How the Bullet Found Malala: The Media Helped Make Malala Yousafzai a Taliban Target
Irfan Ashraf on How the Media Helped Make Malala Yousafzai a Taliban Target
Although Taliban thugs pulled the trigger on teenager Malala Yousafzai, a vocal advocate for girls’ education in Pakistan, western media played a role in making her a target.
Although Taliban thugs pulled the trigger on teenager Malala Yousafzai, a vocal advocate for girls’ education in Pakistan, western media played a role in making her a target.
“This is an issue about you, me. Even the militants. We needed a doll, didn’t we? We needed this story that will fill the belly and we needed Malala to say these things. Everyone else is scared to say things.”
In spring of 2009, after militias loyal to a local warlord seized power from town councils, Pakistani reporter Irfan Ashraf, then working with the New York Times’ digital unit, co-produced and assisted on two short documentaries depicting the closure of girls’ schools in the northern region of Swat. Last month, a star of that documentary, Pakistani high school student Malala Yousafzai, was shot after followers of the same warlord, Maulana Fazlullah, attempted to assassinate her.
Yousafzai, who was 12 years old when she starred in the documentary, became a high-profile advocate for girls’ education. She has received numerous awards, and the suggestion, by actress Angelina Jolie, that she be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. After the shooting, the BBC revealed that Yousafzai had written a blog for its Farsi service under a false name.
Shortly after the shooting, Ashraf published an essay, “Predatory Politics and Malala,” in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, questioning whether he and other reporters working in the region bore any responsibility for the attack on Yousafzai.