Battling Injustice: 16 Women Nobel Peace Laureates

PREFACE

Lead us from the Unreal to the Real; lead us from Darkness to Light; lead us from Death to Immortality. Om peace, peace, peace.

These soulful urges from Brihadaranyaka Upanishad are not an invocation of the benediction of God but man’s innate urge to conquer self and be part of the One, Pure Consciousness. While man strives to reach that state of bliss, he seeks his method from God – in all humility. Socrates says, ‘All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.’ However, they achieve divinity not through the prayers they make to God but by grooming their spirits with the magical stirrings of the Divine and by cleansing those around them with the Divine they possess.

They take in their warm clasp the low, the neglected, the abandoned, the orphaned. They are pained on finding others in pain. They are aggrieved on finding others in grief. Thus, through empathy and self-abnegation they achieve oneness with all existence – and, therefore, with God.

In this book, I script the sagas of sixteen women, who in their meeting with humanity found self-fulfilment through their unbound love and relentless struggle for peace and justice. Their stories, starting from humble origins, are awe-inspiring yet relatable. I believe we have much to learn about ourselves from these righteous souls; if not anything, how similar we are despite our many differences. Let us keep in mind that the bond of humanity we often invoke are our own shared vulnerabilities. Our salvation – spiritual and worldly – lie in knowing how to overcome them, and I hope the reader will find that how while reading the following pages, about some of the most exceptional human beings born of the wheel of time.

MALALA YOUSAFZAI

INCARNATION OF MALALAI OF MAIWAND

‘When the whole world is silent Even one voice becomes powerful.’

The twenty-first century has brought an awakening all over the world. Even in conservative and patriarchal societies which celebrate the birth of sons and lament that of daughters, there is an unmistakable shift in attitudes. Where girls were largely prevailed upon to marry early, bear children and remain confined within the four walls of their homes, there are signs of an increased focus on girls’ education. Parents are beginning to recognize the benefits of women’s empowerment; they see how through learning, their daughters and their families can prosper. We stand at the dawn of an era of universal education that is truly universal.

Thus, the developments in Swat Valley of Pakistan and parts of Afghanistan in recent years – where girls have been ordered by religious extremists to cease their schooling upon pain of violence or even death – have generated shock and disbelief. The world stands aghast at this regressive, even medieval regime and is rightfully horrified that it has been imposed in the name of piety. That militants in these regions have chosen to cloak their brutality with religious injunctions or fatwas only adds to the outrage across the globe.

At the tender age of fourteen, Malala Yousafzai, the brave child campaigner for girls’ education, became internationally famous. Her defiance of the militants was brought to the world stage by a cowardly attempt on her life, which was made simply for her saying that she and her friends should be allowed to go to school. International furore gave way to righteous indignation and widespread concern for her welfare as she battled for life against terrible injuries.

It seems that only Malala’s near-ultimate sacrifice has raised the issue of girls’ struggle for education in the international consciousness. Previously, her cause had been limited to the odd column buried among more sensational news. While her defiance of the regime of fear of the Taliban had been public in her country for some time, Malala was thrust into the international spotlight in her convalescence. She has become a veritable poster child for girls’ education since. Moreover, she has only become more determined since the craven attack against her to further her quest for women’s self-empowerment.

Malala’s advocacy for girls’ education began at the age of eleven, when most had barely crystallized their dreams and rarely chosen their field of accomplishment, and much less had been an inspiration for others. Malala owes much to her father for this. Ziauddin Yousafzai, a poet and school owner, has been a tower of strength for her, and a role model as an educational activist. He encouraged his talented daughter’s development and has been a leading proponent of women’s empowerment in his own right. It is his groundwork that Malala has built on in taking the issue of women’s education to the world.

It must be said that Malala’s passion for learning is in her DNA. Her grandfather, Rohul Amin Yousafzai Ziauddin, was a school owner, and he passed his vocation and his vision of an educated youth to his son. The family founded a chain of schools under the name Khushal School; it was in one of these schools in Swat Valley of Pakistan that Malala had studied. She was in ninth standard, in 2012, when tensions with the Taliban culminated in the near-fatal attack on her.

Malala’s family story is as much one of perseverance through courage as it is of a quest for the emancipation of women. The Taliban had constantly threatened violence against Malala’s family for their public opposition to its edicts. After her father’s friend Zahid Khan had been nearly killed by Taliban extremists, it became clear that Malala’s father’s life was in danger. He refused to change track though, and continued to campaign against the Taliban’s push to destroy Swat’s educational institutions. He had become somewhat accustomed to the militant’s threats and was almost philosophical about the prospect of dying by a terrorist’s bullet. Malala also understood that she might be a target for reprisals. But she and her family shrugged off the notion that the Taliban would harm a young girl, as this kind of atrocity was virtually unheard of in Pashtun culture and Islamic tradition. They also understood that, for any sane person of any culture, this conduct would be unthinkable.

