As I write this, Malala Yousafzai is fighting for her life. She is 14.
She was on her way home from her school in Mingora in Swat Valley in North-West
Pakistan. She was shot, bullets lodged in her head and neck. And the Taliban in
Pakistan has now claimed responsibility for attacking her in the vehicle in
which she was travelling. This was not a random attack. They knew she was
there. They have said that if she survives, they will attack her again.
All she wants is to go to school with her friends. Sometimes she wants
to study law and perhaps join politics. Sometimes, to be a doctor. But the
Taliban does not want any of that. She has been speaking out eloquently against
the Taliban at a time when world leaders are busy appeasing the Taliban. And
the Taliban does not like her because she represents the future they want to
destroy.
Weeks after Al Qaeda’s attacks on 11 September 2001, the US attacked
Afghanistan. Arresting Osama bin Laden and dismantling Al Qaeda were certainly
major priorities for Americans, but many American leaders also expressed
another objective: to emancipate Afghan women. It was a noble priority, for
only the sort of people that British-Pakistani writer Tariq Ali has described
as “bearded lunatics” would defend what the Taliban did to the women.
Many schools did get built in Afghanistan, which the Taliban predictably
attacked once it had regrouped. It could do that because the Bush administration
decided to fight two wars on different fronts at the same time, and attacked
Iraq. The Taliban regained strength, and spread its pernicious influence in
Pakistan, contaminating the society whose fundamentals had weakened since
General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq’s time.
Like in Afghanistan, the Pakistani Taliban placed severe social controls
such as banning music and closing girls’ schools in the areas they controlled,
and targeted anything that would make the society modern. Led by Maulana
Fazlullah, they controlled the Swat Valley, where Yousafzai lives, between 2007
and 2009. Many analysts have warned about the Taliban, but as the Western
troops are winding down, there is an air of inevitability about the Taliban
gaining some power in Afghanistan. Writers like my former colleague Ahmed
Rashid have been warning what that might mean for Pakistan. It is in that
environment that Yousafzai went to school and spoke out for her right to do so.
Yousafzai’s diary, which the BBC published online—initially anonymously—on
its Urdu website, reveals her emotions. She writes with the simplicity and
clarity that we lose as we grow older and lose our innocence.
She writes using a pseudonym, GulMakai. Friends of her parents show them
printouts of her diary not knowing Yousafzai is the author, and her parents
have to conceal their pride. After the Pakistani army regained control,
Yousafzai could say she had written the diary, and she was called a national
heroine, and won an award.
“My Swat is also very beautiful, but there is no peace,” she writes. She
talks of her not being able to wear a uniform, nor being allowed to wear
colourful clothes either. She is pleased that curfew is lifted in one town and
so one of the popular teachers will return to teach. But then she writes about
her disturbed sleep because of artillery fire, and wakes up to discuss homework
with her friend. She writes: “I was afraid going to school because the Taliban
had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.” Only 11 out of
27 girls have come to the class. A friend asks her: “For God’s sake, answer me,
honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taliban?” Some families
decide to move from Swat to other parts of Pakistan, where they can send their
daughters to school safely. “I may not go to school again,” she writes with
resignation, looking at the school one last time before leaving.
One night she has a terrible dream with military helicopters fighting
the Taliban. These dreams recur. In a chilling passage, she writes: “On my way
from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace
and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to
my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening
someone else over the phone.”
On Tuesday morning, they came for her. Imagine hardened militants so
insecure that they see an enemy in a 14-year-old child.
Lately, some analysts are warming to the idea that Imran Khan can lift
Pakistan out of its misery. He led a protest march recently—not against the
attacks on Ahmedis, not the destruction of Sufi shrines, not the suicide bombs,
nor against those who shot at Yousafzai—but against drone attacks. Once those
stop, he thinks, all will be well. Meanwhile, the poison spreads further.
1 comment:
Malala Yousafzai, is evidence of bravery and peace in Pakistan. A 14 year old Pakistani girl is the youngest social activist of the world. Malala Yousafzai, is a hope for the females of the world that are fighting for their basic rights with various ill literate people in the society like the Taliban. Her attempted assassination has created a wave of sadness and anger in the world particularly in Pakistan. People are feeling deep grief at this unfortunate event and are protesting for the quick delivery of the justice.
This is a great dilemma of today that we have entered the 21st century with a lot of grief and sorrow in the world. At one end of this earth we are doing remarkable inventions, new technologies and scientific inventions are taking place, various universes and planets are explored. At the same time, we are living among the people who are completely cornered from the happenings of the world and due to their shortsightedness; they are making the lives of others miserable.
The need of the hour is to devise such strategies that educate the illiterate people. Only in this way we can get our generations prosper and let them not face the fate of Malala.http://check-billa.blogspot.com/2012/10/malala-yousafzai-evidence-of-bravery.html
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