I Am Malala Malala Yousafzai

Childhood

Yousafzai was born on 12 July 1997 in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, into a lower-middle-class family.[26] She is the daughter of Ziauddin Yousafzai and Toor Pekai Yousafzai.[27] Her family is Sunni Muslim[5] of Pashtun ethnicity, belonging to the Yusufzai tribe.[28] The family did not have enough money for a hospital birth and Yousafzai was born at home with the help of neighbours.[29] She was given her first name Malala (meaning "grief-stricken")[30] after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from southern Afghanistan.[31] At her house in Mingora, she lived with her two younger brothers, Khushal and Atal, her parents, Ziauddin and Tor Pekai, and two chickens.[5]

Fluent in Pashto, Urdu and English, Yousafzai was educated mostly by her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, a poet, school owner,[32] and an educational activist himself, running a chain of private schools known as the Khushal Public School.[33][34] In an interview, she once said that she aspired to become a doctor, though later her father encouraged her to become a politician instead.[5] Ziauddin referred to his daughter as something entirely special, allowing her to stay up at night and talk about politics after her two brothers had been sent to bed.[35]

Inspired by the twice-elected, assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Yousafzai started speaking about education rights as early as September 2008, when her father took her to Peshawar to speak at the local press club.[10] "How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" she asked in a speech covered by newspapers and television channels throughout the region.[36] In 2009, she began as a trainee and was then a peer educator in the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's Open Minds Pakistan youth programme, which worked in the region's schools to help students engage in constructive discussion on social issues through journalism, public debate and dialogue.[37]

As a BBC blogger

In late 2008, Aamer Ahmed Khan of the BBC Urdu website and his colleagues came up with a novel way of covering the Pakistani Taliban's growing influence in Swat. They decided to ask a schoolgirl to blog anonymously about her life there. Their correspondent in Peshawar, Abdul Hai Kakar, had been in touch with a local school teacher, Ziauddin Yousafzai, but could not find any students willing to report, as their families considered it too dangerous. Finally, Yousafzai suggested his own daughter, 11-year-old Malala.[38] At the time, Pakistani Taliban militants led by Maulana Fazlullah were taking over the Swat Valley, banning television, music, girls' education,[39] and women from going shopping.[40] Bodies of beheaded policemen were being displayed in town squares.[39] At first, a girl named Aisha from her father's school agreed to write a diary, but her parents stopped her from doing it because they feared Taliban reprisals. The only alternative was Yousafzai, who was four years younger and in seventh grade at the time.[41] "We had been covering the violence and politics in Swat in detail but we didn't know much about how ordinary people lived under the Taliban", said Mirza Waheed, former editor of BBC Urdu. Because they were concerned for Yousafzai's safety, the BBC editors insisted she use a pseudonym.[39] Her blog was published under the byline "Gul Makai" ("cornflower" in Pashto), a name taken from a character in a Pashtun folktale.[42][39][43][44]

On 3 January 2009, her first entry was posted to the BBC Urdu blog. She hand-wrote notes and passed them to a reporter who scanned and e-mailed them.[39] The blog recorded Yousafzai's thoughts during the First Battle of Swat, as military operations took place, fewer girls show up to school, and finally, her school shut down. That day she wrote:

I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taliban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taliban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools. Only 11 out of 27 pupils attended the class because the number decreased because of the Pakistani Taliban's edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.[30]

In Swat, the Pakistani Taliban had set an edict that no girls could attend school after 15 January 2009. They had already blown up more than 100 girls' schools.[39] The night before the ban took effect was filled with the noise of artillery fire, waking Yousafzai several times. The following day, she also read for the first time excerpts from her blog that were published in a local newspaper.[30]

Banned from school

Following the edict, the Pakistani Taliban destroyed several more local schools. On 24 January 2009, Yousafzai wrote: "Our annual exams are due after the vacations but this will only be possible if the Pakistani Taliban allow girls to go to school. We were told to prepare certain chapters for the exam but I do not feel like studying."[45]

It seems that it is only when dozens of schools have been destroyed and hundreds others closed down that the army thinks about protecting them. Had they conducted their operations here properly, this situation would not have arisen.

