Malala Yousafszai with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 10 2017 (IPS)

Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai has become the youngest UN Messenger of Peace with a special focus on girls’ education.

During a designation ceremony, UN Secretary-General António Guterres selected and honoured Yousafzai as the organisation’s Messenger of Peace.

“You are the symbol of one of the most important causes of the world…and that is education for all,” said Guterres.

“Admiring your courageous defense of the rights of all people including women and girls to education and equality [and] honoring the fact that you have shown, even in the face of grave danger, the unwavering commitment to peace…it takes great pride and pleasure in proclaiming Malala Yousafzai a United Nations Messenger of Peace,” he continued.
"I think people should look at me and all of the other 1.6 billion Muslims who are living in peace and believe in peace rather than looking at a few terrorists…they are not us,” -- Malala Yousafzai

Yousafzai, 19, became a symbol for the fight for girls’ education after being shot in Pakistan’s Swat valley in 2012 for opposing Taliban restrictions on female education. She has since become a global human rights leader, becoming the the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate and co-founding the Malala Fund to raise awareness of the millions of girls without access to formal education.

“I stood here on this stage almost three and a half years ago…and I told the world that education is a basic human right of every girl…I stand here again today and say the same thing: education is the right of every child and especially for girls, this right should not be neglected,” Yousafzai said upon accepting the role.

Over 130 million girls are out of school today. Girls often lack access to education because they have to work, care for younger siblings, or are married early. Many also face violence, posing additional barriers for school attendance.

Beyond issues of education, Yousafzai has also been an outspoken advocate on issues of conflict and refugees.

On the escalation of violence in Syria, she stated: “To the children under siege in Aleppo, I pray that you will get out safely. I pray that you will grow up strong, go to school and see peace in your country some day. But prayers are not enough. We must act. The international community must do everything they can to end to this inhumane war.”

Most recently, Yousafzai condemned the U.S. executive order banning people from several Muslim-majority countries, writing that she is “heartbroken” and asking President Donald Trump to not turn his back on families fleeing violence and war.

“I’m a Muslim and I’m proud to be a Muslim… I think people should look at me and all of the other 1.6 billion Muslims who are living in peace and believe in peace rather than looking at a few terrorists…they are not us,” she said during the designation ceremony.

Both Yousafzai and Guterres noted the challenges that refugee families face in camps.

Worldwide, approximately 50 percent of refugee children have access to primary education. The gap widens as children grow older with 22 percent having access to secondary education and less than 1 percent with access to universities. In Lebanon alone, only half of Syrian refugee children can go to school.

“This shows how little the international community is doing to educate refugee children,” said Guterres.

“It is our responsibility, especially in the richest countries, to express our solidarity to all those who unfortunately cannot provide to their children the education they have the right to receive,” he continude.

The Malala Fund helps fund schools around the world, including education programs in the Za’atari and Azraq refugee camps in Jordan.

Messengers of Peace are distinguished individuals, carefully selected from various fields by the Secretary-General, to help raise awareness on the work of the UN. Others Messengers of Peace include U.S. actor Leonardo Di Caprio, Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and U.S. singer Stevie Wonder.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai spoke Tuesday of her mission to bring 12 years of education to all children, rather than the previous goal of nine years, at the final day of the Oslo Summit on Education for Development.

At the July 6-7 summit, global leaders gathered to discuss solutions to the crisis of 59 million out of school children in the world.

Yousafzai said she believes that when it comes to the policy decisions being made in education, they need to be backed by goals which aim higher.

“If nine years of education is not enough for your children, then it is not enough for the rest of the world’s children,” Yousafzai told attendees.

She disputed the idea that there are not enough resources, urging some of the money invested in war to be shifted to education.

“Thirty-nine billion dollars is spent on [the world’s militaries] in only eight days,” she noted.

If developing countries devoted 6 per cent of their gross domestic product to education, it would take eight days of military spending a year to successfully put all children in school by 2030.

This funding is not only necessary to bring children into school, it is also desperately needed to enhance the quality of their education, as summit participants discussed Brigi Rafini, Prime Minister of the Republic of Niger, claimed that an education without quality is worse than no education at all.

