[Ms. Yousafzai grew in
prominence, becoming a powerful voice for the rights of children. In 2011, she
was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Later, Yousaf Raza Gilani, the
prime minister at the time, awarded her Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace
Prize.]
By Declan Walsh
 |
|
A 2009 documentary by Adam B. Ellick profiled Malala Yousafzai,
a Pakistani girl whose school was shut down by the Taliban. Ms. Yousafzai
was shot by a gunman on Tuesday.
|
KARACHI, Pakistan — At the age of 11, Malala Yousafzai took on the Taliban by giving voice to her dreams.
As turbaned fighters swept through her town in northwestern Pakistan in 2009,
the tiny schoolgirl spoke out about her passion for education — she wanted to
become a doctor, she said — and became a symbol of defiance against Taliban
subjugation.
On Tuesday, masked
Taliban gunmen answered Ms. Yousafzai’s courage with bullets, singling out the
14-year-old on a bus filled with terrified schoolchildren, then shooting her in
the head and neck. Two other girls were also wounded in the attack. All three
survived, but late on Tuesday doctors said that Ms. Yousafzai was in critical
condition at a hospital in Peshawar, with a bullet possibly lodged close to her
brain.
A Taliban spokesman,
Ehsanullah Ehsan, confirmed by phone that Ms. Yousafzai had been the target,
calling her crusade for education rights an “obscenity.”
“She has become a symbol
of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it,” Mr. Ehsan said,
adding that if she survived, the militants would certainly try to kill her
again. “Let this be a lesson.”
The Taliban’s ability to
attack Pakistan’s major cities has waned in the past year. But in rural areas
along the Afghan border, the militants have intensified their campaign to
silence critics and impose their will.
That Ms. Yousafzai’s
voice could be deemed a threat to the Taliban — that they could see a
schoolgirl’s death as desirable and justifiable — was seen as evidence of both
the militants’ brutality and her courage.
“She symbolizes the
brave girls of Swat,” said Samar
Minallah, a documentary filmmaker who has worked among Pashtun women. “She knew
her voice was important, so she spoke up for the rights of children. Even
adults didn’t have a vision like hers.”
Ms. Yousafzai came to
public attention in 2009 as the Pakistani Taliban swept through Swat, a
picturesque valley once famed for its music and tolerance and as a honeymoon
destination.
Her father ran one of
the last schools to defy Taliban orders to end female education. As an
11-year-old, Malala — named after a mythic female figure in Pashtun culture —
wrote an anonymous blog documenting her experiences for the BBC. Later, she was
the focus of documentaries by
The New York Times and other media outlets.
“I had a terrible dream
yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban,” she wrote in one post
titled “I Am Afraid.”
The school was
eventually forced to close, and Ms. Yousafzai was forced to flee to Abbottabad,
the town where Osama bin Laden was killed last year. Months later, in summer
2009, the Pakistani Army launched a sweeping operation against the Taliban that
uprooted an estimated 1.2 million Swat residents.
The Taliban were sent
packing, or so it seemed, as fighters and their commanders fled into
neighboring districts or Afghanistan. An uneasy peace, enforced by a large
military presence, settled over the valley.
Ms. Yousafzai grew in
prominence, becoming a powerful voice for the rights of children. In 2011, she
was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. Later, Yousaf Raza Gilani, the
prime minister at the time, awarded her Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace
Prize.
Mature beyond her years,
she recently changed her career aspiration to politics, friends said. In recent
months, she led a delegation of children’s rights activists, sponsored by
Unicef, that made presentations to provincial politicians in Peshawar.
“We found her to be very
bold, and it inspired every one of us,” said another student in the group,
Fatima Aziz, 15.
Ms. Minallah, the
documentary maker, said, “She had this vision, big dreams, that she was going
to come into politics and bring about change.”
That such a figure of
wide-eyed optimism and courage could be silenced by Taliban violence was a
fresh blow for Pakistan’s beleaguered progressives, who seethed with
frustration and anger on Tuesday. “Come on, brothers, be REAL MEN. Kill a
school girl,” one media commentator, Nadeem F. Paracha, said in an acerbic
Twitter post.
In Parliament, Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf urged his countrymen to battle the mind-set behind
such attacks. “She is our daughter,” he said.
The attack was also a
blow for the powerful military, which has long held out its Swat offensive as
an example of its ability to conduct successful counterinsurgency operations.
The army retains a tight grip over much of Swat. But that Tuesday’s shooting
could take place in the center of Mingora, the valley’s largest town, offered
evidence that the Taliban were creeping back.
“This is not a good
sign,” Kamran Khan, the most senior government official in Swat, said by phone.
“It’s very worrisome.”
The Swat Taliban are a
subgroup of the wider Pakistani Taliban movement based in South Waziristan.
Their leader, Maulvi Fazlullah, rose to prominence in 2007 through an FM radio
station that espoused Islamist ideology.
After 2009, Maulvi
Fazlullah and his senior commanders were pushed across the border into the
Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nuristan, where Pakistani officials say they are
still being sheltered — a source of growing tension between the Pakistani and
Afghan governments.
But over the last year
or so, small groups of Taliban guerrillas have slowly filtered back into Swat,
where they have mounted hit-and-run attacks on community leaders deemed to have
collaborated with the government.
On Aug. 3, a Taliban
gunman shot and wounded Zahid Khan, the president of the local hoteliers
association and a senior community leader, in Mingora. It was the third such
attack in recent months, a senior official said.
The military has
asserted control in Swat through a large military presence in the valleys and
support for private tribal militias tasked with keeping the Taliban at bay. But
soldiers have also been accused of human rights abuses, particularly after a leaked
videotape in 2010 showed uniformed men apparently massacring Taliban prisoners.
In response to
criticism, the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, announced an inquiry into
the shootings. An army spokesman said it was not yet complete.
Shah Rasool, the police
chief in Swat, said that all roads leading out of Mingora had been barricaded
and that more than 30 militant suspects had been detained.
Reporting was contributed by Sana ul Haq from
Mingora, Pakistan; Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan; Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud
from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi.
This article has been
revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 9,
2012
An earlier version of the caption with the
picture atop this article misidentified the city where Malala Yousafzai was
attacked. It is Mingora, not Peshawar.
