Tuesday, October 9, 2012

I thought Obama solved this problem, never mind


Liberty-loving teen girl, 14, gunned down by Taliban in Pakistan near school bus


PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A teenage Pakistani children's rights activist was shot in the head Tuesday by a would-be assassin who flagged down her school bus in the former Taliban stronghold of Swat, officials said.
Many in Pakistan reacted with shock and revulsion to the shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who was flown to intensive care in the northwestern city of Peshawar after doctors said earlier she was out of danger.
Two other girls were also wounded, police officer Rasool Shah said.
Malala won international recognition for highlighting Taliban atrocities in Swat with a blog for the BBC three years ago, when the Islamist militants led by radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah burned girls' schools and terrorised the valley.
Her struggle resonated with tens of thousands of girls who were being denied an education by Islamist militants across northwest Pakistan, where the government has been fighting local Taliban since 2007.
She received the first-ever national peace award from the Pakistani government last year, and was nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by advocacy group KidsRights Foundation in 2011.
Tuesday's shooting in broad daylight in Mingora, the main town of the once much-loved valley, raises serious questions about security more than three years after the army claimed to have crushed a Taliban insurgency.
Police accounts of the attack changed during the day. Initially, an officer told AFP Malala was shot as she was getting on the bus, then later that a gunman had flagged down the vehicle some distance away.
"One of them, who had a small beard, went inside and asked the children which was Malala," Shah told AFP.
"He fired three shots. One bullet hit Malala's head. The second hit the shoulder of her school friend and the third inflicted a minor leg injury to another girl on the bus," the policeman added.
Doctors at the Saidu Sharif Medical Complex in Mingora said the bullet penetrated her skull but missed her brain, leaving her out of danger.
President Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the attack, but said it would not shake Pakistan's resolve to fight Islamist militants or the government's determination to support women's education.
London-based rights group Amnesty International condemned the "shocking act of violence" against a girl bravely fighting for an education and said that Malala and her family had been threatened by the Taliban.
"This attack highlights the extremely dangerous climate human rights activists face in northwestern Pakistan, where particularly female activists live under constant threats from the Taliban and other militant groups," it said.
Provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said Malala had been targeted as "an icon of peace", calling for a sweeping military offensive against all Islamist militants in northwest Pakistan.
The Pakistan army went into battle against the two-year Taliban insurgency in Swat in 2009. Fierce fighting displaced around two million people but the army declared the region back under control in July 2009.
Malala was 11 when she wrote the blog on the BBC Urdu website, which at the time was anonymous. She also featured in two New York Times documentaries.
In a 2011 BBC news report, she read out an extract of her diary that gave a sense of the fear she endured under the Taliban.
"I was very much scared because the Taliban announced yesterday that girls should stop going to schools.
"Today our head teacher told the school assembly that school uniform is no longer compulsory and from tomorrow onwards, girls should come in their normal dresses. Out of 27, only 11 girls attended the school today," she said.
Despite sporadic outbreaks of violence, the government is trying to encourage tourists to return to Swat, which had been popular with holidaymakers for its stunning mountains, balmy summer weather and winter skiing.
On Wednesday, state carrier Pakistan International Airlines is scheduled to hold a test flight to Saidu Sharif, Mingora's twin town, for the first time since flights were suspended due to the insurgency.

What we have is the left wants us to ignore reality. Remember what Afghanistan was like under the Taliban?

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