The three important linkages which enhance the quality of education, as agreed by both President of Japan’s International Cooperation Agency Akihiko Tamaka, and the Secretary General of Education International Fred Van Leeuwen, are quality of teaching, quality of the curriculum, lessons and assessments, and quality of community and environment.

Improving teacher training was brought up multiple times throughout the summit. Tamaka stated that teachers are the core of education and they need to be encouraged to continue learning. Overall, valuing the profession of teaching was given great importance at the summit, keeping in mind that many violent attacks at schools are aimed at teachers.

Regarding curriculum, the lack of textbooks in languages which children understand was stressed as an important issue. According to the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), students from minority communities are often pushed out of education because the language of instruction is not their own.

The importance of funding for education, various options and complex realities articulated by this summit will lead the decisions made at the upcoming International Financing for Development Conference, which begins July 13 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, hopefully increasing the percentage of humanitarian aid which is spent on education to much more than the current 1.7 per cent.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The Taliban have damaged over a thousand schools in northern Pakistan since crossing over from Afghanistan in 2001, preventing scores of children, especially young girls, from receiving an education. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 12 2014 (IPS)

For girls living in northern Pakistan’s sprawling tribal regions, the struggle for education began long before that fateful day when members of the Taliban shot a 15-year-old schoolgirl in the head, and will undoubtedly continue for many years to come.

Still, the news that Malala Yousafzai – a former resident of the Swat Valley in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province – had received the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 10, brought renewed vigor to those battling the Taliban’s hard-line attitude towards girls’ education.

Residents here told IPS that when she survived an attempt on her life on Oct. 9, 2012, Yousafzai became an icon, a representative of the state of terror that has become a part of everyday existence here.

“We appeal to Malala to spend funds to promote education in FATA." -- Yasmeen Bibi, a 13-year-old refugee who is not attending school.
By awarding her the world’s most prestigious peace prize, experts say, the Nobel Committee is sending a strong message to all who remain trapped in zones where the sanctity of education has been subordinated to the perils of conflict.

Muhammad Shafique, a professor at the University of Peshawar, the KP province’s capital, told IPS that Yousafzai’s prize has turned a “spotlight onto the importance of education.”

“It will be a motivational force for parents to send their daughters back to school,” he added.

Since militants began crossing the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2001, following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, residents of these mountainous areas have endured the full force of extremist campaigns to impose strict Islamic rule over the population.

At the height of the Taliban’s rule over the Swat Valley, between 2007 and 2009, approximately 224 schools were destroyed, stripping over 100,000 children of a decent education.

It was during this period that Yousafzai, just 12 years old at the time, began recording the hardships she faced as a young girl in search of an education, writing regular reports for the Urdu service of the BBC from her hometown of Swat.

Schoolgirls in Peshawar pray for Malala Yousafzai. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Her struggle found echo all around northern Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of young people like herself were living in constant fear of reprisals for daring to pursue their studies.

In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), for instance, Taliban edicts banning secular schools as a “ploy” by the West to undermine Islam have kept 50 percent of school aged children out of the classroom.

Since the decade beginning in 2004, the Taliban have damaged some 750 schools, 422 of them dedicated exclusively to girls, according to a source within the FATA directorate for education.

FATA has one of the lowest enrollment rates in the country, with just 33 percent of school-aged children receiving an education. In total, about 518,000 children in FATA are sitting idle, as per government records.

The dropout rate touched 73 percent between 2007 and 2013, as families fled from one district to another to escape the Taliban. The latest wave of displacement has seen close to one million people from North Waziristan Agency evacuating their homes since Jun. 15 and taking refuge in Bannu, an ancient city in KP.

Schoolgirls at a demonstration in Peshawar in support of Malala Yousafzai. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

A rapid assessment report released by the United Nations in August found that 98.7 percent of displaced girls and 97.9 percent of the boys were not receiving any kind of education in the camps.

Already nursing a miserable primary school enrollment rate of 37 percent, Bannu is on the verge of a full-blown educational crisis, with 80 percent of its school buildings now occupied by refugees.

Thus the honour bestowed upon Yousafzai has touched many thousands of people, and breathed new life into the campaign for the right to education. Since October 2012, enrollment in the Swat Valley has increased by two percent, according to Swat Education Officer Maskeen Khan.

