Clarence Page
Did the Taliban overplay their hand when they shot a 14-year-old Pakistani girl simply because she wanted to go to school? We can only hope.
Just when you think the militant Islamic Taliban movement can't sink any lower, you hear another story as deplorable and cowardly as the shooting of
This week, before she was transferred in critical condition to a British hospital that specializes in battle injuries, spokesmen for Tehrik-I Taliban Pakistan, the Pakistani Taliban, boldly announced that, if she survives, they will try to kill her again.
Her crime? Advocating for the education of girls. Questioning the Taliban's sexist reading of Sharia law, the Tehrik-I Taliban Pakistan organization told media in an
In fact, she led no such thing, but the Taliban are too fanatical to see the difference. The letter accuses Malala, who gained global fame through an online diary that she wrote for the
In fact, the Taliban, who helped give birth to al-Qaida next door in
Thousands of young people and families have poured into the streets of
She was a very special girl, even at age 11, when Taliban fighters swept into her town in northwestern
Soon she was writing an anonymous blog for the
The Taliban warned her to hush up. But she refused. So on
The shooting of this one bright, articulate teen captures our attention and the Taliban's cowardice in ways that thousands of other Taliban atrocities do not. As
In the past, this sort of media-driven outrage sometimes has shaken the government into taking productive action. Three years ago a chilling cellphone video of a woman being held down and flogged more than 30 times in
That video was shocking enough to spur widespread outrage and military action that pushed the Taliban out of the valley, some all the way to rural
But the Taliban slowly returned and Pakistani authorities are now on the move again, making more than 100 arrests related to the attack on Malala,
Khar, the first woman to hold the job, called Malala's shooting a "wakeup call."
Twitter: @ihavenet
- China's President-in-Waiting is Inheriting a Mess
- Slowdown of the Chinese Economy Pushing The World Towards New Crisis
- Pakistan: Brave Teen, Cowardly Taliban
- Pakistan's Malala: Everyone's Daughter in the Fight for Girls' Education
- Add Malala Yousafzai to the List of Those Who Fought for Truth
- An Unlikely Hero Stands Up to the Taliban
- Afghanistan's Vibrant Media Scene
- Mao's Great Famine
- Citizen Protests Making an Impact in China
- Militancy in Central Asia: More Than Religious Extremism
- Afghanistan: Life after NATO
- Afghanistan: The Barber of Kabul
- Political Meritocracy is a Good Thing: The Case of China
- Why China Won't Collapse
- Phillipines Fighting Floods as well as Rebels
- North Korea and Disneyland
- Alienated People and an Overcautious State in China's Xinjiang
- The Farce of Chinese Multilateralism
- Central Asia: A Look at Sources of Violence and Instability
- The Paradox of China's Naval Strategy
- Challenging China's Rare Earth Monopoly
- South Korea: Stuck in the 20th Century?
- Japan's (Un)Clear Nuclear Ambition
- Political Rift Deepens in Japan over Senkakus Nationalization
- India's Gambit in the Central Asian Abyss
(c) 2012 Distributed by Tribune Media Services