Jolie writes: "The shots fired on Malala struck the heart of the nation, and as the Taliban refuse to back down, so too do the people of Pakistan."
Angelina Jolie talks to Syrian refugees in Lebanon. (photo: AFP)
We All Are Malala
18 October 12
n Wednesday morning, as we readied the kids for school amidst a few of the usual complaints about not wanting to go, I saw a headline on the cover of The New York Times: Taliban Gun Down a Girl Who Spoke Up for Rights. The Taliban claimed that 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai "ignored their warnings, and she left them no choice." They approached her school bus, asking for her by name, and shot her in the head for promoting girls' education.
After reading the article, I felt compelled to share Malala's story with my children. It was difficult for them to comprehend a world where men would try to kill a child whose only "crime" was the desire that she and others like her be allowed to go to school.
Malala's story stayed with them throughout the day, and that night they were full of questions. We learned about Malala together, watching her interviews and reading her diaries. Malala was just 11 years old when she began blogging for the BBC. She wrote of life under the Taliban, of trading in her school uniform for colorless plain clothes, of hiding books under her shawl, and eventually having to stop going to school entirely.
Our 8-year-old suggested that the world build a statue for Malala, and fittingly create a reading nook near it. Our 6-year-old asked the practical question of whether Malala had any pets, and if so, who would take care of them? She also asked about Malala's parents and if they were crying. We decided that they were, but not only for their daughter, also for children around the world denied this basic human right. Like Malala, her parents are icons of bravery and strength. Malala's father, also a long time champion for girls' education, is a school principal, teacher, and poet.
The following morning, the news showed pictures of children across Pakistan holding up Malala's picture at vigils and demonstrations, and praying in schools. My son worried that girls were going to be shot for standing up for Malala. I told him that they were aware of the danger, but publicly supporting her reflects how much Malala means to them. Malala's courage reminded all Pakistanis how important an education is. Her bravery inspired their own.
Still trying to understand, my children asked, "Why did those men think they needed to kill Malala?" I answered, "because an education is a powerful thing."
The shots fired on Malala struck the heart of the nation, and as the Taliban refuse to back down, so too do the people of Pakistan. This violent and hateful act seems to have accomplished the opposite of its intent, as Pakistanis rally to embrace Malala's principles and reject the tyranny of fear. A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban said "let this be a lesson." Yes. Let this be a lesson-that an education is a basic human right, a right that Pakistan's daughters will not be denied.
As girls across Pakistan stand up to say "I am Malala," they do not stand alone. Mothers and teachers around the world are telling their children and students about Malala, and encouraging them to be a part of her movement for girls' education. Across Pakistan, a national movement has emerged to rebuild the schools and recommit to educate all children, including girls. This terrible event marks the beginning of a necessary revolution in girls' education.
Malala is proof that it only takes the voice of one brave person to inspire countless men, women, and children. In classrooms and at kitchen tables around the world, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters are praying for Malala's swift recovery and committing themselves to carry her torch. As the Nobel Committee meets to determine the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, I imagine brave Malala will be given serious consideration.
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Comments
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But the only way to stop these crimes against women is to point out the source. The Taliban is funded and trained by Saudi Arabia. It has been this way since the mid 1980s. The US government consents to Saudi run madrassas which train young men to believe in a militant and violent Islam. The US will not oppose the Saudi Royal family because they own a huge amount of the US stock market.
The US could shut down the madrassas if it chose to. But it does not. The Taliban serves US interests. So girls like Malala pay the price for US and Saudi imperialism.
In the beginning the Taliban numbered in the hundreds, were badly equipped and low on munitions. Within months however 15,000 students arrived from the madrassas in Pakistan. The Taliban's first major military activity was in 1994, when they marched northward from Maiwand and captured Kandahar City and the surrounding provinces, losing only a few dozen men. The Soviets fell in 1992.
The Saudi run madrassas support rivals to the Taliban.
Taliban means "student." The madrassas were in Pakistan because that is where the CIA training camps of the mujahadeen were. The Taliban were intended to be fresh recruits for the mujahadeen who would fight the soviets.
Iran has nothing to do with any of this. The US and CIA have a very mixed relationship with the Taliban. If the Taliban would just allow the CIA to produce all the heroin it wants in Afghanistan, I'm pretty sure the CIA would recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government.
The Taliban serves US corporate media interests in that news like this encourages the American public to see them as the real evil. The US looks like the good guy and Jolie's stardom is used to score political points for Obama's campaign. Interesting that all of this is coming up just days before the next debate on US foreign policy.
Ask the children she has adopted and is raising whether Ms Jolie is a "problem." I suspect they would think you're nuts.
She is not a problem or a "joke," as Mickeyfilm calls her. She behaves according to her personal belief system and is doing her bit to help the world's children. Not a one of us can do it alone, but if we all did our part as she is doing, it just might go a long way toward bringing some measure of peace to the world.
Had we left well enough alone once upon a time, the Taliban might well have gone the way of most terrorist groups and Afghanistan would just be another post-Soviet bloc country desperately trying to become Western. As to Pakistan, does anyone remember Benazir Bhutto?
The United States owes Malala and every woman under the Taliban's iron rule an apology backed by appropriate action. Perhaps a drone strike on the thug who shot her is in order.