“Now, we are expecting a huge boost after the award,” the official told IPS.

Naila Ahmed, a 10^th-grader originally hailing from North Waziristan Agency who now lives in a refugee camp in Bannu, feels her generation has been “unlucky”, forced to grow up without an education.

The situation is so dire that she views her displacement as a “blessing in disguise”, since the move to Bannu has enabled her to enroll in a private school for the first time in many years.

She is one of the fortunate ones; few parents in this militancy-infested region can afford the cost of private schooling, she says.

Thirteen-year-old Yasmeen Bibi is one of those whose parents cannot shoulder the bill for an education. “We hope that the government will make arrangements for our education,” she told IPS from her makeshift home in a refugee camp in Bannu, adding, “We appeal to Malala to spend funds to promote education in FATA.”

Her words hearken back to the time immediately following Yousafzai’s decision to flee the country, when many from the Swat Valley and its surrounding provinces felt let down by the rising star, left behind to face the Taliban’s wrath stemming from the teenager’s newfound fame.

Some agreed with the Taliban’s claim that she had “abandoned Islam for secularism” by accepting an offer to live and study in the UK.

In the last few days, however, any ill feeling towards Yousafzai, now the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, appears to have dissipated, replaced by a kind of collective euphoria at the global acknowledgement of her courage.

All throughout Swat, girls’ schools distributed free sweets on Oct. 10 and celebrated in the streets.

Yousafzai’s former classmate, Mushatari Bibi, explained that the news has been like “a ray of hope” to other girls, who take a big risk each time they leave their homes to head to school.

Some even say that the Nobel Prize, and the hope it has instilled in the population, represents a challenge to the very foundations of the Taliban’s power, since more people now feel compelled to stand up to the militants that have plagued the lives of millions for well over a decade.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Naxalite fighters exploded two bombs in Belhara High School, Jharkhand, on the evening of Apr. 9, 2009. One bomb, on the school's lower floor, blasted a hole in the wall between the two classrooms, as well as outside the wall. Credit: Bede Sheppard/Human Rights Watch (India)

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 28 2014 (IPS)

There was a time when images from war zones featured only battlefields and barracks. As warfare moved into the 20^th century, pictures of embattled urban centres and rural guerilla outposts began to make the rounds.

Public squares are now common sites of protest and violence, while hospitals treating the wounded are considered fair game during times of political turbulence."An attack is not only felt by the 150 or 200 kids in a particular community school, but by all the kids in the surrounding area." -- Zama Coursen Neff

But perhaps the most disturbing trend in modern warfare is the rise in attacks on educational institutions, the cradles of any country’s future.

In the most exhaustive account of the issue to date, the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack (GCPEA) Thursday released a 250-page report detailing attacks on schools, universities, teachers, students and academics, by both state and non-state actors.

Covering the five-year period from 2009-2012, and following on the heels of less comprehensive studies put forth by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 2007 and 2010, “Education Under Attack 2014” documents threats and the deliberate use of force against those involved in educational activities for “political, military, ideological, sectarian, ethnic or religious reasons.”

The findings are grim: in the last half-decade, hundreds of school children have been killed or maimed, many more kidnapped or forcibly enlisted into armed groups as combatants, sex-slaves or labourers, and hundreds targeted for assassination (as with the now iconic case of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who survived an attack on her life by the Pakistani Taliban in 2012).

Source: Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack

Scores of teachers have been killed or attacked, while thousands of school buildings and other educational institutions either reduced to rubble in bomb blasts, or commandeered by armed groups or military personnel as makeshift shelters and barracks.

The number of students denied the right to an education as a result of such attacks runs into the hundreds of thousands, experts say.

“This is an underestimated phenomenon,” Zama Coursen Neff, executive director of the children’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, told IPS, “especially when you consider the fact that an attack is not only felt by the 150 or 200 kids in a particular community school, but by all the kids in the surrounding area.

She said the report, which drew heavily on a wide range of sources – from U.N. and human rights reports to in-country research – uncovered numerous reasons for attacks, including the desire to discredit a government or exert control over an area; prevent girls from going to school in violation of religious beliefs or cultural practices; block certain languages of instruction; and even to quell teacher trade union activity or academic freedom.