However, the unthinkable would occur. On 9 October 2012, Malala was shot by two Taliban assassins in her school bus, as she was travelling home from school. Two of her schoolmates were also injured in the attack. Her injuries were horrific: she had been shot in the head at point-blank range – a clear indication of the Taliban’s resolve to kill her. The numerous surgical procedures – and the substantial efforts coordinated across two countries to ensure her survival – do not diminish the miracle of her complete recovery.

The girls’ injuries would not be in vain. While Malala’s life would hang in the balance for days and her convalescence would last many months, the attention that her plight drew to her cause led to her meteoric rise as an activist and ambassador for universal education. In this regard, Malala’s life fits William Shakespeare’s aphorism: ‘Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.’

Malala was born on 12 July 1997 into a stiffly patriarchal society, where a girl’s birth was commiserated and a boy’s birth an occasion for jubilation. She was one of the few fortunate girls whose births were rejoiced by their fathers: Ziauddin Yousafzai had showered dry fruits, coins and sweets into her cradle, as was the tradition upon the arrival of a boy baby. Malala’s father’s celebrating Malala’s birth in this manner astonished all in the family and even her father’s friends. Ziauddin’s cousin Jehan Sher Khan Yousafzai was the only one who came to felicitate her father, offering a handsome gift of money to Malala. He had brought with him a family tree beginning with her great-great-grandfather and ending with the name of her father, Ziauddin. Ziauddin wrote ‘Malala’ below his own name, thereby declaring Malala as the heir to the family’s legacy. This is unheard of in conservative and patriarchal societies, particularly in the Pashtun community to which Malala belongs.

Ziauddin and Tor Pekai’s young daughter was named after Malalai of Maiwand, the most revered heroine of Afghanistan. When Malala was an infant, her father used to sing a song penned by Rahmat Shah Sayel, the famous Pashtun poet. The expectations of Malala’s father of her daughter were well articulated in the last verse of the song:

O Malalai of Maiwand,

Rise once more to make Pashtuns understand the song of honour,

Your poetic words turn worlds around,

I beg you, rise again.

Her father wished the same courageous spirit of Malalai of Maiwand to rise again in Malala, his daughter. He would often sing songs to her, and he cherished his young daughter’s development. Something of a dissident in the increasingly narrow-minded society in which he found himself as his family grew, Ziauddin would write poems of secular import and tolerance. Swat Valley had seen a number of faiths: It had been a haven for Buddhism from the second century BC; it had been predominantly Hindu until the invasion of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni early in the eleventh century, from which time Islam held sway. Malala’s father, himself a devout Muslim, wrote the poem ‘The Relics of Butkara’ about the Butkara Ruins in the Valley, which was once a pilgrimage place for Buddhists. The poem alludes to inter-religious truths, a spiritual oneness throughout the ages in this ageless, picturesque land:

When the voice of truth rises from minarets,

The Buddha smiles,

And the broken chain of history reconnects.

In Malala’s father’s youth, love marriages were taboo. Malala’s father, though, never allowed himself to be bogged down by purposeless convention that restricted one’s freedom. He appreciated well that in freedom lies the essence of life. While Malala’s mother consented to marry him, the match was opposed by his parents and Tor Pekai’s father. By the sheer force of his sincerity and perseverance, Ziauddin prevailed over his parents’ reluctance, and his grandfather finally decided to send a barber to her mother’s house with a proposal for Malala’s mother’s hand, as per the local custom. Tor Pekai’s father, Malik Janser Khan, refused the proposal. But Ziauddin remained undeterred and continued to make overtures. After snubbing Malala’s father for several months, Malik Janser Khan finally relented, and the delighted pair were married.

Malala, the eldest of three children, was thus born with a blessing: her supportive and enlightened – and evidently determined – father. Malala could never have become the confident, insightful and assertive young woman whom we know today without Ziauddin’s encouragement and inspiration. He did not clip her wings, as is common in many traditional societies. He let her soar as high as she would, think as deep as she could and take in her grasp as much of the world as she could. Malala’s rise from persecuted child human rights campaigner to the youngest, the first Pashtun – and indeed the first Pakistani – recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize evinces the boundless potential within young women. Malala has shown the world what may be achieved with a decent education.

