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The Taliban Shot a 14 Year-Old Girl in the Face For Being a Blogging "Pioneer"

In 2009, an 11 year-old girl named Malala Yousafzai stood up to the Taliban after it shut down all schools for girls in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She had dedicated herself to becoming a doctor, to receiving an education. And before she turned 1...

In 2009, an 11 year-old girl named Malala Yousafzai stood up to the Taliban after it shut down all schools for girls in the Swat Valley of Pakistan. She had dedicated herself to becoming a doctor, to receiving an education. And before she turned 12, she started openly blogging about her life, introducing an international audience to her and her peers’ plight. Now 14, she has just been href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article3563782.ece">shot in the head by a Taliban militant — for being a blogging “pioneer.”

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She lived, and some reports say she’s in stable condition. Pakistan has rallied around her, and she has become a href="http://www.worldcrunch.com/world-affairs/pakistan-quot-prays-for-malala-quot-teen-blogger-shot-by-taliban-undergoes-surgery/malala-pakistan-taliban-attack-swat/c1s9827/#.UHbmBuMj6eA">national icon in the pop culture there. She is undergoing surgery.

Back in 2009, the New York Times profiled Malala in a documentary, Class Dismissed.

And here she is in action, via a local news report:

The Tehrik-i-Taliban, the group responsible, has released a statement explaining why it ordered an assassination on a 14 year-old girl. It href="http://dawn.com/2012/10/10/taliban-use-islamic-shariah-to-defend-malala-attack/">reads:

 

Tehrik-i-Taliban’s crime wasn’t that they banned education for girls. Instead, our crime was that we tried to bring education system for both boys and girls under Shariah. We are against co-education and secular education system, and Shariah orders us to be against it.
 
  If anyone thinks that Malala was targeted because of education, that is absolutely wrong, and propaganda of media. Malala was targeted because of her pioneer role in preaching secularism and so called enlightened moderation. And whomsoever will commit so in future too will be targeted again by class="caps">TTP.

They shot her for blogging, and they threaten to do the same to anyone else who would open a WordPress account and do the same. What, exactly were they so afraid of? This, evidently:

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class="caps">SATURDAY 3 class="caps">JANUARY
 
  I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.
 
  Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taleban’s edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.
 
  On my way from school to home I heard a man saying ‘I will kill you’. I hastened my pace and after a while I looked back if the man was still coming behind me. But to my utter relief he was talking on his mobile and must have been threatening someone else over the phone.

 

class="caps">MONDAY, class="caps">JANUARY 5th
 
  I was getting ready for school and about to wear my uniform when I remembered that our principal had told us not to wear uniforms – and come to school wearing normal clothes instead. So I decided to wear my favourite pink dress. Other girls in school were also wearing colourful dresses and the school presented a homely look. My friend came to me and said, ‘for God’s sake, answer me honestly, is our school going to be attacked by the Taleban?’ During the morning assembly we were told not to wear colourful clothes as the Taleban would object to it.

The entries all more or less read like that; most were written between 2007-2009. Her candidness and personal, diary-like style won her accolades around the world. She blogged under a pen name, and her posts were published on href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/urdu/pakistan/2011/11/111118_swat_girl_award_bbc_nj.shtml">class="caps">BBC Urdu. When her true identity was revealed, she became an activist celebrity in Pakistan. She was soon tracked down and shot. The href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2012/1011/My-conversations-with-Malala-Yousafzai-the-girl-who-stood-up-to-the-Taliban">CSMonitor has a chilling account of how it happened:

 

“Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all,” a hooded, bearded Taliban militant asked a bus full of schoolgirls on their way home earlier this week. “She is propagating against the soldiers of Allah, the Taliban. She must be punished,” the Taliban militant shouted louder. Then, recognizing her, he shot her at a point blank range.

There’s nothing much to be said. Some stories just make you want to smash your laptop; instead, you sit comfortably a dozen time zones away reading a stream of words and tapping out a casual blog post about the most extreme pole of human suffering. A 14 year-old girl getting shot in the face on a school bus — for blogging — is one of those stories.