Anger spreads over shooting of 14-year-old girl

Malala Yousafzai has survived Taliban shooting while Pakistanis unite in fury

Topics: Women's Rights, drones, Islam, Taliban, Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, ,

Anger spreads over shooting of 14-year-old girl

Surgeons in Pakistan successfully removed a bullet from the head of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, a campaigner for girls’ rights. The schoolgirl was targeted by Taliban militants for her activism promoting education for women. She remains unconscious but stable in a Peshawar hospital as of Wednesday.

Meanwhile, as the New York Times reported, her attack has provoked anger across Pakistan and the world. The information minister of her province has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of her attackers, while politicians and military leaders have united in condemnation of the shooting. The Times noted:

Some commentators wondered whether the shooting would galvanize public opinion against the Taliban in the same way as a video that aired in 2009, showing a Taliban fighter flogging a teenage girl in Swat, had primed public opinion for a large military offensive against the militants that summer.

Yousafazi had been a symbol of Taliban resistance before her shooting. As the Wall Street Journal noted, she “first came to prominence in 2009 when she wrote an anonymous blog for BBC Urdu about her experiences as a schoolgirl as the Taliban forced closures of private schools as part of an edict banning girls’ education. Malala’s identity was revealed later, and she was nominated for an International Children’s Peace Prize. She also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan.”

The WSJ reprinted an excerpt from the teenager’s online diary, which illustrated her fear of a Taliban attack on girls attending school:

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.

While some will see Yousafazi’s tragedy as validating U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, aiming to strike Taliban militants, peace activists have swiftly weighed in to block such a narrative, while expressing anger and sympathy for the young victim. Activists with American anti-war group Code Pink, who are currently visiting Pakistan to protest drone strikes and build on-the-ground solidarity with Pakistanis, condemned the shooting and offered $1,000 to Yousafazi’s school. They stated in a release:

The delegates see a connection between drone attacks and growing extremism in Pakistan. A recent report from Stanford University called drone attacks an effective “recruiting tool” for extremists. “We oppose all forms of terrorism,” said delegate leader Tighe Barry, “and we stand with the people of Pakistan who are fighting for both national sovereignty and individual freedoms.”

Concerns remain about whether Yousafazi will make a full physical recovery and whether she can remain in Pakistan safely now that she is, more than ever, a Taliban target.

 

 

 

Continue Reading Close

Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com.

Next Article

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

More Related Stories

Comments

6 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>