That Malala is a remarkable young woman, of course, is an understatement. Her courage and determination is prodigious, and her passion for the emancipation of repressed women around the world is manifest. It infuses every word when she speaks about girls’ education. Perhaps more significant, though, is that Malala has remained genuine and true to herself, to her family and culture, in spite of her horrific experience and her international exposure. Her authenticity, poise and forthrightness is evident to those who view her in the media.

Malala’s remaining the very same young Muslim Pashtun woman from Swat Valley, who talks with conviction about people’s right to freedom and education, has endeared her to the world. Many would have been broken or deeply scarred by the tribulations she has endured, and others would have spurned their people in the face of the injustice meted out to them. But Malala seems no different from the courageous teenager she was when she spoke with local media and posted blogs before the attack; only now, she is more of a woman than a child, with greater determination and focus.

Malala’s unaffected manner and stillness was my first and lasting impression when I spoke with her. She exudes a calm strength, a quality innate of people aspiring to greatness. Her colourful headscarf frames a face that is at once compelling and attractive, and she holds eye contact naturally and in a way that is comforting rather than confronting. Malala talks about herself and her life disarmingly rather than with self-indulgence. She has quite pale skin, but says she would rather have inherited the white skin of her mother than the brownish complexion of her father, which is a closer hue to her own. Her mother, she says, is a white-skinned fairy whom her father seemed to cherish like a fragile china doll.

While she idolized her mother and admired her beauty and her femininity, Malala recognized that being a woman in Swat Valley under the Taliban meant living by strictures that impinged on everyday freedoms. Girls and women in her society could not go out without being accompanied by a male relative, for instance, even if he were only a small child. The expansive freedom she envisioned for herself, however, knew no horizon. She dreamt of scaling the mighty Mount Elum on the wings of support provided by her father, who always said about her, ‘Malala will be free as a bird.’

It is ironic that her father wanted Malala to be as free as a bird, as he had been captivated by jihad when he was only twelve years old. A senior Taliban leader had come to his village during the Afghan war. The leader described jihad so gloriously that her father was entranced and he wanted to fight Russian ‘infidels’ who had occupied Afghanistan. He would pray every night to Allah to create war between Muslims and infidels so that he could die in His service and become a martyr. Her father’s captivation by jihad and his later taking up cudgels against the Taliban in Swat Valley offers a study in contrasts. How could a person who himself wanted to be a jihadi later decide to counter the excesses of the jihadi Taliban in Swat Valley? Men such as Ziauddin lead one to suspect that most militants, other than mercenaries, are essentially pious souls who have been indoctrinated by religious fanatics. Malala’s father was truly a case in point: He was a pious soul, but when he was indoctrinated by his theology teacher, he was prepared to achieve martyrdom in the cause of jihad.

Nevertheless, Ziauddin renounced violence, and he did so on the basis of scripture. The Quran sanctifies life and condemned the killing of innocents. Malala reminded everyone in her Nobel Prize speech that the Holy Quran says, ‘If you kill one person it is as if you have killed the whole humanity.’ Killing innocent human beings is, in fact, an act of blasphemy; it is against the will of Allah. And it may very well be that true jihad is opposing the Taliban’s repressive campaign against education, for which militants have bombed more than 2,000 schools in Pakistan, including more than 400 in the Swat Valley alone. True jihad may be the striving for the sanctity of human life so that all will have the opportunity to flourish; it may be campaigning for girls’ education and their freedom.

At any rate, banning education of girls under the threat of violence is not in consonance with the Holy Quran, which places importance on the acquiring of knowledge: There are several Hadiths where Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) enjoins his people to seek knowledge. Perhaps Malala and her father’s efforts in championing education for young women are as much religious as secular; Malala and Ziauddin may thus be among the greatest and most courageous jihadists in Pakistan.

And their courage is paramount. Malala hasn’t been the only student victim of extremist violence. The Taliban perpetrated among the worst atrocities in recent years when six Taliban fidayeen killed 132 school children and nine teachers of Army Public School in Peshawar on 16 December 2014. That this fiendish attack was carefully orchestrated exhibits the depravity of the organization and makes a mockery of their religious pretensions. Equally, it evinces the heroism of Malala and her father in continuing to stand publicly against them, unbowed by mortal threats.

There are numerous heroes in Malala’s culture. Her father has always revered Khushal Khan Khattak, the legendary Pashtun poet who inspired the Pashtun’s unity against Mughal domination in the seventeenth century. It was after him that he had named his son Khushal Khan and a school which he started. The war which Ziauddin has waged, however, is not against any human enemy. His enemy is illiteracy and its progeny, ignorance, and his weapon is not a sword but a sharper and more effective weapon – the kalam (pen).