They became fighters but after the Soviets fell, and two Rival militias were fighting a civil war, one militia backed by the Saudi's, the other by Iran. That civil war left the rest of the country without working government institutions which allowed the Taliban to take power by offering Shira law and security.
Mr. Galindez, thank you for bringing real (that is to say FACTUAL) information into these comments. Too many times what purports to be informed opinion is just the ranting of angry, ill-informed individuals.
Peripheral to the subject but it was the Afghan-based Mujahadeen, armed by the US, who fought the Soviet Union in AFGHANISTAN, one of their leaders being the late Saudi, Osama B. L.
There's little evidence of how many of the former "Our bad guys" became Taliban that I can find, doubtless many did join that totalitarian, repressive regime that ruled Afghanistan for a time. We're talking PAKISTAN here but it seems that the various violent and fanatical arms of some Islamic factions find rather porous borders, moving fairly freely via terrain, collaboration and corruption, between the UAE, Saudi Arabia, various 'Stahns, (Not Iran) which the US refused to acknowledge.
Glad that Ms Jolie spoke out; her motives are none of our business.
Daily drone attacks are also part of the real problem in the Swat valley. The Serb racists who persistently shelled Sarajevo, and powermongers who are shelling Aleppo, deserve to be put down as vermin. The same applies to the launchers of drones, which is simply long range shelling of communities. Full marks too for Imran Khan and those who went with him into Talibanland to raise a protest against the murderers joining with the Taliban in terrorising the people.
You must be a real load o' fun to be around. -D'you wake up on a nice day and declare "By Gawd we'll pay for this!"?
Miss Jolie's good heart and celebrity has focused on the individuals' problems in just surviving amongst such terrorism.
Everyone in the media understands that human interest stories move hearts and sometimes mountains.
She and others highlight those problems which mirror our own super-aggressiv e prejudiced, racist, sexist, etc., and fundamentalist minorities who are wrecking the advance of civilisation.
The latter are fighting harder for our geopolitical domination of that area for profit. The rest of us would be furious if we lost the gas, oil, geographical access, lithium and other precious metals of Afghanistan and we couldn't keep Pakistan and India fighting it out.
Though correct in the immediate cause of Malala's tragedy, RMDC simplifies with an impossible solution.
Very well reasoned comment, with an actual grasp of what is going on in that area of the world.
Some of the other comments above (minus those of Scott Galindez) are proof that having the slightest idea of the facts on the ground, or the faintest ghost of an idea what one is talking about, has never proved to be an impediment for some posters who hold forth exposing the paucity of their grasp on this subject.
Kudos to you and to Scott Galindez for introducing a "fact based" assessment of the picture.
And, whatever one chooses to think of Ms. Jolie, she is at least doing *something* more productive than simply whining inanities on some computer comment string.
Ms. Jolie is bringing focus to a problem that drastically needs attention, attribute to her whatever other motives one may be sufficiently cruel to conjecture.
Only Ms. Jolie knows *why* Ms. Jolie does what she does. The rest cannot be known by any observer, and remains truly no one else's business.
Shouldn't you list the correct limit on the number of symbols?
Agreed. I have had the same difficulty. But, from word count in comments to the opinion registers thumbs up or down, the IT dept. at RSN would appear to be either IT challenged, or arithmetically confused.
I've had the same issue with having to cut responses sometimes, even though the note tells me I still have symbols left until I finally realized I could just make two separate comments, stating "continued in pt 2" at the bottom of the first, and then go on with whatever I was trying to say. It's a small victory but I do enjoy winning a skirmish with a computer once in a while! :-)
I hold a special place in my heart for Malala. This issue transcends religion. It reinforces our common humanity and our greatest gift that nature or God has bestowed upon us and that is compassion, understanding and most of all our ability to learn.
It is that gift -- learning -- which civilizes man. It is clear to those who gain power through ignorance that there is nothing they will not do to achieve their cause and inject the poison of ignorance into those they control.
Education IS dangerous because it liberates man stuck in a 7th century mindset in this the 21st century.
The Taliban though are a metaphor for the toxicity of uncompromising and extreme fundamentalist belief. Our own nation should not sit smugly secure thinking that we are so much more advanced than they. WE ARE NOT. Our own American Taliban have seized power through an unrecognizable Republican Party which shows NO mercy, has NO compassion and whose minds are so closed they want to return our heretofore advanced country to an 18th century world our Founders would find abhorrent.
Those of us who care about human advancement should ALL be Malalas hoping and praying, if it is your choice, that Malala, this profound example of heroism, heal and return to speak another day for her cause.
For too long men have ruled the World and what have we seen? How good a job have they done? We are headed towards a global disaster, and there are people among us arguing about the "students" and where they came from?
In the coming election, there is a party that is pro women, and another that is anti women. Sure, knock out half the population from the productivity of America and what do you have? That's right folks.
The U.S. is an oil slave to the Saudi's and it is our own fault and we need to get off
of this addition as fast as possible....
People are seeing that we all face the same problems to a greater or lesser degree. Civilization cannot progress without secular or tolerant committment to "the common good".
We are talking about our shared problems because of Angelina Jolie (whatever her motives which I suspect are good) and Malala (who is safe in England).
BRAVA ladies!
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