In July 2013, Abubakar Shekau, the leader of Nigeria’s notorious rebel outfit Boko Haram – which literally means ‘Western education is sinful’ in Hausa – said in a video statement reported on by the Associated Press, “School teachers who are teaching Western education? We will kill them! We will kill them!”

Just a few months earlier, some 200 Buddhist nationalists set fire to a Muslim school in Meiktila, in central, Myanmar, beating and torching students and even beheading one. By the time the mob’s fury was spent, 32 students and four teachers lay dead in the schoolyard.

Of the 70 countries identified in the report, 30 showed a pattern of deliberate and systematic attacks on schools, teachers and educational institutions, with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Colombia, Somalia, Sudan and Syria emerging as some of the worst affected countries, recording over 1,000 attacks apiece between 2009 and 2012.

Adding to its list of woes, Colombia now stands as one of the most dangerous countries in the world for teachers – 140 lost their lives in the last four years and 1,086 others received death threats.

Armed groups in Pakistan were responsible for the destruction of 838 school buildings, and the deaths of 20 teachers and 30 students.

Meanwhile the civil war in Syria has interrupted regular schooling for some three million students, with UNICEF reporting that “at least 20 percent of schools inside the country” no longer function as educational institutions.

Countries like Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Libya, Mexico and Yemen fell into the category of “heavily affected”, with anywhere from 500 to 999 reported attacks on educational institutions and personnel.

The largest number of higher education student casualties in the world was recorded in Yemen – in 2011 alone 73 students lost their lives and a further 139 suffered injuries.

The report also highlights various “response and prevention tactics”, including better monitoring, assessment and reporting on attacks; enhanced security on the ground; and community responses to violence and destruction.

While the latter is often a risky undertaking, leaving community members vulnerable to retaliatory attacks, it has also resulted in successful negotiations, according to GCPEA Director Diya Nijhowne.

“In Nepal, school management committees agreed to codes of conduct with Maoist fighters to make schools zones of peace,” she told IPS. “In [the Central African Republic] a priest was involved in facilitating negotiations between rebel forces who targeted schools and government forces which resulted in the rebels returning home. Moreover, negotiations between NGOS and the People’s Army for the Restoration of Democracy (APRD)  effectively ended the use and occupation of schools in some villages.”

Such efforts are small steps towards a more lasting solution, but have the potential to create a different kind of ripple effect, one that returns education to its sacred place in human society.

Malala Yousafzai (right), the young education rights campaigner from Pakistan, speaks at the “Malala Day” UN Youth Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 13 2013 (IPS)

Malala Yousafzai and Muhammad Qasim have a lot in common.

Both of them hail from the remotest areas of Pakistan, which have been battling extremism and terrorism for many years now."It was only later that I realised that the Taliban were not pro-humanity and pro-Pakistan. They were killing innocent women and children." -- Muhammad Qasim

Yousafzai is from Pakistan’s northwestern Swat valley, and Qasim comes from the Chakwal region of Punjab.

Yousafzai stood against the Taliban in her pursuit for education. Like Yousafzai, Qasim was determined to educate himself as well as his sisters. He and his friends constructed a secondary school for girls in his village by collecting funds through charity and donations.

In her speech at the United Nations Friday, Yousafzai said, “The extremists were and are afraid of books and pens.

“The power of education frightens them,” she added.

Qasim seconds that. “Those living in cities cannot be targeted by the Taliban because they are educated, unlike in rural areas where there is illiteracy,” he told IPS.

The main commonality between 16-year-old Yousafzai and 23-year-old Qasim is that both of them are children of conflict and education is their passion.

The attack on Yousafzai, who was shot in the head by the Taliban but heroically recovered from her injuries, made headlines all over the world.

Qasim was informed of the attack after receiving a text message from a friend, he said. Since then he and his friends have organised protests, and used social media to raise awareness about girls’ education in Pakistan.

Qasim and Yousafzai came face to face a few days ago in New York. Qasim’s excitement knew no bounds when he spotted her at the airport.

“I inquired after her health,” Qasim said. “She said she was doing fine and that she is planning to select geography and history as her main subjects.”

Dressed in a yellow T-shirt and a pair of jeans, Qasim exudes an air of confidence.

Growing up in a remote area of Pakistan, Qasim had just one dream. “I wanted to become an engineer,” he said.

Qasim is one of the 1,000 youth leaders who arrived at the U.N. in New York City to mark “Malala Day”.

To honour Yousafzai’s courage for standing up against the Taliban and insisting that girls have a right to go to school, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has designated Jul. 12 as “Malala Day.”

And on this occasion, Qasim is here to lend his support towards education for girls.

According to a report titled “The State of Pakistan’s Children 2012,” launched by the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a well-known child rights organisation in Pakistan, almost 25 million children and adolescents are out of school in the country.

For Qasim, too, the education he wanted did not come to him easily. After studying for five years in a primary school, Qasim’s father enrolled him into a madrassa (an Islamic religious school).

“Those at the madrassas would tell us not to go to government schools to pursue a normal education,” Qasim told IPS. “There was pressure on my father from the madrassa. And my father also insisted that I give up my normal education and pursue religious education at the madrassa.”

Qasim was not ready to compromise, he said. Initially, he would juggle his religious and academic education.

“Friday, being the Muslim religious holiday, I would go to school and catch up with the assignments, and the rest of the six days I would be studying in the madrassa,” he said.

Life in the madrassa was tough, recollects Qasim. It was a few months before 9/11 when he enrolled into a religious school in his village.

“I was 11 or 12 years old then,” he said. “At that time the Taliban were our heroes and we would honour them.

“It was only later that I realised that the Taliban were not pro-humanity and pro-Pakistan.
They were killing innocent women and children and this is when people realised that the Taliban were not the right people to support,” Qasim said. “They are not even Muslims,” he added.

However, life in a madrassa did not appeal to him.

“The perception outside is that students are tortured and they go crazy in madrassas,” he said. “I must say that the situation is exactly not the same as being portrayed. But these things do exist where children are beaten and brainwashed. But I was clear from the very beginning that this is not what I wanted for myself.”

Qasim fought with his parents and finally convinced his father to allow him to pursue his studies in a government school.

“This is the only way I could become an engineer,” Qasim said.

Until tenth grade he studied in a village school and then he shifted to a nearby city. He won a merit-based scholarship and is currently studying at an engineering college in the capital, Islamabad. Qasim now works part time for a company. He has extensively worked in flood-hit areas in the country. But he strives to achieve something bigger in his life.

“I want to build a good college in my area and then convert it into a university after a few years so the children from my village can study.”

Not only has he managed to educate himself, Qasim is determined to educate all his sisters, too.

His trip is an inspiration for the members of his community, but coming to the U.N. might pose a huge risk, he admitted.

“I am concerned when I return home to Pakistan,” he said. “But this is a lifetime opportunity and I wanted to express myself before the world.”

As far as the role of Pakistani government is concerned, Qasim said that the government is trying but corruption has been a major deterrent when it comes to education. Also, changes needs to be implemented at a policy level, along with funding, which continues to be a huge challenge, Qasim said.

According to a new policy paper by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) Education for All Global Monitoring Report, 28.5 million children, who constitute half of the world’s out-of-school children, live in conflict-affected countries. The paper further claims that humanitarian aid for education has declined to 1.4 percent, down from 2.2 percent in 2009.

Children come back to a school destroyed by the Taliban in Bajuar Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region in northern Pakistan. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

By AJ Correspondents
DOHA, Qatar, Oct 10 2012 (Al Jazeera)

The Pakistani government has offered a Rs10 million (105,000-dollar) bounty for the capture of the Pakistani Taliban assailants who shot Malala Yousafzai, a teenage rights and education activist in the northwestern Swat Valley, officials say.

Yousafzai, a 14-year-old schoolgirl, was shot in the head and neck on Tuesday, and has since undergone surgery to remove a bullet lodged in her skull.

She was attacked on her way home from school in Mingora, the main town of Swat Valley, and is being treated at Peshawar’s Combined Military Hospital.

Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Yousafzai had been sedated following her surgery, and that doctors would reassess her condition in 48 hours.

He said that she was in stable condition, but was not out of danger.

“The government has decided to award Rs10 million rupees to whoever helps us identify the attackers and their names will be kept secret,” he said.

