Aghanistan's Ministry of Virtue and Vices

"Women are banned from all walks of life. And, now, not only are girls deprived of education, but boys' rights are being violated because they're not learning the skills and knowledge that will prepare them for the workforce, for tomorrow."

"They should be raised with all the dreams and desires in their heart. If I find any chance, I want to do something for them."

"I won't stop talking about them."

Najia Haneefi, Afghan refugee in Canada

"People are facing extrajudicial killings, detention, calls for banishment. The Taliban keeps releasing decrees that replace laws."

"Women can' go to university, school, work, travel alone, be on the TV or radio."

"They're confined to their homes."

Razia Sayad, human rights advocate, PhD student of law and legal studies, Afghan refugee in Canada

"There was no reliable mechanism to which women victims of domestic violence could turn. Courts and prosecution units that were previously responsible for investigating and adjudicating cases of gender-based violence remained shut. The Taliban authorities and community-level dispute resolution mechanisms both punished women for reporting domestic violence."

"Institutions designed to support human rights were severely limited or shut down completely. Peaceful protesters faced arbitrary arrests, torture and enforced disappearance."

"The Taliban conducted extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and unlawful detention of perceived opponents with impunity, creating an atmosphere of fear."

Amnesty International report

Women weave wool at traditional carpet factory/AP

When the United States and its allies left Afghanistan in 2021 and all troops were withdrawn, the Taliban returned to power, taking up where they left off after the U.S.-led invasion that led to the country being freed of Taliban oppression when al-Qaeda and the Taliban fled to the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the return of the rule of the fundamentalist Islamist Taliban, sharia law was enforced, the previous justice system scrapped.

 

Repression of the population, and revenge meted out to those within the society who collaborated with the foreign presence, setting Kabul up to govern like a democracy, and introducing Western concepts of gender equality and justice saw women's place return to that of male possessions with no rights of their own. Girls in Afghanistan are now permitted to attend school up to Grade 6 only, banned from a secondary education and university attendance. Women may no longer serve as teachers to boys. 

 

Sewing workshop in Kabul/AP

 

Afghanistan has become a gender-apartheid country. Gender-segregation laws lock women out of social, political and economic life. Women are discouraged from working outside the home. And when outside the home they are expected to be accompanied by a male family member.The country's Ministry of Women's Affairs was disbanded and replaced with the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice which "issues restrictive and abusive decrees on women's and girls' rights".

A strict dress code is enforced, one that requires women to have chaperones in public and which bans women and girls from public parks, public baths and other sites among restricted public venues. Women who protested against restrictions were faced with "unlawful detention and violence".  According to a 2024 report from the United Nations, Afghan women's access to public life, particularly targeted to single women and those without male guardians, have been further restricted. Single women have been restricted in some provinces from accessing  health-care facilities.

Bus terminals are regularly visited by morality police where drivers are forbidden from permitting unchaperoned women to board buses. Girls and young women face forced marriages and sexual assault, leading them to attempt suicide when shunned by their families for being 'unclean'.  Internet services, available to those who can afford them, offer an opportunity to girls to help educate themselves once they can no longer attend school. A more recent decree banned women's beauty salons.

 

Medica Mondiale

"Girls in Afghanistan have been banned from secondary school and women from tertiary education. Women and girls have been banned from entering amusement parks, public baths, gyms and sports clubs for four months. Women have been banned from working in NGO offices. Since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August 2021, women have been wholly excluded from public office and the judiciary. Today, Afghanistan’s women and girls are required to adhere to a strict dress code and are not permitted to travel more than 75 km without a mahram. They are compelled to stay at home."

"All over the country, women report feeling invisible, isolated, suffocated, living in prison like conditions. Many are unable to have their basic needs met without access to employment or aid, including access to medical healthcare and psychological support in particular for victims of violence, including sexual violence. It’s a sobering reminder of how swiftly and aggressively women’s and girls’ rights can be taken away."

United Nations Office of the High Commissioner

Canada's Evacuation of Vulnerable Afghans

"We are so happy because we are here, we are safe. In Afghanistan it was big trouble for us, especially for me, because I was working with foreigners."

"If we were stuck in Afghanistan there would be no opportunities for my daughters to go to school."

"I'm glad for my children ... because they are living here, they have futures. They will be educated."

Ahmad Ferdaws Rahimi, Afghan, former watch commander, contracted security forces, Canadian Kabul diplomatic mission

"The people that have come to Canada are burdened with survivor's guilt."

