Malala, conspiracy theories and Boko Haram approach to education

I cannot agree more. In his opinion, I did not place Malala’s speech to the United Nations in the ambit of international politics I failed to locate it “in its proper context beyond being caught up in the emotion of the moment”. His observation is apt and I thank him for that. My intention was […]

I cannot agree more. In his opinion, I did not place Malala’s speech to the United Nations in the ambit of international politics I failed to locate it “in its proper context beyond being caught up in the emotion of the moment”. His observation is apt and I thank him for that. My intention was simply to use the page offered me by my friends, the wonderful people of the Daily Trust, to not only reproduce a very important document which, to the best of my knowledge, had up to that time not been given the publicity it deserves in our dailies. I was also hoping that it would spark some debate.
Particularly true was his charge that I got caught up in the “emotion of the moment” for which I offer no apology. After years of near-disbelief an simmering anger at the killing of school children and their teachers as well as the burning of hundreds of schools by groups in many countries abroad, and more recently here in Nigeria it was great, almost therapeutic listening to a 16 year old girl bravely standing up for the right of every child, especially girls, to education. The speech needed the widest circulation we all can give it. It deserves to be heard. Here we part ways with Ahmed Yahaya-Joe.
To Yahaya-Joe, the whole Malala Yousafzai saga was a conspiracy of the Americans and their minions at the BBC to discredit the Taliban, make them angry enough to react and create the justification for more US funds (a trillion dollar military and economic package, according to him) to Pakistan because “the US needed assurances that Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal would be safeguarded from falling into the `wrong hands’ because the stage for the third round of the presidential debates was already set between Obama and Romney”. Both the US and Pakistani authorities, according to him, “needed a pretext for an enhanced military action against the Taliban”.
How did Malala fit into this intelligence operation? Let me extensively quote Yahaya-Joe:
“In 2009 when she was just 12 years old a BBC correspondent in Pakistan Abdul HaiKakkar whose then assignment was to find a courageous school girl willing to share her experiences on going to school under the Taliban was introduced to a private schools entrepreneur by the government in Islamabad to source for such a child. That was how The Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl was started on the BBC World Service to critical acclaim but under the name Gul Makai meaning Corn Flower to protect Malala’s real identity. The program was widely listened to and proved to be extremely potent propaganda against the Taliban which ran up to Malala’s attack. Unfortunately or by design the New York Times reporter Adam Ellick travelled to Pakistan in mid-2011 and featured the details of Malala’s life and real identity in his report including video clips on the paper’s website. Her cover was thus “blown” and she became an instant international celebrity to the extent that the Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu nominated her for the International Children Peace Prize which she easily won. Malala also became a confirmed target for the Taliban”.
From his deconstruction of Malala it would appear that the writer had been following the story, even though the ideas are far from original.  Nothing wrong with popularising positions one has read elsewhere in the interest of the reading public. For more detailed postulations of this conspiracy theory, however, take a few minutes to read the following three pages on the Web, on which I suspect Yahaya-Joe based his whole response: Was Malala Yousafzai used for a larger US plan?, by Zafar Bangash (2012), The Staged Malala Yousafzai Story: The Making of Malala – The CFR Mockingbird Reporter and the Charter School Owning Father by Scott Creighton (2012), and Malala is another Illuminati Psy Op by Henry Makow (2013).
The problem with these postulations, cherry-picking of factoids and theorising from there is central to understanding the similarities and differences between agitation and teaching; between propaganda and knowledge. In both cases, one starts with some facts that are well known, easy to grasp and easily verifiable.  Subsequently, one could then address-well known facts to arrive at conclusions and positions. However, where the difference lies is that for knowledge we must strive to uphold higher standards of verification and interpretation, among others things.
Was there really some trillion dollars at stake that the Pakistanis were salivating over and the US was eager to part with for the reasons Yahaya-Joe alluded to? A TRILLION DOLLARS he said!! To the best of my knowledge the US was not about to hand over a trillion to anyone for the simple reason that it didn’t then, nor does it now, have it to spare. From what can be gathered in the public domain, US total aid to Pakistan, both military and economic from the creation of Pakistan to date is nowhere near a trillion dollars.
According to Wikipedia, U.S. financial aid to Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 attacks up to 2010, as approved by Congress is about $18 billion in military and economic aid. However the Pakistani treasury is said to have received only $8.647 in direct financial payment. Even Western officials have admitted that nearly 70% (roughly $3.4 billion) of the aid given to the military has been misspent, adding that “a significant proportion of U.S. economic aid for Pakistan has ended up in back in the U.S., as funds are channelled through large U.S. contractors”, Wikipedia added. Reuters reported some US lawmakers and officials, including former ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Thomas Pickering, as having complained that “large sums went on consulting fees and overhead costs, and never left US soil”. From 2010 to 2015, the United States expects to spend more than $1.5 billion a year, as per the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009(better known as the Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill), a tripling of U.S. development assistance to Pakistan to $7.5 billion. Is there anything here approaching a trillion? Or is Yahaya-Joe a victim of the “printer’s devil”?
Compare this to Pakistan’s expenditure of over $80 billion on the War on Terror since 2001. I thus fail to see what would lead to the deliberate conspiracy to kill a 14year old girl to ensure financial flows. After 9/11 and other attacks against them, after what Pakistan has itself suffered from Taliban atrocities, do they really have to create any additional “pretext” to continue fighting the Taliban? If the alleged goals (to get a trillion dollars and another “pretext” to go on with the war) are suspect does it follow that the whole constructed plot is itself to be questioned? I should think so.
The issues surrounding the responsibility of the BBC to want to air a programme highlighting the courage of a school girl going to school and chronicling her travails and resistance to the Taliban in her TV Diary is to me both a legitimate journalistic act even if also a political statement. Yes the Taliban were provoked and that was obviously expected. But what gave them the rights to decide what type of education we should give our kids, and to kill or maim those who dare to disagree? Was this TV programme ab initio part of an elaborate CIA plot? We need more concrete evidence. Was the father using his daughter for the money? As a father of six girls myself I doubt anyone would be so callous. Did he know it was a very risky thing to do? I am sure of that. He was, to my mind, rather reckless. The New York Times reporter, Adam Ellick, was callously guilty of exposing her for money, fame or even as part of a plot. That is probable, I concede, given his connection to the Council for Foreign Relations.  That Desmond Tutu, Gordon Brown and all the others were really part of this Psy Ops, to my mind, is just conjuncture and speculation. But I really don’t know and Yahaya-Joe gave no sources for all these either.
Conspiracy theories aside, it is significant that Malala’s UN speech got a response from the Taliban which itself raises several questions. But that is a matter for next Tuesday, Insha Allah. Ramadan Kareem.