Senior Pakistani Taliban leader 'shocked' by Malala attack
Adnan Rasheed urges teenage girl shot by the group her to return to Pakistan and enroll in an Islamic school for women
A prominent Pakistani Taliban commander has written a letter to a teenage girl shot in the head by the group, expressing regrets that he didn’t warn her before the assassination attempt that propelled her activism to the international stage.
The letter from Adnan Rasheed, however, didn’t apologise for the October attack that left Malala Yousafzai gravely wounded. Rasheed, who has close relations with Taliban leaders, only said that he found the shooting “shocking” and wished it hadn’t happened.
Rasheed said he would leave it up to God to decide whether the outspoken activist for girls’ education should have been targeted.
“You have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword,” Rasheed wrote in reference to Malala’s speech on Friday at the United Nations, “so they attacked you for your sword not for your books or school.”
Malala was 15 years old when she and two of her friends were attacked on their way home from school in Pakistan’s northwest Swat Valley. The assassination attempt sparked worldwide condemnation. Malala celebrated her 16th birthday last week by giving a speech at the UN in New York, telling the body that the attack gave her new courage while demanding world leaders provide free education to all children.
Rasheed said the Taliban did not attack Malala because she was a proponent for girls’ education, but because she was critical of the militant group when it took over much of Swat in 2008 and 2009. That mirrors what some militants said at the time of the shooting.
