Taliban shoot Pakistani schoolgirl campaigning for peace

[Guest]

Taliban shoot Pakistani schoolgirl campaigning for peace | Reuters

By Jibran Ahmad

PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Tue Oct 9, 2012 3:46pm EDT

(Reuters) - Taliban gunmen in Pakistan shot and seriously wounded on Tuesday a 14-year-old schoolgirl who rose to fame for speaking out against the militants, authorities said. Malala Yousufzai was shot in the head and neck when gunmen fired on her school bus in the Swat valley, northwest of the capital, Islamabad. Two other girls were also wounded, police said. Yousufzai became famous for speaking out against the Pakistani Taliban at a time when even the government seemed to be appeasing the hardline Islamists.

The government agreed to a ceasefire with the Taliban in Swat in early 2009, effectively recognizing insurgent control of the valley whose lakes and mountains had long been a tourist attraction.
The Taliban set up courts, executed residents and closed girls' schools, including the one that Yousufzai attended. A documentary team filmed her weeping as she explained her ambition to be a doctor.

"My friend came to me and said, 'for God's sake, answer me honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taliban?'," Yousufzai, then 11, wrote in a blog published by the BBC.

"During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colorful clothes as the Taliban would object."

The army launched an offensive and retook control of Swat later that year, and Yousufzai later received the country's highest civilian award. She was also nominated for international awards for child activists.
Since then, she has received numerous threats. On Tuesday, gunmen arrived at her school and asked for her by name, witnesses told police. Yousufzai was shot when she came out of class and went to a bus.
Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said his group was behind the shooting.

"She was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban and she was calling President Obama her ideal leader," Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"She was young but she was promoting Western culture in Pashtun areas," he said, referring to the main ethnic group in northwest Pakistan and southern and eastern Afghanistan. Most members of the Taliban come from conservative Pashtun tribes.

Doctors were struggling to save Yousufzai, said Lal Noor, a doctor at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in the Swat valley's main town of Mingora.
The U.S. State Department condemned the attack.

"Directing violence at children is barbaric. It's cowardly. And our hearts go out to her and the others who were wounded, as well as their families," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington.

[Minskaya]

A Taliban gunman singled out and shot the girl, Malala Yousafzai, on Tuesday, and a spokesman said it was in retaliation for her work in promoting girls’ education and children’s rights in the northwestern Swat Valley, near the Afghan border. Ms. Yousafzai was removed from immediate danger after the operation in a military hospital in Peshawar early Wednesday, during which surgeons removed a bullet that had passed through her head and lodged in her shoulder, one hospital official said. The government kept a Boeing jet from the national carrier, Pakistan International Airlines, on standby at the Peshawar airport to fly Ms. Yousafzai to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for emergency treatment if necessary, although senior officials said she was too weak to fly. “She is improving. But she is still unconscious,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the provincial information minister, whose only son was shot dead by the Taliban in 2010. He said Ms. Yousafzai remained on a ventilator.

Among some commentators, there was a sense that rage was redundant: that unless Pakistan’s military and civilian leaders drop all equivocation about Islamist extremism, the country is likely to suffer further such traumas. “We are infected with the cancer of extremism, and unless it is cut out we will slide ever further into the bestiality that this latest atrocity exemplifies,” read an editorial in The News International, a major English-language daily.

Source: NY Times

If Ms. Yousafzai survives, the Pakistani Taliban have vowed to shoot her again.

Tangentially, this incident is but a taste of the gender brutalities that will occur under the Taliban when the ISAF abandons Afghanistan.

[Double Edge]

Salute to Malala Yousafzai, shame on Pakistan | ZeeNews Blog

She is just 14 years old, and brave enough to face the bullet.

The courageous Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan reminds of Anne Frank. No, Anne, who was a Jew, was not an activist but her writings were a testimony to the atrocities of the Nazis. Anne’s diary documented her experiences while hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands in Second World War. The young girl, however, did not pen the incidents to evoke any action against Nazis. But here is Malala, who is audacious enough to write a blog about life under the Pakistan Taliban when they controlled the Swat Valley.

At a time when the South Asian country is reeling under extremism and even the government has failed to take a stern stance against Islamist fundamentalists, here is a girl who dreams of secularism and speaks against the cruelty of the Taliban. She dares to rise against brutality and campaigns for literacy amongst females.

Nominated in 2011 for the International Children's Peace Prize, Malala has also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan. Her diary under pseudonym, Gul Makai, was also broadcast on the BBC three years ago.

Malala is an inspiration, a ray of hope for a country like Pakistan, whose Army is either unable to or unwilling to face Taliban.

“We will focus on our work with more strength…If all of us die fighting, we will still not leave this work,” Malala’s father Ziauddin told a news agency.

This BBC article has a translation of some of her posts.

[Officer of Engineers]

My anger boils at these fucks ... but then, I remember I'm too old to want to do anything about it. The Taliban is going to turn on Pakistan and Pakistan is welcome to them. Unfortunately, that means also the Taliban is going to turn on Pakistani little girls. I wish to hell the fathers get pissed off enough and scared enough to go after the Taliban with the devil's piss and vinegar. I, however, want no part of that campaign.

[USSWisconsin]

Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said his group was behind the shooting

Unbelievable. Claiming to be a part of this.

