Re: The spirit of Malala

Not only because of some murky details in the big picture but because as former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt once put it “nothing in politics happens by chance”. Malala’s speech was politics. It is that international politics that the Tuesday Column was expected to peel away to locate Malala’s speech in its proper context […]

Not only because of some murky details in the big picture but because as former US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt once put it “nothing in politics happens by chance”. Malala’s speech was politics. It is that international politics that the Tuesday Column was expected to peel away to locate Malala’s speech in its proper context beyond being caught up in the emotion of the moment.
It will be nevertheless grossly inhumane and virtually impossible not to sympathize with the extreme travails of a mere teenager that had to undergo such trauma as she did before her medical recovery. This rejoinder is by no means an attempt to undo a genuine triumph against all odds by a young girl with an obvious strength of character, vision and determined focus but to help understand the puzzling circumstances surrounding this remarkable teenage personality of which she had no hand in determining lest even understanding.
It is noteworthy to recall that on October 9, 2012, Malala and her school mates were on a bus heading to their various homes from school along a notorious road in Minjora in the Swath Valley when their journey was abruptly interrupted by a Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan roadblock. A lone gunman then boarded the bus, demanded to know where Malala was seated, having identified her then proceeded to open fire at her. The rest is now living history.
Why was Malala targeted? 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.
Why would a publication of the status of the New York Times so brazenly blow the cover of Malala that had been for 2 years so strenuously protected by the BBC? Perhaps the best person to answer that question is Ziauddin Yousafzai. He is the entrepreneur Islamabad introduced to BBC; he negotiated hiding Malala’s identity with London and negotiated exposing that same identity with New York. He is also Malala’s father better known in the Pakistani press as “a private school mogul” who now works in a nondescript role at the Pakistani consulate in Birmingham, UK.
Why would a parent deliberately expose his child to such clear and present danger? Financial gain, a passion for girl-child education or an axe to grind with the Taliban for keeping most of his schools shut and dictating the curriculum of those they allowed open? There is also the strategic interest of both the U.S. and Pakistan to consider. Pakistan by then wanted a trillion dollar military and economic aid package from Washington and the US needed assurances that Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal would be safeguarded from the falling into the “wrong hands” because the stage for the third round of the presidential debates was already set between Obama and Romney. Both sides needed a pretext for an enhanced military action against the Taliban; Malala’s certain doom was the outrage to pull the trigger but she miraculously survived. The military onslaught went on, aid money poured in and Obama got re-elected.
Perhaps one day Malala will ask her handlers about 2 of her school mates that were also severely wounded on that road in Mingora whom nobody has bothered to chronicle. She might also in the future ask her speech writers about the 3 young members of the same family that were killed in a US drone attack in the Nawa district of Helmand province just across the Pakistani border in Afghanistan just a few days  into her coma.
Malala prominently mentioned Nigeria in her speech so did the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his own remarks at that historic occasion. Was it a co-incidence? No. Because Mr Brown heads “the global campaign for charter school systems” which is in partnership with the United Nations “Education First” program “a global scheme whereby not -for- profit institutions would be privatized” to be run under a “global business coalition for education” whose initially targeted countries are Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Nigeria. When about 30 or so years ago ASUU warned that one day there will be private universities in Nigeria it sounded so outrageous that nobody believed them. When the Obasanjo administration tried to privatize Nigeria’s Unity Colleges, it was just an idea whose time had not then come.  
Is Malala a thespian, a pawn, a piece of a jigsaw puzzle, an exploited child or a genuine heroine?  Too many questions; too few answers.
Yahaya-Joe wrote from France Road, Kano, <[email protected]>;