"That's the burden that these families are struggling with, and to some degree there's an expectation -- either spoken or unspoken -- that refugees should be grateful for what Canada gives them."

"But it's easy to see the way Canada is treating people that worked for us [in Afghanistan] could lead to resentment."

"This is the consequence of the government's failed policy."

Canadian Air Force veteran Robin Rickards

The Rahimi family (FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) Zahara (DAUGHTER), Farida (MOTHER) Omar (SON BEING HELD) by Ahmad Rahimi (FATHER), Marwa (DAUGHTER), Iqra (DAUGHTER) and Ahmad Fakher (SON) at their Mississauga home, who escaped the Taliban in Afghanistan where he was a security head for Canada’s embassy in Kabul. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post

Canada's 14-year mission in Afghanistan during the UN-approved, NATO-U.S. coalition to free the country from the talons of the Taliban, and to hold al-Qaeda's chief Osama bin Laden -- sheltered by the Taliban hierarchy -- accountable for the horrors of the 9/11 strikes on American soil with the suicide-plane attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the downing of another plane heading for Washington in Pennsylvania, was reliant on the voluntary response of ordinary Afghans in aiding their portion of the mission. 

 

Afghans who responded to the foreign missions' requests for locally employed people who worked as interpreters, security personnel and embassy workers among others. And whom the foreign countries that employed them, assured their Afghan assistants that they would extract these workers and their families and bring them to safety should their lives ever be endangered as a result of their commitment both to bringing a semblance of civilized democracy to their country and in aiding the foreign delegations to help accomplish that difficult and inspiring aspiration.

 

Ahmad Rahimi had worked as a watch commander for contracted security forces at Canada's Kabul diplomatic mission. He was an adviser to the Operation ARGUS team of the Canadian Forces as well as performing security work for the military and diplomatic operations of Germany at their embassy while managing security for Kiam Air, Afghanistan's largest private airline. Employment that marked Rahimi on a hit list of the Taliban. As the resurgent Taliban marched toward Kabul in 2021, their members conducted door-to-door searches for people like Rahimi, who had worked for the allies.

 

ID card for Ahmad Rahimi when he was employed at Canada’s embassy in Kabul. Photo by Courtesy Ahmad Rahimi

 

An exit plan was an obvious need at this point for the former locally employed Afghans and Rahimi planned to take Canada up on its word. He, his wife Farida and their five children joined the hundreds of people anxious to be evacuated to safety. Canadian Immigration and Refugees and Global Affairs Departments' bureaucracy swung into inept, tardy action, leaving people stranded as they expectantly waited for finalization of their request to secure space on an evacuation flight.

The U.K. and Germany took the necessary steps to bring people to safety, using armed patrols to evacuate their citizens and Afghan workers with the use of helicopters and buses to move people to the Kabul airport. Canada, in its great wisdom informed evacuees  they were to "wear red clothing" as identifying material when they presented themselves on the airport's perimeter to Canadian officials stationed at a hotel. The red clothing directive reached the ears of the Taliban and their response was to target those showing up in red clothing.

Any of those desperate to be evacuated to safety out of the clutches of the Taliban who were able to make their way to the assigned area, found themselves turned back by Afghan and by Canadian soldiers, including people with valid documents officially allowing them passage on Canadian flights. A Taliban confronted Rahimi as they waited, and began administering a brutal beating. "I tried to put myself between him and my wife and children. If I had allowed, he would have killed us", the later recounted.

The beating was stopped by a passing Royal Air Force officer who ushered the family through the gate where, thanks to Rahimi's previous work for a U.K. contractor, his family was able to board a British evacuation flight. The Rahimi family lived for some time in London, and were eventually given the required documentation to enable them to emigrate to Canada where Rahimi was given employment with the Ontario government, and the family rents a small three-bedroom apartment.

The children were registered for school, and quickly began picking up English, including the two-year-old child. Once the Afghan refugees arrive in Canada they are given very little government support. Taking up the slack is community support services in the provision of language training. The entire failed effort of the government of Canada to adequately respond to the desperation of Afghans reliant on their former employers to make good on their promise of rescue cued back to the emergency evacuation which fell on the very day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to dissolve parliament prior to a federal election, when a humanitarian emergency fell victim to political expediency.

Four of Ahmad Rahimi’s five children in the back of an Royal Air Force A-400 cargo plane, just arrived in Dubai from Kabul, on Aug. 21 2021. Photo by Courtesy Ahmad Ferdas Rahimi

Canada, Leaving Afghans in the Lurch of Taliban Vengeance

"In Afghanistan, there is the risk of detention and prosecution for those who want to get a passport under the Taliban."