— Malala Yousafzai, 24 January 2009 BBC blog entry[45]

In February 2009, girls' schools were still closed. In solidarity, private schools for boys had decided not to open until 9 February, and notices appeared saying so.[45] On 7 February, Yousafzai and her brother returned to their hometown of Mingora, where the streets were deserted, and there was an "eerie silence". She wrote in her blog: "We went to the supermarket to buy a gift for our mother but it was closed, whereas earlier it used to remain open till late. Many other shops were also closed." Their home had been robbed and their television was stolen.[45]

After boys' schools reopened, the Pakistani Taliban lifted restrictions on girls' primary education, where there was co-education. Girls-only schools were still closed. Yousafzai wrote that only 70 pupils attended out of the 700 who were enrolled.[45]

On 15 February, gunshots were heard in Mingora's streets, but Yousafzai's father reassured her, saying, "Don't be scared—this is firing for peace." Her father had read in the newspaper that the government and militants were going to sign a peace deal the next day. Later that night, when the Taliban announced the peace deal on their FM Radio studio, another round of stronger firing started outside.[45] Yousafzai spoke out against the Pakistani Taliban on the national current affairs show Capital Talk on 18 February.[46] Three days later, Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi leader Maulana Fazlulla announced on his FM radio station that he was lifting the ban on women's education, and girls would be allowed to attend school until exams were held on 17 March, but that they had to wear burqas.[45]

Girls' schools reopen

On 25 February, Yousafzai wrote on her blog that she and her classmates "played a lot in class and enjoyed ourselves like we used to before."[45] Attendance at Yousafzai's class was up to 19 of 27 pupils by 1 March, but the Pakistani Taliban were still active in the area. Shelling continued, and relief goods meant for displaced people were looted.[45] Only two days later, Yousafzai wrote that there was a skirmish between the military and Taliban, and the sounds of mortar shells could be heard: "People are again scared that the peace may not last for long. Some people are saying that the peace agreement is not permanent, it is just a break in fighting."[45]

On 9 March, Yousafzai wrote about a science paper that she performed well on, and added that the Taliban were no longer searching vehicles as they once did. Her blog ended on 12 March 2009.[47]

As a displaced person

After the BBC diary ended, Yousafzai and her father were approached by New York Times reporter Adam B. Ellick about filming a documentary.[41] In May, the Pakistani Army moved into the region to regain control during the Second Battle of Swat (also known as Operation Rah-e-Rast). Mingora was evacuated and Yousafzai's family was displaced and separated. Her father went to Peshawar to protest and lobby for support, while she was sent into the countryside to live with relatives. "I'm really bored because I have no books to read," she is filmed saying in the documentary.[5]

That month, after criticising militants at a press conference, Yousafzai's father received a death threat over the radio by a Pakistani Taliban commander.[5] Yousafzai was deeply inspired in her activism by her father. That summer, for the first time, she committed to becoming a politician and not a doctor, as she had once aspired to be.[5]

I have a new dream ... I must be a politician to save this country. There are so many crises in our country. I want to remove these crises.

— Malala Yousafzai, Class Dismissed (documentary)[5]

By early July, refugee camps were filled to capacity. The prime minister made a long-awaited announcement saying it was safe to return to the Swat Valley. The Pakistani military had pushed the Taliban out of the cities and into the countryside. Yousafzai's family reunited, and on 24 July 2009 they headed home. They made one stop first—to meet with a group of other grassroots activists that had been invited to see United States President Barack Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. Yousafzai pleaded with Holbrooke to intervene in the situation, saying, "Respected ambassador, if you can help us in our education, so please help us." When her family finally returned home, they found it had not been damaged, and her school had sustained only light damage.[5]

Early activism

Following the documentary, Yousafzai was interviewed on the national Pashto-language station AVT Khyber, the Urdu-language Daily Aaj, and Canada's Toronto Star.[41] She made a second appearance on Capital Talk on 19 August 2009.[48] Her BBC blogging identity was being revealed in articles by December 2009.[49][50] She also began appearing on television to publicly advocate for female education.[40] From 2009 to 2010 she was the chair of the District Child Assembly of the Khpal Kor Foundation.[51][52]

In 2011, Yousafzai trained with local girls' empowerment organisation, Aware Girls, run by Gulalai Ismail, whose training included advice on women's rights and empowerment to peacefully oppose radicalisation through education.[53]

In October 2011, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a South African activist, nominated Yousafzai for the International Children's Peace Prize of the Dutch international children's advocacy group, KidsRights Foundation. She was the first Pakistani girl to be nominated for the award. The announcement said, "Malala dared to stand up for herself and other girls and used national and international media to let the world know girls should also have the right to go to school."[54] The award was won by Michaela Mycroft of South Africa.[55]

Yousafzai's public profile rose even further when she was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize two months later in December.[39][54] On 19 December 2011, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani awarded her the National Peace Award for Youth. At the ceremony, she stated she was not a member of any political party, but hoped to found a national party of her own to promote education.[56] The prime minister directed the authorities to set up an IT campus in the Swat Degree College for Women at Yousafzai's request, and a secondary school was renamed in her honour.[57] By 2012, she was planning to organise the Malala Education Foundation, which would help poor girls go to school.[58] In 2012, she attended the International Marxist Tendency National Marxist Summer School.[59][60] In a television interview the same year, she named Barack Obama, Benazir Bhutto and Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan), a Pashtun leader known for his nonviolent Khudai Khidmatgar resistance movement against the British Raj, as inspirations for her activism.[9]