School girl who blogged against Taliban attacked in Pak
October 09, 2012: A 14-year-old Pakistani girl, who emerged as an unlikely champion
of peace in the former Taliban stronghold of Swat, was seriously injured when a suspected
militant attacked her car in the country's restive northwest on Tuesday.
Malala
Yousufzai, the first recipient of Pakistan's National Peace Award for Youth, was hit
by at least two bullets when the gunman fired at her car in Swat, located 160 km from
Islamabad. Two other children were injured in the attack that occurred outside Yousufzai's
school. Yousufzai was rushed to a hospital in Saidu Sharif town where doctors performed
an emergency surgery, TV news channels reported. Security forces cordoned off the
hospital. The attack occurred as the girls were leaving the school after it closed
early due to a protest by government employees.
The gunman asked people in
the area to point out Yousufzai and then fired at her car, witnesses said. No group
claimed responsibility for the attack. Yousufzai received several threats after she
began writing about the excesses of the Taliban in a blog. In March, Tehrik-e-Taliban
Pakistan spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan said Yousufzai and social worker Shad Begum were
on the militants' 'hit list'.
Shad Begum was among 10 women conferred the International
Women of Courage Award by the US. Yousufzai received the first National Peace Award
for Youth from former premier Yousuf Raza Gilani in December last year for her "courageous
and outstanding services for the promotion of education and peace under extremely
hostile conditions" in Swat. The teenage girl was a victim of the ban imposed by the
Taliban on education for girls after the Swat region was overrun by the militants
in 2008. She wrote about her pain and anguish while blogging for BBC Urdu under the
pseudonym Gul Makai. Yousufzai had encouraged her fellow students to continue their
studies despite threats from militants before the military launched an operation to
flush out the Taliban from Swat in 2009.
Besides being nominated for the International
Peace Prize for Children, she was also decorated with the Sitara-i-Jurat. The government
sent the army into Swat in early 2009 after the Taliban began extending their influence
to districts located 100 km from Islamabad. Hundreds of Taliban fighters were captured
or killed but most of the top commanders, including Mullah Fazlullah, managed to escape
to Afghanistan.