It is hard not to admire Ziauddin’s indomitable will, redolent of the traditional Pashtun warrior ethos. His school was devastated some years ago by flash floods, and what was left of the school was entombed in thick, foul-smelling mud. He had already depleted his meagre resources in building the school; this was a veritable calamity for him. But Ziauddin refused to be defeated. His commitment to education and his vision would not be subdued by a mere natural disaster. With great effort, he supervised the rebuilding of his school. This same resolution in the face of adversity has been inherited by his famous daughter.

Adherence to principles is another of Ziauddin’s strong suits that Malala has inherited. There is a ceremony called woma which is performed on the seventh day after a child’s birth in a Pashtun family. Her father could not perform the ceremony for Malala, as he did not have enough money to buy a goat and rice to feed the guests; and Malala’s grandfather did not help either. But when the woma celebration of her younger brothers was to be performed and her grandfather offered help, her father refused to accept it, saying her grandfather had not assisted with Malala’s woma.

Ziauddin had shown since his youth that he was not one to go with the tide. When Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie was condemned all over the Muslim world for his novel Satanic Verses, Ayatollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie’s head. Ziauddin’s college held a heated debate on the issue. Ziauddin suggested that the appropriate response to Rushdie’s book would be to counter the blasphemy with their own book. ‘Islam is not that weak that it can be threatened by a book,’ he thundered.

With such an independent-thinking father, it is both unsurprising that Malala would be outspoken and that this would create difficulties for her. In a society in which some traditions patently deny a woman her worth, it is indeed a feat for Malala to have asserted her individuality. In Swat Valley, a woman may be given away as swara, a gift to one disaffected party to resolve a dispute with another. Once, a widower married a widow without the permission of her family. The issue was taken up by a jirga (a traditional assembly or court of local elders), which punished the widower’s family by directing that their most beautiful girl be married to a boy with poor prospects from the widow’s clan. Such outrageous, sexist edicts were common. Malala felt threatened, at times, by such bizarre persecution of women.

She was yet to know the worst. The Taliban under the leadership of Mullah Omar had taken control of Afghanistan and demolished and burnt girls’ schools. Even US military intervention could not break their hold on parts of the country. They forced men to grow long beards and women to wear burqas. Malala saw the burqa as a cumbersome garment; it felt to her like an oven on hot days. The Taliban’s fiats were devised to squeeze the life out of women. It banned laughing loudly, wearing white shoes and varnishing nails. Women were beaten up on any indication of defiance. It sent shivers down Malala’s spine, but she felt comforted by the fact that in their country, girls could still go to school. Little did she know that the Taliban were about to assert their dominance over Swat Valley’s women too. Nonetheless, she felt inspired by books like Leo Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina and the novels of Jane Austen, and Malala banked upon her father’s assurance: ‘I will protect your freedom, Malala. Carry on with your dreams.’

Malala’s father was not only a doting parent but also a guide. When Malala was a young child, she stole toy jewellery from her school friend Safina in retaliation for Safina’s having stolen her toy mobile phone. But when she was caught she felt miserable; it was unbearable for her to fall in the estimation of her father. Her father, though, did not punish her unduly. He did not allow her self-esteem to be shattered by this childish error. He told Malala that great men had committed mistakes in their childhood, and quoted the revelatory words of Mahatma Gandhi: ‘Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.’ He hung a framed copy of a letter purportedly written by Abraham Lincoln to his son’s teacher, asking the teacher to guide his son. The letter asks his son be shown that it is far more honourable to fail than cheat, but also entreats the teacher to spare him some time so he may ponder the eternal mysteries of nature.

Malala’s enlightened father’s expectations were not of the kind that crushes a child’s individuality or will, but that would surely drive the young girl to extend herself. She would run errands for her elders whenever she was asked so that her father would not be disappointed in her that his daughter failed to help someone in need. Once she was asked by a neighbour to buy some maize. On the way, Malala was hit by a passing bicycle and her shoulder pained terribly. But she withheld her tears until she delivered the maize and cried only when she reached her home. Once, in a competition she was determined to win, she lost to her friend Moniba. But she took that in her stride, just as her father had instructed her.

As Malala grew, the Taliban’s hold on Swat Valley became more overt, bolder. Prominent dissenters – or even those whose way of life was not to the liking of the Taliban’s medieval vision – were increasingly targeted. It was perhaps inevitable that militants would train their sights on Ziauddin, and not merely on his school. Malala’s father was not one to bend to dogmatic authority, however; this and his secular thinking only increased the Taliban’s hostility towards him as he spoke openly against the Taliban’s policies.

