You’ve heard this horrific story by now: A Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley badlands and shot 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai in the head. The reason? Malala wanted to go to school. That’s forbidden by the Taliban.
You’ve heard this horrific story by now: A Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley badlands and shot 14-year-old Malala Yousufzai in the head. The reason? Malala wanted to go to school. That’s forbidden by the Taliban.
Over the years, Taliban terrorists in Pakistan have destroyed at least 200 schools for girls. But Malala would not back down. She started, at 11, blogging about her dream to be a doctor or a politician. Last year, she was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize. She won Pakistan’s first National Youth Peace Prize. She became a potent symbol of defiance against the Taliban.
“I have the right of education,” she said. “I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”
Now Malala lies in a hospital bed in England. Doctors say she’ll need surgery to repair or replace damaged bones in her skull and is also expected to need neurological treatment. British doctors last week said Malala has every chance to make a “good recovery.” We hope the world again hears Malala’s voice. And we hope that Pakistan officials hear its echoes now. This is a brutal reminder that Pakistan’s long battle against the Taliban still rages.
In 2009, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari surrendered the Swat Valley on its border with Afghanistan to Taliban terrorists in hopes of placating them. Instead, they re-armed and pushed toward Pakistan’s capital. That spring, Pakistan’s military launched a massive assault and reclaimed the valley.
This heinous attack shows that the Taliban are creeping back and just as vicious as ever in their assault on women.
What will Pakistan’s response be? Pakistan Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told CNN that she believes the attack on Malala marks a “turning point” in Pakistan’s pursuit of the Taliban and other extremists. “Pakistan, at the diplomatic, political and every level, has been asking … to take this matter seriously, to not let them (the Taliban) have a safe haven,” she said.
Those are the right words. Now they need to be backed by strong military action. Pakistan’s leaders must launch a renewed assault against the Taliban along the Afghan border. That’s also a base for al-Qaida.
After this horrific attack, Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan boasted that Malala had been targeted. He called her crusade for education rights an “obscenity,” The New York Times reported. “She has become a symbol of Western culture in the area; she was openly propagating it. Let this be a lesson,” he said.
Yes, let this be a lesson. Let it be a lesson — another lesson — about the Taliban’s barbarism.
Just last spring, over the border in Afghanistan, about 150 Afghan schoolgirls were poisoned after drinking water contaminated by the Taliban at a high school. Several of the girls, suffering headaches and vomiting, were admitted to a local hospital.
A month later in the same province, more than 120 schoolgirls and three teachers were poisoned when Taliban terrorists used an unidentified toxic powder to contaminate the air in classrooms. That attack left scores of students unconscious, Reuters reported.
In 2010, Time magazine put on its cover a harrowing portrait of an 18-year-old Afghan girl who was brutally disfigured by the Taliban for fleeing her abusive in-laws.
In 2009, the world watched a video of a shrieking 17-year-old girl, flogged for refusing to marry a Taliban official.
That same year came the tale of 19-year-old Gul Pecha and her fiance, 21-year-old Abdul Aziz. They were bound, blindfolded and shot dead by a Taliban firing squad in Afghanistan for the crime of trying to elope.
This savagery is what the Taliban stand for. They cannot be appeased or accommodated. They pose a grave threat to Pakistan, to Afghanistan, to international security — and to every woman within their reach who would have the temerity to dream.