As Anthony Hopkins said in his final words to Inspector Patzi in "Hannible" - "I that see you're confused, allow me to decide for you: bowels out"

[cataphract]

Sir, if the Taliban do take over Pakistan, it's only the common families whose access to education will be restricted. The political elite educate their kids (including girls) in the west or Dubai anyway. They couldn't care less.

[troung]

The Taliban is going to turn on Pakistan and Pakistan is welcome to them.

I hope they both lose.

[Double Edge]

Unbelievable. Claiming to be a part of this.

A little schoolgirl is making a mockery of Taliban writ.

Its not about who she is but what they say cannot be done.

If they have to resort to something as extreme as this one wonders how powerful they really are.

[Parihaka]

A little schoolgirl is making a mockery of Taliban writ.

Its not about who she is but what they say cannot be done.

If they have to resort to something as extreme as this one wonders how powerful they really are.

They claimed it because in their own mind they act at the behest of god. Their followers, and there are many, also believe the Talibunnies act on god's behalf, but are less certain of it. At most this might drive a small wedge between the 'good' Talibunnies and their followers, but not much. It is nice to see the Pakistani womenfolk out protesting this though. It's hard to remain fervent to god and his 'disciples' when the missus has you on short rations.
As for their power, in '09 they owned SWAT and strutted the squares of Lahore. Only the most stern ultimatums by THE US stirred the PA sufficiently to come north and drive them out, and all they did was level a few towns and displace a million or two citizens to establish a buffer zone.

[S2]

Minskaya Reply

"...Tangentially, this incident is but a taste of the gender brutalities that will occur under the Taliban when the ISAF abandons Afghanistan."

Let's not suggest that "...gender brutalities..." are a recent phenomena associated with the taliban. You are accurate insofar as the taliban will re-institutionalize much which we find abhorrent. That said, it goes much, much deeper in these societies. The menfolk hardly need the taliban to practice upon women and girls their brutal nature.

[Chogy]

Most here know I am a fan of science fiction. We often discuss alien mentalities, and how what might be immoral to us, may be an moral imperative to a species far removed from common human thought.

Folks, the earth has been invaded by aliens. Their thought processes are so far removed from what would be considered moral and acceptable, that any attempt to analyze them is doomed to complete and utter failure. It is like trying to discern the motives of a snapping turtle, or a head of coral. Anthropomorphizing them is like ascribing human thought processes to a paramecium.

When invaded or attacked by aliens whose moral processes are so grossly distant from anything recorded in human history, eradication seems to be the only answer. And if the people subject to this don't have the courage to stand and fight, there's nothing we can do, until and unless they export their violence. If and when that happens again, I would suggest rather than a "measured response", we respond with the atom.

Tired of it... so tired. And all I did was watch from the side lines.

[Minskaya]

"...Tangentially, this incident is but a taste of the gender brutalities that will occur under the Taliban when the ISAF abandons Afghanistan."

Let's not suggest that "...gender brutalities..." are a recent phenomena associated with the taliban. You are accurate insofar as the taliban will re-institutionalize much which we find abhorrent. That said, it goes much, much deeper in these societies. The menfolk hardly need the taliban to practice upon women and girls their brutal nature.

I don't need a lecture on honor culture and gender brutalism. I've witnessed it firsthand and find it all abominable.

Within this repulsive admixture, the Deobandi Taliban regimen is the epitome of institutionalized sexual brutality and sadism.

[S2]

Minskaya Reply

"I don't need a lecture on honor culture and gender brutalism. I've witnessed it firsthand and find it all abominable..."

Fair enough but submitting that ISAF is abandoning the women and girls of Afghanistan to the taliban is doubly unfair as it diminishes the efforts put forth by ISAF on behalf of those women and girls while absolving Karzai, his regime and all men perpetuating these crimes. Not simply the taliban.

We've more than done our share. For that you may need reminding or, even, "a lecture". The taliban exist because the men of that culture permit such. Even those opposed to the taliban only do so out of tribal allegiance. The functional practices remain largely one and the same.

[S2]

Chogy Reply

"...we respond with the atom."

Ahhh...another convert to the Mihais/S-2 interpretation of Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations.

We should never have legitimized Karzai nor, perhaps, the Iraqis shias and Kurds. None had earned the right to govern...and so they haven't. I'm of the profound conviction that civil war is a necessity in these (and other) states where the forces of democracy-such as they are-must define themselves in battle against tyranny and injustice. If they don't or won't, why should we?

[tantalus]

The taliban exist because the men of that culture permit such. Even those opposed to the taliban only do so out of tribal allegiance. The functional practices remain largely one and the same.

where the forces of democracy-such as they are-must define themselves in battle against tyranny and injustice. If they don't or won't, why should we?

Because the west is there now (in ref. to afghanistan). The door has been opened and the nest has been stirred. Perhaps therein rests an obligation ?

Sadly even if democracy wins the day, we should not expect the equal rights for women to follow. That said, the ultra radical postions of the tailban towards women is surely far worse than the will of the majority under a democracy. So, it is easier to imagine positive change facilitated under a democracy, or even the guise of one.

The award of the nobel peace prize to the EU deserves even greater ridicule in the light of a story such as this. Even someone like me, remote from many of the horrors of the world, can see how bizarrely removed from reality a decision such as that is.