‘Back with eyes open’: Malala visits Pakistan’s Swat Valley
WHERE IT BEGAN Nobel laureate was shot in former Taliban stronghold
Yousafzai visited the Swat Valley on Saturday for her first trip back to the once militant-infested Pakistani region where she was shot in the head by the Taliban more than five years ago.
“I left Swat with my eyes closed and now I am back with my eyes open,” she told AFP, referring to how she was airlifted out in a coma after the attack in 2012.
“I am extremely delighted. My dream has come true. Peace has returned to Swat because of the invaluable sacrifices rendered by my brothers and sisters,” she said at a school outside Mingora, the district’s main town.
The brief trip by the 20-yearold Nobel laureate is a highly symbolic moment for Pakistan, which regularly touts Swat as a success story in its battle with extremism as it defends itself against accusations by the US and others that its northwest remains a safe haven for militancy.
The visit — on which she was accompanied by her father, mother, and two brothers — was kept tightly under wraps.
After flying by army helicopter from Islamabad, she met with friends and family before visiting the all-boys Swat Cadet College Guli Bagh, some 15 kilometres outside Mingora.
Officials had earlier said she would address students there, but she stayed only a few minutes to take photographs before leaving again to return to Islamabad.
Mingora is where Malala’s family was living and where she was attending school on October 9, 2012, when a gunman boarded her school bus, asked “Who is Malala?”, and shot her.
She was treated first at an army hospital then airlifted to the British city of Birmingham.
Her near-miraculous recovery, and tireless career as an education advocate, have since turned her into a global symbol for human rights, and in 2014 she became the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize when she was just 17.
The trip comes two days after Malala, currently a student at Oxford University in the UK, made her emotional return to Pakistan, where her surprise visit has been met with widespread joy and pride.
There had been much speculation within the country over whether Malala would go to Swat during her visit. The mountainous region, once a prized tourist destination famed for its pristine
MINGORA:Malala
scenery, was overrun by the Pakistani Taliban in 2007.
The militants imposed a brutal, bloody rule, but the army drove them out in 2009. Recently restrictions on tourists visiting the area were lifted.
However security has remained fragile, as the assault on Malala three years after the military operation demonstrated. In February this year, 11 military personnel were killed in an attack, and analysts have warned the militants still have a presence there.
Pakistani law enforcement agencies on Saturday claimed to have busted the “biggest” Taliban network in the Punjab province with the arrest of six militants, including a suicide bomber, according to media reports here.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants had carried out deadly suicide attacks on army personnel on Bedian Road in July and on policemen near Ferozepur Road in April 2017, Dawn news reported, citing a Counter-Terrorism Department official.
The militants were sent by the TTP leadership from a madrassa on Ferozepur Road to hit the targets, the report said. PTI
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