"Those who worked for the Canadian government and international partners -- the risk is always there."

"We wish and we hope there will be a more flexible approach when it comes to documentation inside Afghanistan and also the paperwork that is required in terms of bringing people to 

Canada."

"Women are being gradually but systematically erased from public life. They are denied access to education, they are not able to work, they cannot protest — it means they gradually become invisible." 

"Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are denied a secondary education."

"I am very much hopeful that the outcome will help with a kind of solution that will help with the humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, without helping the Taliban consolidate their power, without legitimizing the Taliban."

"[he Taliban are becoming increasingly hard-line and  not a moderate or more inclusive version of the previous regime; they are] the same old Taliban — they have not changed."

Hassan Soroosh, Afghan Ambassador to Canada 

Ambassador of Afghanistan to Canada Hassan Soroosh stands outside the Embassy of The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in Ottawa, on Thursday, July 7, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

Clearly this fearless man is not speaking on behalf of the current government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, but is reflecting the sensibilities of the previous Afghan government which gave him his appointment to represent the country in Canada. He dare not himself return to his country of origin as long as the Taliban remain in power, but his concerns are for fellow Afghan civilians and those whose lives are in danger under the present regime. His office continues to represent the interests of Afghan citizens outside Afghanistan requiring consular assistance.

And he is extremely concerned over the plight of people whom the government of Canada pledged it would extend security to as a recompense for their services to the Canadian diplomat corps, Canadian servicemen and Canadian charitable groups as translators and office workers while Canada deployed its troops along with other NATO countries in the U.S.-led mission to the country in an effort to ward off the Taliban, combat members of al-Qaeda and help the country modernize itself toward democracy and the upgrades of civic installations.

 

Taliban fighters stand guard at the site of an explosion in front of a Sikh temple in Kabul, Afghanistan on June 18. (Ebrahim Noroozi/The Associated Press)

 

Canada is one of the few countries involved in Afghanistan that has failed to honour its promise to withdraw vulnerable Afghans from the repressive threatening searches of the Taliban for people who they claimed 'betrayed' Islamic values by befriending and assisting foreign countries that invaded Afghanistan to free it from the first restrictive and oppressively violent Taliban rule. While other countries devised ways to extract those who gave aid to their military, those awaiting Canada's promise to be fulfilled remain in danger.

Canadian veterans' groups who worked with Afghan volunteers and workers as well as Canadian humanitarian charitable groups and members of the Canadian political opposition have all called upon the ruling Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to live up to Canada's obligations, to no avail. Complex paperwork must be completed, and special visas approved in a long, drawn-out process that leaves vulnerable people in danger. The year that has passed since the pullout of Western countries leaving the population of Afghanistan at the mercy of the Taliban has failed to convince the Canadian government of the urgency for it to act.

 

Painda Mohammad Noori, a former schoolmaster, died of a heart attack in Pakistan while his family waited for news in Islamabad about when they might be able to travel to Canada. (Submitted/Jamil Ahmad Noori )

 

Ambassador Soroosh emphasizes that those Afghans who committed to helping Canada prior to the Taliban's return have been left in a state of "high vulnerability", calling on Canada to widen the eligibility criteria for arrival to Canada under a humanitarian program meant to expedite vulnerable Afghans to Canada who face Taliban persecution. A need also exists, he emphasized, to provide Canadian charities aiding Afghans with needed paperwork to enable them to get on with their work.

Some Afghans awaiting final paperwork to enable them to board flights to Canada were able to leave Afghanistan to take up temporary haven in Pakistan on visas that have now expired. Leaving them at real risk of being involuntarily returned to Afghanistan and Taliban reprisals. Aidan Strickland, a spokeswoman for Canada's Immigration Minister, gave assurances that her department "can help facilitate travel to Pakistan", but not, unfortunately 'facilitate travel to Canada'.

A group of Afghans seeking to come to Canada on special immigration measures for former employees of the government and their families, hold a protest over travel delays in Islamabad on Canadian consular grounds in early May. (Submitted/Asad Ali Afghan )

 

"Our Brothers, The Taliban"

Liberal MP Monsef briefing call.  Screenshot

"I want to take this opportunity to speak to our brothers, the Taliban."

"We call on you to ensure the safe and secure passage of any individual in Afghanistan out of the country."

"The Taliban are a terrorist group and yet they've claimed to be Muslims. We are calling on them, to immediately cease the violence, the femicide, the genocide, the rapes, the lootings and to return immediately to the peace negotiation table in an inclusive and meaningful way."

