Saving Malala

Before the truck can roll to a halt, a throng of little boys hops out of the back. They run to join the men chanting on a grassy street corner in a posh neighborhood of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. A man gives one of the young protesters a handwritten sign that says WE CONDEMN TERRORISM. He holds it up in front of his tiny chest. “Terrorism!” one of the men shouts, pumping his fist. “We condemn it!” the crowd responds. A city policeman watches from the periphery, a Kalashnikov leaning against his leg. “Malala!” another protester shouts. “Zindabad!” the crowd shouts back. “Long live Malala!”

It has been more than a week since Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old blogger and activist, was shot in the head while riding in a van on her way home from school, and people across Pakistan are not done being angry. From Islamabad in the north to Karachi in the south, demonstrators in all Pakistan’s big cities have denounced the Taliban’s brazen attack on the girl and two of her classmates in northwestern Pakistan’s Swat Valley.

(MORE: Malala Yousafzai: The Latest Victim in the War on Children in Pakistan)

Malala, who is in stable condition after surgery, was flown to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, on Oct. 15, and her British doctors say she could make a good recovery but she has several weeks of treatment ahead of her. She leaves behind a nation trying to understand why, despite years of fighting the Taliban, extremists can still attack children with impunity. Bound by outrage, Pakistan seems united — a rare occurrence. “The mood of the people is unforgiving,” says Shaukat Qadir, a retired brigadier in the Pakistani army. “We have to do something.”

But what? Alas, there is little agreement about that. Within hours of the Oct. 9 attack, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility, calling Malala’s advocacy for children’s rights and education “pro-West” and “against Taliban.” Since then, “nobody has condoned or endorsed the attack,” says Mubashir Akram, a former political analyst for the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. “But when it comes to condemning the attacker, there is a division.” As the anti-Taliban protests continue, another wave of outrage is gathering force. Islamist groups like Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl say the international publicity lavished on Malala’s case is diverting attention from Pakistan’s other problems, especially the widely criticized campaign of U.S. drone strikes against militants on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Hundreds of civilians have been killed by the drones since 2004, including 176 children, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. “[The Islamists] say, O.K., this is bad, but what about the drones?” says Akram.

It isn’t just Islamists raising that question. Mainstream political leaders in the border areas — which have long been affected by extremist violence, military offensives and drone strikes — also wonder at the sudden attention. “There are so many young girls who have been killed in the last few years by drones and suicide attacks,” says Ajmal Khan Wazir, a central senior vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) and a resident of South Waziristan. “Everybody is crying for Malala, but nobody is crying for the other Malalas.” This cycle of violence and recrimination makes decisive action against her attackers unlikely.

MORE: The Malala Yousafzai Saga: Like Father, Like Daughter

A Kind of Peace The plight of civilians in this region had the world’s attention not long ago. Militants controlled the picturesque Swat Valley, where Malala was born, when she began blogging for the BBC in 2009 about living under Taliban rule. She was one of the few local voices speaking out about the devastating impact of extremism on the lives of women and girls. On Jan. 14, 2009, the day before a Taliban ban on education took effect, Malala wrote, “Since today was the last day of our school, we decided to play in the playground a bit longer.”

A few months later, the Pakistani army swept into Swat and the surrounding area in a highly publicized offensive, deploying over 30,000 troops and using air strikes to force the Taliban out of the valley. Some 2 million civilians, including Malala and her family, were displaced, but a kind of peace eventually took hold, and they returned home. Her father Ziauddin became something of a folk hero in Swat, in part because of the girls’ school that he built: the Khushal School and College in Mingora, where Malala was his star pupil. A television crew from al-Jazeera visited the area in 2010, and Malala’s father spoke chillingly on camera of the continuing threats against those who stand up for girls’ education. “We have to make a big sacrifice,” he said.

(MORE: How Malala Yousafzai May Affect Pakistan’s Culture Wars)

What went wrong? The army’s focus on certain areas like Swat has created a vacuum in others, giving the militants who were pushed out of Swat a chance to regroup and return. The Pakistani military’s interests have been entangled with those of extremist groups in the region for years, and despite its having some 50,000 troops engaged in counterinsurgency, says Qadir, the retired brigadier, the military is stretched too thin. After the shooting, army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani visited Malala in the hospital and vowed to fight terrorists “regardless of the cost.” Some analysts read his gesture as a sign that the military is ready to get serious against extremism, but with elections looming, it will be tough to secure the needed consensus for another large-scale campaign. Any action targeting extremists can be interpreted as kowtowing to the West, and few leaders are willing to take this political risk. “They’re not going to go in under international pressure,” says Akram, “and domestically, there is a strong lobby by the religious right that opposes military action in Waziristan.”

The solution may not be found in the corridors of power. As her supporters await news from her doctors in the U.K., Malala’s face has become part of Pakistan’s landscape, splashed across newspaper front pages and on posters attached to trees and lampposts. Her ideas for gender equity and children’s rights now seem to be everywhere. In a busy open-air market in Islamabad, 18-year-old Mariam Ghafoor enjoys the cool October air and the scent of hot kebabs on an afternoon out with her family. “This has made each and every one of our generation think about what’s happening around our country,” she says. Ghafoor has her pick of universities — an unimaginable dream for most girls in the Swat Valley, just 250 km away. If nothing else, the attack on Malala has brought their worlds a little closer together.

—with reporting by Sonia Van Gilder Cooke and Sarah Kneezle / London

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