Ziauddin regretted so many things that prevailed in Pakistan at the time, and in his own way became an activist against the repression that he saw closing in on his people. He felt that the statement of Jinnah, the father of Pakistan, to the Constituent Assembly should have been adopted as a guiding principle of governance in the nation: ‘You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.’ To this day, Malala’s father expresses his anguish over the persecution in the country of more than two million Christians and a similar number of Ahmadis, and the sharp divisions among the various sects and sub-denominations of Muslims. Ziauddin opines that the three wars fought against India since Pakistan’s creation – and the endless waves of sectarian bloodletting within the country itself – have brought nothing but misery to the people.

It was in the middle of the last decade that extremists first made their presence felt in Swat Valley. Their arrival could not have been more ominous. The firebrand cleric Maulana Fazlullah’s entry in Imam Deri, a small village near Mingora town, foretold no less a disaster than the earthquake that shook the Valley not long afterwards. Maulana Fazlullah, who would become the Pakistani Taliban leader in 2007, set up an unauthorized radio station in Mingora, which operated unchallenged by the government authorities.

The earthquake of 8 October 2005 caused widespread devastation, claiming 73,000 lives and rendering some 128,000 injured and about three million homeless. Initially, the extremists supported relief efforts after the disaster, helping the traumatized populace rebuild their lives. Maulana Fazlullah projected himself as an Islamic reformer, and his popularity among the uneducated, disaffected poor people of the Valley grew. He exhorted people to abandon bad practices and cultivate good habits. He asked men to grow beards and eschew smoking and taking heroin and hashish. He instructed people on how to perform their religious rituals, and he would cry while speaking of his faith, extravagantly expressing his love for Islam. But as with the Afghan Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah’s dictatorial tendencies and repressive social agenda could not remain masked by his show of false piety.

Like most despots, Fazlullah wanted to establish his hold over the people of Swat Valley, and he would do so with the instrument of a narrow and sometimes patently false interpretation of Islam. Exploiting the people’s ignorance, he interpreted the Quran in a manner that suited him and his ambitions. He declared that sinful acts were the cause of natural calamities like earthquakes. His men thus ordered people to stop listening to music, cease watching movies and shun dancing. Shortly thereafter, CD and DVD shops were forcibly closed, and Fazlullah’s men collected televisions, DVDs and CDs from people and then burnt huge heaps of electronic gadgets on the streets. Initially, the Taliban paid shop owners due compensation, but later they simply bombed those music shops that dared to remain. All music except Taliban songs was declared haram.

The Maulana’s growing dominance in Swat Valley – or rather, the effect his dominance was having on its people – greatly distressed Malala’s father. Ziauddin knew that Fazlullah was a school dropout and was only fostering ignorance. In Fazlullah’s popular radio show every evening, he would announce the names of the people who had eschewed smoking or hashish and would congratulate them on having ceased being sinful. He would say that such people would have their reward in the life hereafter. Maulana would also criticize the Pakistani government for having failed to introduce shariat law. He was opposed to the feudal system and would declare that Khans would face retribution. Fazlullah’s broadcasts, however, were particularly focused on women, whom he advised to stay veiled and remain confined to their homes. His men would display the fancy clothes of women they looted from the homes of notables.

Several women made offerings of gold jewellery and money in the hope that it would please Allah. With the support of the people, Fazlullah began constructing his headquarters, a large, two-storey madrasa in Imam Deri village. Fazlullah’s growing influence would soon be felt by Malala’s father. His Urdu teacher Roshan Ali once demanded leave for constructing Fazlullah’s buildings. Fazlullah issued a call for girls to withdraw from schools, and many responded. In his evening radio show, the names of girls who had quit schools were announced, and they were congratulated for doing so.

Ziauddin was deeply aggrieved by this turn of events. Fazlullah issued fresh edicts virtually every day. There were few voices of protest in the valley apart from those of Ziauddin and a few of his friends. Beauty parlours were ordered closed and men were asked to abjure shaving. Fazlullah’s men even started a campaign against polio drops, declaring that shariat does not approve of curing a disease before it besets anyone. Their diktat was followed religiously, and not a single child took the vaccine in the areas where Fazlullah had established his dominance.

But merely dictating the lifestyles for the residents of Swat was not enough for Maulana Fazlullah. The religious fanatics’ holy grail is presiding over their own justice system, with which they can dispense their bigotry with a semblance of legitimacy. Fazlullah’s men thus started holding shura, a local court without the approval of state law – in simple terms, a kangaroo court run by extremists. Quick decisions were pronounced. Some decisions were well received, but soon they resorted to imposing corporal punishment, and sinners were publicly whipped. With a trademark sense of drama, Fazlullah, with his long locks and chin curtain beard, would sometimes appear astride a white horse at these public floggings.

