Up for Nobel Prize, Malala still targeted by Taliban

The Pakistani Taliban shot the young education activist on her way to school last year. Now the militant group says given the chance it would go after Malala again.

|
Luke MacGregor/Reuters
Pakistan's Malala Yousafzai gives a speech after receiving the RAW (Reach All Women) in War Anna Politkovskaya Award at the Southbank Centre in London October 4, 2013.

One year after a Taliban gunman stunned the world by shooting Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai as she rode the bus to school, the difference between the Taliban and Malala’s ideology remain stark. While Malala called this week for dialogue with the Taliban, their spokesman said the group would target Malala again if given the chance.

"The best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue," Malala told the BBC Monday in her first in-depth interview since the Oct. 9, 2012 attack.

Malala, now attending school in England, said the Taliban “must do what they want through dialogue.”

"Killing people, torturing people and flogging people… it's totally against Islam,” she said. “They are misusing the name of Islam."

But Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the Pakistan Taliban, told CNN Monday that the group would go after Malala again if given the opportunity, as it would with anyone who opposes the group.

Mr. Shahid said the Pakistani Taliban singled-out Malala because she was “used in propaganda” against the Taliban and denied that the group homed in on Malala because she was an outspoken advocate for girls education.

At the time of the shooting, Malala was a 15-year-old schoolgirl already well known within Pakistan for her articulate defense of the right to education for girls. She wrote the anonymous blog “Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl” for the BBC, and spoke openly on Pakistani television and in a New York Times documentary about her determination to stay in school.

Malala's autobiography, "I am Malala," to be published Tuesday, describes her memories from the attack for the first time. In an excerpt from the book, Malala writes:

The man was wearing a peaked cap and had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Then he swung himself onto the tailboard and leaned in over us. “Who is Malala?” he demanded.

No one said anything, but several of the girls looked at me. I was the only girl with my face uncovered.

That’s when he lifted up a black pistol.

The gunman shot Malala three times, nearly killing her and injuring two of her classmates. Malala recovered in a British hospital and has not returned to Pakistan since the shooting.

Despite the threats, Malala said she plans on eventually returning to her native country and entering politics. 

"I will be a politician in my future. I want to change the future of my country and I want to make education compulsory," she told the BBC.

In July, Malala continued to advocate for girls' education when she addressed the United Nations and she’s in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize, due to be announced Friday.

The Malala Fund, supported by UNESCO, the Pakistan government, and a Washington-based non-governmental organization, is paying to send 40 girls to school in the Swat Valley, Malala’s home region.

Yet, as The Christian Science Monitor's correspondent Annabel Symington reported last month, while the Swat Valley was cleared of the Taliban by a Pakistani military operation in 2009, “it’s taken a while for girls to fill the schools again.”

Girls struggle to simply get to school in the remote mountainous region and the persistent issue of poverty remains key. The Taliban is considered a greater threat in areas that border the valley, but activists here say there's a need to make sure girls as well as boys are educated in order to avoid a repeat of the past.

“There is a feeling [in Swat] that if we are not educated these things will happen again," says Hazer Gul, a local activist. "The Mullahs misinformed us. They [the community] have understood that education is the key to avoiding militants.”

Today the number of girls' schools in Swat is substantially less than the number of schools available to boys: 717 primary schools for boys compared with 425 for girls, according to official figures.

While Monday's statement by the Pakistani Taliban underscores the continued threats to Malala, a different Pakistani Taliban commander wrote to Malala in July and urged her to return to Pakistan.

"When you were attacked it was shocking for me. I wished it would never happened and I had advised you before."

"At the end I advise you to come back home," Rasheed wrote, adding that she should join a female Islamic school and "use your pen for Islam".

"Taliban believe that you were intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish Islamic system in Swat and your writings were provocative,” he wrote.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Up for Nobel Prize, Malala still targeted by Taliban
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/terrorism-security/2013/1007/Up-for-Nobel-Prize-Malala-still-targeted-by-Taliban
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe