On Tuesday, Oct. 9, school had just let out in Mingora, a city in the northern part of Swat Valley in Pakistan. Children filed into pickup trucks, which have been modified into makeshift buses. White tarps covered the truck beds, offering the youngsters a break from the scorching Middle Eastern sun. Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani girl who is a student and an activist for women’s rights in the Middle East, boarded her bus and awaited its departure. The bed of the truck fillled with students, all ready to go home after a long day of math problems and writing assignments.
As the truck started, a bearded man stepped into the bed of the vehicle and demanded to know which of the children on board was Yousafzai. According to Rasool Shah, Mingora’s police chief, a fellow female student reluctantly pointed out Yousafzai, who immediately denied this fact. The man shot two of Yousafzai’s classmates and turned on the young activist. He fired two rounds into Yousafzai, one into her neck, and the other in her head which travelled down her body and ended up in her chest cavity.
Although this sounds like a scene in a Hollywood terrorist thriller, Yousafzai was the victim of a Taliban-coordinated assassination attempt on Oct. 9. She became a target in 2009 when she began to publicly speak out in support of education rights for women. She was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize, an award presented by the Dutch organization KidsRights. The Taliban adamantly opposes the education of women, and Yousafzai represented just the sort of progressive thinking that the extremist organization is hellbent on suppressing. Orders came trickling down from Taliban central command to regional officers: Yousafzai must be silenced.
In an article published by USA Today, Taliban spokesman Sirajuddin Ahmad said that local Taliban leader Maulana Fazlullah and his subordinates hand-picked three operatives to plan the attack, two whom are trained snipers. The three-man cell studied Yousafzai’s commuting habits to and from school. Once they figured out her travel patterns, the team was ready to carry out its terrible operation. Ahmad also stated that Yousafzai and her family had been warned on three separate occasions to stop blogging anti-Taliban rhetoric before they gave the go-ahead to kill her. The Taliban carried out their mission in cold blood, and the only regret the organization appears to have is failing to kill the girl.
According to the Huffington Post, the Taliban has released a statement vowing to kill Yousafzai if she survives her current injuries.
“This is a new chapter of obscenity, and we have to finish this chapter,” Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan said via telephone, according to the Huffington Post.
Against all odds, Yousafzai is currently listed as being in a “stable” condition and has shown signs of improvement over the last few days of treatment. According to an article by CBS News, Pakistani military spokesman Asim Bajwa said that military surgeons have successfully removed the bullet that was lodged in her chest after being shot through her head.
Although she is still on a ventilator, doctors are trying to assess just how severe the damage is.
“They reduced her sedation today [Saturday, Oct. 13],” Bajwa said. “Malala did respond to that, and she did move her four limbs.”
Local Pakistani authorities have offered a reward of over $100,000 for the capture of the gunmen, according to the Agence-France Presse. All across Pakistan, the Middle East and the world, people have united against the Taliban and other extremist organizations. Fifty Islamic clerics from the Sunni Ittehad Council issued a “fatwa” against the gunmen, which is a ruling grounded in Islamic sharia law. According to USA Today, the “fatwa” issued by the clerics “represents the sharpest backlash yet to attempts by the Taliban to justify its attack.” The latest move by the Taliban to enforce its medieval version of society is sickening and I believe that the attempted assassination on Yousafzai should be a catalyst in a world effort to stop the terrorist organization.
Resorting to the murder of young children reveals how far the Taliban and other extremist groups will go in order to force their beliefs on others. The Taliban has brought itself to a new moral low with the attempted assassination of Yousafzai. I believe that they will lose a huge amount of support throughout the Middle East, resulting in their eventual demise as an organization with any serious influence. However, before this happens, I would not be surprised to see a flood of similarly disturbing attacks carried out by the group in an attempt to scare people into obedience.
Since harboring Osama bin Laden after the 2001 attacks, the Taliban has been losing any shred of credibility they had with world governments. The group, which was once a beacon of hope for the Afghan people during the country’s war with Russia, has resorted to suicide attacks against coalition forces and poorly carried out assassination attempts in an effort to gain ground in a war they are clearly losing. Yousafzai’s tragic shooting has spurred outrage against the Taliban and many are calling for an end to extremism in the Middle East.
All across Pakistan, schools opened with prayers for Yousafzai on Friday, Oct. 12 and mosques held prayer services for her speedy recovery. The Taliban is losing their foothold in the Middle Eastern region and I believe that they will stoop to new lows in an attempt to retain power. As the saying goes, “when a dog is backed into a corner, it’s going to bite.” The Taliban has been cornered and they are willing to do anything to get out.
David Adams can be reached at dadams@spartans.ut.edu