Wherever religious hardliners have imposed shariat – be it in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan or Pakistan – a morality police is formed to enforce decrees on matters ranging from personal conduct to dress codes and more serious matters. The Taliban morality police in Swat Valley was called the Falcon Commandos, and they operated with impunity. The provincial government in Swat was largely run by parties sympathetic to the extremists, who in any case dared not criticize anyone who committed atrocities in the name of Islam. It was certain that they would ask Malala’s father to close his school.

One morning, the Taliban pasted a letter on the gate of Ziauddin’s school, which read, ‘Mr Principal, the school you are running is Western and infidel. You teach girls and have a uniform that is un-Islamic. Stop this, or you will be in trouble, and your children will weep and cry for you – Fedayeen of Islam.’ Ziauddin, encouraged by his friend Hidayatullah, disseminated an open letter to the Fedayeen of Islam in the Daily Azadi, a local newspaper, in which he wrote: ‘Please don’t harm my children, because the God you believe in is the same God they pray to every day. You can take my life, but please don’t kill my schoolchildren.’ The newspaper published Malala’s father’s name and also the name of his school, which made Ziauddin somewhat jittery, but he received immense support from some quarters. Many came to congratulate him for having bravely engaged with the Taliban, and declared that they too would pluck up the courage to speak.

Around this time, there were a number of other groups that were persecuting people in the name of shariat. Taliban leaders eventually formed a united front under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban–Pakistan, or the Pakistani Taliban, and chose Baitullah Mehsud as their leader. Fazlullah was given charge of Swat Valley. The Pakistani Taliban started indiscriminately targeting whomsoever they thought had violated Islamic norms, e.g., women without purdah or men shaving or wearing shalwar-kameez (traditional dress) in inappropriate dimensions. It was in this uneasy time that Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated. Fear stalked ordinary people throughout the country.

The zeitgeist of oppressive conservatism and the haunting spectre of violence in Pakistan was bound to affect the impressionable minds of the nation’s young children. Malala was no exception. While some of her classmates wanted to be doctors, she thought of being an inventor who would devise an ­anti-Taliban machine that could destroy the Taliban’s arsenal. But the Taliban held sway over the entire Swat Valley and acted as a de facto government. They started blasting the region’s schools at night, razing them to rubble. These attacks became more frequent each day. The situation had degenerated to such a state of lawlessness that in February 2008, a deputy superintendent of police, Javid Iqbal, was killed in a suicide bombing along with three constables. His funeral was similarly attacked hours later, killing more than fifty-five mourners, including the officer’s young son. Ten of Malala’s friend Moniba’s family members were either killed or seriously injured.

Swat Valley’s moderate citizens were outraged by the Taliban’s actions but were numbed by fear of the Taliban. Ziauddin, his friends and a few notables of Swat, however, created a Qaumi Jirga (local private body) with a view to challenging Fazlullah. A few eminent people of Swat joined the Qaumi Jirga, and since Malala’s father was neither an elderly person nor a Khan, he was chosen as the spokesperson of the Jirga. He was respected for his wisdom and had demonstrated his courage on several occasions earlier, and had garnered much respect for confronting Fazlullah in the local newspaper. He was also well versed in Urdu and English and could communicate effectively. Malala’s father said that those who want peace must swear by truth and speak nothing but the truth, as it is truth alone that can demolish fear.

That Malala had inherited her father’s fearlessness was for all to see when she made a public stand for girl’s education. Ziauddin’s friend Abdul Hai Kakar, a BBC radio correspondent, telephoned him and asked him to suggest a female teacher or a schoolgirl for writing a diary for a blog on life under the Taliban in Swat. Abdul Hai Kakar envisaged a diary in the tradition of that of Anne Frank, an ill-fated Jewish girl who had kept a diary about her life under the shadow of death during World War II. No teacher was prepared to risk his welfare for this. One brave tenth-standard girl Aysha volunteered and made one entry, but the following day her father informed Ziauddin that his daughter would not continue this perilous task. The duty of representing the oppressed girls of Swat Valley thus fell to Malala, who was now just eleven years of age.

With a view to hiding her identity from the Taliban, Malala was given the pseudonym Gul Makai, and she began writing the BBC blog. The first entry she made in her diary was dated 3 January 2009 under the title ‘I Am Afraid’. She recorded her personal feelings and everyday life under the terror of the Taliban. She lamented that the girls had to wear plain clothes instead of the erstwhile royal blue school uniform and that they had to hide school books, wrapping them in shawls. One diary note was written, under the title ‘Do Not Wear Colourful Clothes’. In this note, she recorded that she was about to wear her uniform when she remembered the advice of her principal and decided instead to wear her favourite pink dress. On another occasion, the diary note discussed the burqa. Malala was overjoyed to see her words on the website.

