Daily Times

“The world can be conquered through education, not wars.” This is what Pir Ilahi Bux said many years ago and his grandson quoted these words on his 37th death anniversary. That coincidentally occurred the same day when the greatest aspirant for education and knowledge, Malala Yousufzai, fell prey to the bullets that were shot into her head by those who want to conquer the world through wars and weapons. She knew what her peaceful desires meant for the bloodthirsty extremists who love nothing more than killing. Yet she carried on her peaceful campaign to create an environment where the basic human right of having access to knowledge is guaranteed. Despite being harmless, she appeared to her enemies more dangerous than their suicide bombers and hence they feared her. Enlightenment was gaining some ground in the area that was once controlled by Mullah Fazlullah. Now the news is that the brave Mullah was behind this fatal attack on Malala.

This is the second incident that brought people’s wrath on the Taliban and, coincidently, both incidents took place in Swat. The victims were girls, and Mullah Fazlullah was the backstage player in both the cases. In 2008, when Swat was under the control of Mullah Fazlullah, a 17-year-old female called Chand Bibi was flogged by the Taliban for allegedly having illicit relations with her father-in-law. It took nearly a year or so before a video of the incident appeared in public but the reaction of the people did not take that long; a storm of condemnation hit the Taliban the very day the report appeared in the media. On April 3, 2009, Haji Muslim Khan, the then spokesman of the Taliban, admitted the occurrence of the incident, even declaring that the girl might have been stoned to death had there been Qazi courts functioning in the country. Ameer Izzat Khan of the TNSM said they were not part of it while Munawwar Hassan of Jamaat-e-Islami lamented for a nation that never showed such reactions against drone attacks. Two days later, Muslim Khan changed his stance and declared the video as fake, saying that the accused was a 34-year-old woman and not a 17-year-old girl assuming that the age difference justified their crime.

Nearly three years have passed since the Swat girl’s flogging incident and we are once again reminded of what we went through. The same old story is repeated with a new touch of audacity and chicanery. The Taliban justified their crime by saying, “Malala was causing damage to Islam and the Muslim Umma. Al’ Hamdulillah (praise to God) she has been punished for this crime now.” Her un-Islamic crime was she used her ‘lethal’ weapons — pen and voice — to promote ‘western’ education and anti-Taliban ideas.

The message the Taliban conveyed through the attack was loud, clear and scary: Any dissent, peaceful or otherwise, would be quelled through guns as per their Sharia rule. Yet the results were quite the opposite of what they expected. More voices started joining the struggle that the little Malala had begun all alone. For the first time, the whole media community, barring a few, came down hard on the Taliban. Result: Hamid Mir and Aamir Liaquat Hussain were threatened by the Taliban. Until recently, these two were considered to have a soft corner for them and it was Dr Hussain who, three years ago, had written a column in an Urdu daily that suggested 10 reasons to prove the video of the Swat girl’s flogging as fake. Now he has become a ‘jahil’ online for the Taliban because he organised a show in praise of Malala. The former chief of JI, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, did not have the courage to justify the assassination attempt on Malala even though most of his article that appeared in an Urdu daily on October 17, 2012 was full of lame excuses for the Taliban.

Political parties like the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Awami National Party, Pakistan People’s Party and Sunni Tehreek took a very bold stand and without mincing words, they openly criticised the Taliban, demanding a full-scale military operation against them. Even Chief of the Army Staff General Pervez Kayani condemned the incident and vowed not to bow before the terrorists. The National Assembly and the Senate also called the attackers of Malala beasts, though they shied away naming the attackers. The religious scholars and muftis affiliated with the Sunni Ittehad Council issued a fatwa declaring the incident as un-Islamic. Despite all these signs of a significant change on the issue of terrorism and open condemnation of the Taliban’s role in the crime, the barbaric acts of terrorism show no sign of decline.

From October 9, the day Malala was attacked, to October 22, the country lost at least 218 persons due to acts of terrorism and target killings; 88 were killed in FATA alone, 30 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 59 in Sindh, 31 in Balochistan, and 1 person in Punjab. One bomb attack was reported in Quetta and 13 bomb attacks occurred in FATA and KP. One suicide attack was carried out in Kohat and two deadly attacks on security checkpots were carried out by the Taliban on the outskirts of Peshawar. In one of these attacks, almost 300 well-armed militants took part and after three hours of a gunfight with the security forces, the Taliban succeeded in torching the check post, and killing six security personnel. All that was not enough for them. Therefore they went ahead, beheaded SP Khurshid Khan and hung his severed head at a public place. A few days later, they also tried to blow up two schools in Charsadda, attacked and injured three Shia students in Kurram Agency, including a female student Nabila. On October 13, they carried out a bomb attack on one of the oldest mosques of Mohmand Agency.

All these killings and destruction went as a part of normal media reports. Neither the invasion of 300 armed militants on the police post in Matani nor the brutal act of the hanging of the severed head of the SP could generate any media outcry. Feeling smug with the silence of the people and their political leaders, the militants continued with their onslaught against civilians, security personnel, and the tribal lashkars that came in their way. While militancy is still going on, a feeling of resistance is slowly gaining ground against that. Newspapers, analysts, religious parties and political parties have now begun suggesting a military operation in North Waziristan. In the past, this operation was a big ‘no’ for the government but a change is now taking place. In an unprecedented move by the Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani has recently invited a parliamentary panel to visit Waziristan to take a look at the thousands of troops stationed at the front line of extremism and decide whether or not an operation in the militancy-infested region is to be carried out.

The ideological divide that once benefited terrorists is now becoming less prominent. Never in the past did the country feel so strongly for an action to take care of this inhouse threat. And the credit for this change goes to the brave resistence of Malala that she began four years ago using her pen and not guns to counter the terrorism that was unleashed by the Taliban in Swat. It is too early to make any prediction but the signs of change are there. Malala had no desire to conquer the world through education but she probably did not know that one day she would conquer a significant number of people through her love for education and peaceful resistance. Would the Taliban and their supporters ever learn any lesson from this humiliating experience?

The writer is a freelance journalist and researcher. He can be reached at mohammad.nafees@yahoo.com