Day of Prayer for Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan

People in Pakistan observed a day of prayer on Friday for the recovery of a 14-year-old girl shot in the head by Taliban gunmen.

Malala Yousafzai was transfered to a military hospital in Rawalpindi on Thursday. Doctors say her progress over the next few days will be “critical”.

The girl wrote a diary about suffering under the Taliban and was accused by them of “promoting secularism”.

Aaron Schachter speaks with the BBC’s Ilyas Khan in Islamabad.

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Aaron Schachter: In Pakistan today, the young girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban was moved to a military hospital in Rawalpindi. Doctors say the next twenty-four hours will be crucial for fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai. People throughout Pakistan have been holding prayer vigils for the young school activist now fighting for her life. The BBC’s Ilyas Khan has been following Malala’s story from Islamabad.

Ilyas Khan: You know, there is a feeling out here that the people who attacked her did not anticipate the type of reaction that the Pakistani people have shown. There is an example, in 2009, we had this video which surfaced on the internet in which the Taliban was shown flogging a girl in Swat and we saw almost a similar kind of anger across the country. And that anger kind of galvanized public opinion for a military operation in Swat and it actually happened and the military was able to clear Swat within six months.

Schachter: The attack against Malala was also in the Swat Valley, no?

Khan: Yes, it was, yes.

Schachter: So do you foresee some other kind of action as a result of this attack?

Khan: You know, the kind of the reaction, specially which is coming from the politicians, even from the leaders of the religious parties as well as the military, so there is a lot of speculation about some kind of an action in the offing.

Schachter: Malala become somewhat famous, I guess you could say notorious among some, a few years ago, as an eleven-year-old, she wrote a diary for the BBC Urdu Service with a blow-by-blow account of how her school in the Swat Valley dealt dealt with the Taliban’s 2009 edict to close girls’ school and that was, as you say, before the government action there. I wonder if you’ve gotten a chance in the last few years to meet her and what your impression was of the girl.

Khan: Well, actually I never had a chance to meet her as such. Many of our collegues met her. In fact, she was discovered by one of our colleagues in BBC Urdu and that is how she ended up writing that diary for the BBC. She became quite a public figure after that.

Schachter: She also incredibly courageous, right? I mean she has put herself out there as someone writing against the Taliban, which is why apparently she was attacked. It’s a very bold thing to do for an eleven or a fourteen-year-old girl.

Khan: It certainly is. And this is one reason why she’s adored by the Pakistanis right across the board. I think her family was equally courageous, especially her father who supported her, who actually allowed her to go to school at a time when the Taliban had banned girls’ education over there and when they couldn’t actually wear the school uniforms. They used to go to school hiding their books under their clothing.

Schachter: And, Ilyas, how widespread is the condemnation? Is this something that’s happening all across the country today or is it limited to the Islamabad-Peshawar-Swat Valley area?

Khan: It’s quite widespread. Television coverage in Pakistan is almost more than eighty percent and images of this fourteen-year-old girl lying in a hospital bed with a bullet in her head is something which hasn’t gone down well with the people at large. And that probably is why the Pakistani media, for the first time, has singularly focused on this case. Today is the third day and it continues to be a top story. And the Taliban have started dishing out threats, but these voices are a few and far between and there is a lot of condemnation of these voices as well on the Pakistani media.

Schachter: The BBC’s Ilyas Khan from Islamabad. A pleasure. Thank you.

Khan: Thank you very much.

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Ban Ki-moon on Malala Yusufzai: “The terrorists showed what frightens them most: a girl with a book.” j.mp/RRzlS6

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