At her school, the pupils started talking about the diary. The desire to be identified as the author was overpowering her, but Malala could ill afford to ignore the BBC correspondent’s advice to stay incognito. The diary was being widely read. Extracts of the diary were printed by some newspapers. The BBC had even made a recording in the voice of another girl. Malala felt satisfied that the words which came from her pen could vanquish the whole of the Taliban’s arsenal.

Malala had faith that Allah would help her in her campaign for girls’ education, and her faith bolstered her resolve. She began to give interviews to the media. She appeared on local and national television, including Geo TV, one of the most popular news channels in Pakistan. Upon finding that she was so forthright and articulate in her answers on the rights of girls, many people came forward to support her, including local journalists who had not dared to voice their opinions in public. Journalists gave her a powerful forum to issue counters to the Pakistani Taliban’s propaganda.

Once, she appeared with her father on a BBC Urdu talk show which was hosted by the well-known columnist Wasatullah Khan. Malala and Ziauddin were to counter an arch-conservative’s pre-recorded pronouncements on the issue of women’s rights. With her characteristically outspoken manner, Malala immediately asserted, ‘How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?’ There could be no response from her opposite, and it is doubtful if he could have mounted a successful defence had he been in the studio, anyway. Such a bold question instantly demolished the perception that the Taliban’s authority was unassailable: here was a young girl, a devout Muslim, bluntly admonishing the extremists for their conduct.

The interview emboldened some to confront the Taliban, at least verbally. Malala was congratulated by many people. Nonetheless, Malala would not be swayed by the jubilant mood in the aftermath of her interview, as she and her father understood the magnitude of the struggle ahead. In any event, the Taliban did not stop blowing up schools. On the night of 7 October 2008, Sangota Convent School and the Excelsior College for boys were razed down by improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. Malala’s father was mortified, but perhaps more crushing was the looting of the broken furniture, the books and the computers that remained after the blasts.

The reasons the Taliban proffered for their grand acts of depraved vandalism were that Sangota Convent School was a school for the propagation of Christianity and that Excelsior College was co-educational. Her father denounced the Taliban’s claims the very next day in a live interview on the Voice of America. He pointed out that since Sangota School’s establishment in 1962 there had been no reported case of conversion; and Excelsior College had co-education classes only at the primary levels. Malala’s father passionately campaigned for the reconstruction of both the institutes. At times, he would be almost overcome with emotion on the issue of girls’ education. Once, he lifted a girl from an audience he was addressing and implored, ‘This girl is our future. Do we want her to be ignorant?’ The crowd responded, rising up in defiance and declaring that they would sacrifice themselves for the sake of their daughters’ education.

But all this public remonstration did little to sway the Taliban. Indeed, their bitter obduracy hardened and their campaign against girls’ education intensified with the public opposition. They announced a deadline: No girl, they declared, should go to school after 15 January 2009. Malala’s response was: ‘How can they stop us from going to school? They say they will destroy the mountain but they can’t even control the road.’ Many other girls were less confident. They felt that none had been able to stop the Taliban’s destroying schools – around 400 schools had already been bombed and reduced to rubble by the Taliban – and only by risking life and limb could one defy the extremists’ fiat.

Shortly before the deadline expired, the Taliban made their presence felt with a brutal murder. Shabana was a traditional dancer and singer and taught young dancers her skills. She had defied the Taliban’s ban on dancing and teaching and had ignored their warnings to her. On 2 January 2009, militants knocked at her door in Banr Bazaar at around 9 p.m. They demanded that she dance for them. She went to her room to change into her dancing costume. When she returned, they threatened to slit her throat. She begged for her life. Despite her heart-rending plea to spare her as a woman and Muslim and her desperate assurances that she would never dance again in her life, the assailants dragged her at gunpoint to Green Chowk and shot her dead. They strewed money, photographs and CDs of her performances over her bullet-ridden body. The Chowk came to be known as Bloody Square, as the bodies of many such victims of the Taliban’s savagery would be dumped there, as a warning to all who would defy them.

Some days after Shabana’s murder, a teacher was shot dead after refusing to pull his shalwar above his ankles in the manner of the Taliban. His cogent argument that nowhere in Islamic texts is it stated that the wearing of a shalwar above the ankles is required perhaps sealed his fate. While all these disturbing events were straining the nerve of Malala and her father, the worst was still in store for them. After some days, one Shah Douran announced on Mullah FM that Ziauddin was on the Taliban’s hit list.

