Security high in Pakistan’s Swat but Malala visit uncertain

A Pakistani women’s activist said Friday that Malala Yousafzai, who has returned to Pakistan’s capital Islamabad for the first time since a Taliban militant shot her in 2012, was hoping to visit her Swat Valley hometown but the trip depended on security clearances from the government.

Security was visibly beefed up in Mingora, the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s hometown, but authorities wouldn’t confirm whether she would be arriving there. Yousafzai is expected to return to London on Monday.

Activist Adnan Tabassum, also from Swat, met with Yousafzai on Thursday in Islamabad. She said Yousafzai told her that she wanted to travel to Swat to see her former school friends and relatives.

According to Tabassum, 20-yearold Yousafzai asked authorities to allow her to go to Shangla village in Swat, where a school has been built by her Malala Fund.

“Malala is not afraid of going to Swat, where the terrorists opened fire on her in 2012 and wounded her. It is her wish to again see her hometown, her school and her home, where she spent years of her life,” she told The Associated Press.

In October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head by a Taliban assassin who had jumped inside her school van and yelled, “Who is Malala?” She had been targeted for speaking out on education in her home of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Only 14 when she was shot, Yousafzai has since delighted in telling the Taliban that instead of silencing her, they have amplified her voice. She has also written a book, spoken at the United Nations and met with refugees.

Yousafzai praised the Pakistan army in an interview on the independent Geo news channel Friday for providing her timely medical treatment, saying her surgery was done by an army surgeon at the “right time” and she later received post-trauma treatment in Britain. She said she planned to again return to Pakistan in the future. Schoolgirls in Yousafzai’s hometown said they were keen to see her.

“I admire Malala because she strived to promote girls’ education,” said Amna Khan, 12, as she entered one of the schools in Mingora.