Iraqi doctors are all too familiar with the disease. Last year there was both chickenpox and measles outbreaks in the area and no one called the outbreaks smallpox.
It is too simplistic to label these people backward and uneducated and unaware of a disease that ravaged their land for too many years in their history.

The Indian Army has been rumoured (by those inside, reporting to family and friends) to be ready to strike Pakistan by last weekend. May 25 was the actual date of the "two weeks to go" warning. What would you say? Come on by, bring the wife and kids. By the Way, we've got a smallpox epidemic here. It would surely give them pause and break the momentum of the thrust, and appears to have done just that! Remember, truth is the first casualty of war.
This considered, note this ProMed article from 6 weeks ago titled UNDIAGNOSED VESICULAR DISEASE - PAKISTAN (SINDH): REQUEST FOR INFO

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[Mitchell]

This considered, note this ProMed article from 6 weeks ago titled UNDIAGNOSED VESICULAR DISEASE - PAKISTAN (SINDH): REQUEST FOR INFO

This one isn't from 6 weeks ago; it's from April 15, 2001. If that had been smallpox, it would have spread by now. The other ProMED articles that I linked to are from 2002 (April and May), but I don't think these mention smallpox (just a mysterious illness in the same general region of Pakistan).

I agree with you that the current report of smallpox isn't just a mistake. The editors of Dawn surely know that they are, at the very least, writing a sensationalistic article (and, at worst, spreading intentional disinformation) when they claim, apparently without real evidence, that the illness is smallpox.