There was no saviour in sight. The government appeared to have abrogated its responsibility for protecting people from the Taliban’s depraved violence. The local administration – and even the army – was behaving as if it were unaware of the Taliban’s murderous activities. The deputy commissioner of Mingora, Syed Javid, had begun to attend Taliban meetings and even, at times, to lead them. He refused to meet those who would come to seek his help against the Taliban’s threats. Once, Malala’s father dared to question the deputy commissioner as to whose order he would obey – Fazlullah’s or that of the government. People had lost their hope. Moreover, they seemed to have abandoned their Pashtun values and the qualities which Islam had imbued in them. Malala, and her father Ziauddin, and a few of his friends stood in glorious isolation; but they were determined not to capitulate.

With the deadline of 15 January 2009 approaching fast, Malala and her father resolved to keep Khushal School’s bell ringing – even if it remained the only school functioning on the last day before the deadline. Malala spoke on radio and television as many times as she could to protest against the Taliban’s farman. She declared, ‘They can stop us going to school, but they can’t stop us learning.’ She posed very pertinent questions to the Taliban. She asked if girls are not to go to school, from where will they find lady doctors? When they ordain that women should only be treated by lady doctors, how can there be lady teachers for girls aspiring to be doctors if there were to be no schools for girls?

Malala became more and more impassioned in her attacks on the Taliban. She questioned why the Taliban had destroyed five more schools after the deadline when no school was open for girls. She did not spare even the Pakistani army, which she felt was least interested in controlling the Taliban’s lawlessness. Even more than the civil and military establishment’s abrogation of their responsibility to the people of Swat, she regretted the people’s thronging to witness the floggings announced on Mullah FM.

On 16 February 2009, the government reached an agreement with the Taliban, whereby the government agreed to impose shariat law in the whole of Swat Valley in return for the militants ceasing hostilities. From the government perspective, the truce had two purposes: first, to bring peace to Swat Valley; and second, to expose the Taliban’s demand for peaceful shariat law. Malala and her father welcomed this development, as girls were permitted to go to school – albeit well veiled.

The Taliban, however, could not be so easily contained, and the agreement proved a disappointment for anyone who saw in it any hope of the return of peace and normalcy in the Valley. Militants captured the nearby Buner district only 100 kilometres away from the country’s capital, Islamabad. The federal government dithered and appeared to deny the gravity of the situation until Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said, ‘I think the Pakistani government is abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists.’ The Taliban had become bolder; the agreement had only conferred upon it a form of recognition, bolstering its morale.

Needless to say that the Taliban had usurped the role of the state at gunpoint. Each night, they embarked on a flag march on the roads with guns and sticks, as if the task of maintaining law and order were thrust upon them. Many pinned their hopes on a meeting which was to be addressed by Sufi Mohammad on 20 April 2009. A crowd of about 40,000 people assembled to hear him; many were common citizens and others Taliban supporters. Some of the latter sang jihadi songs. Sufi Mohammad’s speech confirmed the worst fears of the moderate and progressive Muslim citizens of Pakistan. He called for the stamping out of democracy in the country and claimed that Western democracy had been imposed upon Pakistan by the infidels. He stunned everyone when he announced, ‘Now wait, we are coming to Islamabad.’

The fear that stalked Swat Valley now loomed large all over Pakistan, especially Islamabad, the nation’s capital. That Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had been brazenly assassinated in Islamabad less than two years earlier only heightened the fear that extremists could take control at the nation’s centre. It was only when America threatened to withhold billions of dollars in aid and issued thinly veiled warnings of drone attacks that the government decided to act. It announced the launching of Operation Rah-e-Rast (true path) to eliminate the Taliban in Swat.

The military operation brought upheaval rarely seen in countries ostensibly at peace, and Malala’s family were affected as much as anyone. The authorities announced over megaphones that all residents of Mingora should leave. Her father resisted, until her mother issued the ultimatum that she would leave with their children should he decide to remain in Swat. She knew her husband would not let her leave unprotected, and Ziauddin thus had to capitulate. On 5 May 2009, this courageous family joined the ranks of internally displaced persons (IDPs), which Malala felt sounded like some infectious disease. The streets were jammed with people in their cars, rickshaws, mule carts and trucks, stuffed with their belongings, rushing out of Swat before the impending firefight.

This marked the biggest exodus of Pashtuns from their own land, with some two million fleeing their homes. There was some element of farce in the process, as people encountered both government and Taliban checkpoints as they left the Valley. It appeared that the military were still barely taking cognizance of the Taliban’s presence, mere days before launching a concerted assault on the Taliban.

Malala’s family finally reached Mardan city from Mingora, leaving Swat behind. The journey is a little more than 100 kilometres, but with roads