Malala visits hometown in Pakistan for first time since shooting

World
Europe

Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai visited her hometown in Pakistan's Swat Valley on Saturday for the first time since she was shot by a Taliban gunman as a teenager, two security officials and a family friend said.

Roads leading to the 20-year-old education activist's home in Mingora were blocked off earlier in the day.

Yousafzai has been visiting Pakistan since Thursday, her first trip home since she was shot and airlifted abroad for treatment. The government and military have been providing security.

It had been uncertain whether Yousafzai would be able to visit Swat, parts of which spent nearly two years under the Pakistani Taliban militants' harsh interpretation of Islamic law, due to continued concerns for her safety.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai pauses during an interview with Reuters at a local hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan, March 30, 2018. /Reuters Photo‍

"I miss everything about Pakistan ... from the rivers, the mountains, to even the dirty streets and the garbage around our house, and my friends and how we used to have gossip ...to how we used to fight with our neighbors," she told Reuters in an interview on Friday.

Two security officials told Reuters the trip by helicopter would likely be just for one day.

The Pakistani army wrested control of Swat back from the Taliban in 2009 and the area remains mostly peaceful, but the Taliban still occasionally launch attacks including one on the military a few weeks ago.

The Taliban claimed responsibility in 2012 for the attack on Yousafzai for her outspoken advocacy for girls' education, which was forbidden under the militants' rule over Swat.

Joy in the hometown

"We're very happy that Malala has come to Pakistan. We welcome Malala," said Arfa Akhtar, a third-grade student in a school where Yousafzai once studied. "I'm also Malala. I'm with Malala in this mission."

Children attend a class at Khushal school that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai used to attend, in her hometown of Mingora in Swat Valley, Pakistan, March 30, 2018. /Reuters Photo

Barkat Ali, 66, says he remembers holding Malala in his lap when she was a child in Mingora. He is proud of the 20-year-old's struggle to promote girls' education, just as he is of his refusal 10 years ago to turn over his son when the Taliban demanded new fighters.

"They were the old illiterate people who would say that our daughters will not go to schools," Ali said, recalling two mortar shells landing in his street, often patrolled by the Taliban.

"Now people have become sensible. They educate their girls."

The Taliban took over much of the valley starting in 2007, banning girls' education, killing people, flogging women and hanging bodies from electric poles to enforce their harsh interpretation of Islamic law before the Pakistani army drove them out in 2009.

Not everyone in Swat, though, has such reverence for Yousafzai, who became the youngest Nobel laureate in history in 2014 at age 17.

Barkat Ali, 66, speaks to Reuters correspondent near a school that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai used to attend, in her hometown of Mingora in Swat Valley, Pakistan, March 30, 2018. /Reuters Photo

Resident Mohammad Nisar Khan says the international celebrity and official protection given to the young woman overshadows the sacrifices made by others in Swat.

"We were the ones who stood up against the Taliban... My four uncles and two cousins were slaughtered by the Taliban in Matta. They were brutally martyred. Yet, no one has asked about me," Khan said.

[Cover Photo: A helicopter carrying Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai prepares to land at her hometown of Mingora in Swat Valley, Pakistan, March 31, 2018. /Reuters Photo]

Source(s): Reuters