Prayers are being offered across the country for Yousafzai’s recovery.

Pakistan’s national airline has placed an air ambulance on standby to take Yousafzai abroad for treatment if needed, government sources said, but medics are wary of lengthy travel times given her unstable condition, while officials have rushed to issue her a passport.

Prayers for recovery

Students at a demonstration in support of the rights activist said that Yousafzai “is like our sister”.

“We pray for her earliest recovery and well-being,” said 14-year-old Shamaila, who goes to the same school as Malala. “We also pray that other students can benefit from Malala’s enlightening views.”

Classmate Brekhna Rahim said Malala “wished to have enough money and build schools in every village for girls in Swat”.

The entire Swat Valley was in shock over the shooting, she said, glued to their televisions and crying as they watched the endlessly repeated scenes of her being stretchered to hospital.

Hussain, the information minister, told Al Jazeera that “every child in (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) is under threat”, but the provincial government “doesn’t have the resources” to provide them all with security.

“Schools can be provided security and we’re looking into it. We’re all on target, we are and we will have to face these threats bravely. We’ll definitely provide security to Malala and their family as they are still onthe target list,” he said.

Yousafzai was with her classmates in a school van when unidentified men stopped the vehicle, asking if it belonged to Yousafzai’s school.

One of the gunmen then asked: “Where is Malala?”

As she was identified, the assailant reportedly drew a pistol and shot her in the head and neck. Two other girls on the bus were also wounded. They were treated for their injuries at a nearby hospital.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack.

Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Pakistani Taliban spokesperson, said the group had repeatedly warned Yousafzai to stop speaking out against them.

“She is a Western-minded girl. She always speaks against us,” he said by telephone from an undisclosed location.

“We will target anyone who speaks against the Taliban.

“We warned her several times to stop speaking against the Taliban and to stop supporting Western non-governmental organisations, and to come to the path of Islam.”

Taliban’s justification

The Taliban said it was not only “allowed” to target young girls, but it was “obligatory” when such a person “leads a campaign against Islam and sharia”.

The spokesman also referred to the Quranic story of Hazrat Khizar, who killed a young child, justifying it to Prophet Musa (Moses in other religions), by saying the boy would overburden his pious parents with his disobedience, and that God would “replace” the boy with a more obedient son.

Ehsan said that the Pakistani Taliban had not banned education for girls, “instead, our crime is that we tried to bring the education system for both boys and girls under Islamic law.

“We are deadly against co-education and secular education systems, and Sharia orders us to be against it.”

The group also criticised media coverage of the shooting, saying: “After this incident, (the) media poured out all of its smelly propaganda against Taliban mujahideen with their poisonous tongues.

“…will the blind media pay any attention to the hundreds of respectful sisters whom are in the secret detention centres of ISI (Pakistan’s spy agency) and suffering by their captivity?

“Would you like to put an eye on more than 3,000 young men killed in secret detention centres, whose bodies are found in different areas of Swat, claimed to be killed in encounters and died by cardiac arrest?”

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf both strongly condemned the attack.

Private schools in the Swat Valley shut their doors in protest on Wednesday, though government schools are opened as per usual.

Taliban resurgence

The local chapter of the TTP, led by Maulana Fazlullah, controlled much of Swat from 2007 to 2009, but were driven out by an army offensive in July 2009.

Local reports indicate, however, that the group was only driven into the surrounding areas, rather than being wiped out, and it has since staged a resurgence.

Tuesday’s shooting in broad daylight in Mingora raises serious questions about security more than three years after the army claimed to have crushed the local Taliban.

Yousafzai rose to international prominence as an 11-year-old in 2009, writing an anonymous diary for BBC Urdu about life under the Taliban, before featuring in two documentaries made by the New York Times.

She also featured in an Al Jazeera documentary.

She had famously stood against the TTP’s attempts to stop girls from going to school, and was awarded the National Peace Award for Youth.

The international children’s advocacy group KidsRights Foundation nominated her for the International Children’s Peace Prize, making her the first Pakistani girl put forward for the award.

Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls who were being denied an education by the Taliban and other armed groups across northwest Pakistan, where the government has been fighting such groups since 2007.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.