Liberal Member of Parliament, Maryam Monsef, Minister of Women and Gender Equality

This Minister in the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, speaks of 'we', the government of Canada's expectations of the Taliban to comport themselves in a civilized manner. While speaking of their exploits in the Islamist terrorism cycle of conquest, defeat and return ... while excelling in the sport of genocide, rape, looting, an fundamentalist group of Islamist diehards who have their place on many countries' list of terrorists, including Canada's ... as a 'brother'.

 

When Hamid Karzai was in power at the political helm in Afghanistan, he was often infuriated at U.S. bombing raids against the Taliban, deploring the killing of the terrorists who thought nothing of killing other Afghans, yet speaking of them as 'brothers'. A mere cultural courtesy, responded Maryam Monsef, when she was queried about her choice of words and her seeming sympathies. Canadian soldiers, a diplomat and a journalist were killed by the Taliban during their assignment in Afghanistan. None among them thought of the Taliban as 'brothers'.

 

Hamid Karzai, however, a member of the ethnic Pashtun tribe like most Taliban, is now in negotiation with the Taliban, his 'brothers'. Making an effort, he feels, to bring them to reason. That in their second time around as the newly re-installed Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, they might consider being less harsh in their administration of the country; as in no public floggings for offences such as men being clean-shaven, or women unescorted and not wearing burqas in public.

 

No impulsive beheadings, either. To consider, on the other hand, inclusiveness of the people of Afghanistan, treating all equally, the many different tribes and ethnicities. To achieve international recognition in moderation. To be vigilant that no other Islamist fundamentalist groups bitterly offended at the very existence of Western cultures and politics, seek to use Afghan soil as nurturing and launch-off spots for their terrorism-abroad plans to appease their rage and deliver more martyrs to the cause.

 

The Prime Minister of Canada saw fit to appoint a woman to ministerial posts whose cultural heritage was that of Afghanistan, a woman whose ethnic/cultural heritage has far more in common with her past, born in Iran of Afghan refugees who later returned with her to Afghanistan before finally leaving for the West -- to the ministry of Democratic Institutions. When she failed in that portfolio, she was shunted to the ministry of Women and Gender Equality.

 

Both choices incredibly inappropriate, but a reflection of Justin Trudeau's penchant for elevating ethnic minority candidates reflecting Canada's massive absorption of ethnic and cultural groups from all over the world who eventually form a voting bloc. That it might be wiser to allow immigrants to first immerse themselves in Canadian culture and values before bestowing on them the privilege of helping to administer the country's affairs plays second fiddle to reaping the vote.

 

Taliban fighters take control of Afghan presidential palace after the Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sunday, Aug. 15, 2021. Person second from left is a former bodyguard for Ghani. (AP Photo/Zabi Karimi)

 

The victorious Taliban whose swift return to power while brushing away any opposition the duly elected government or/and the national police along with the military initially proffered, are not in the habit of taking advice from mere women, much less from advice emanating from foreign countries, particularly one of no great reputation as a power broker. Evidently Maryam Monsef feels comfortable enough to address the terrorist group with the self-confidence of vainglorious conceit.

Even Hillel Neuer, director of United Nations Watch commented: "158 Canadian soldiers died fighting the Taliban. Thousands wounded, Taliban not our brothers." An Afghan refugee and political analyist, Zahra Sultani responded: "If you think ppl of Afghanistan -- even the most illiterate -- are OK with calling Taliban 'brother' and it's not a big deal, you're a bigot. Taliban is our enemy not our brother!"

"Our BROTHERS the Taliban. Just take a moment and think about what that means to our troops and allies who fought and died in Afghanistan over the last 20 years", wrote David Jacobs, a frequent Twitter commenter on the failings and absurdities of the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau. Unknown thousands of people, mostly Afghans desperate to escape Taliban rule in their country court death by crowding around the Kabul airport in a desperate effort to depart elsewhere. None seem to regard the Taliban as their 'brothers'.

Civilizing Rural Pakistan

"Back home, you have to go anywhere with your father, mother or brother, because you are a girl."
"We are really proud. We follow her [Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai] and we will follow her in the future."
"In some areas, [of Swat, Pakistan] girls and boys are now even being taught in the same classroom."
"However we can help [by returning to Pakistan], we will."
Shazia Ramzan, 19, Pakistani woman studying in the United Kingdom

"If I'm wearing jeans and my friends [in Pakistan] see pictures online, they say: 'You forgot your culture'."
"Before [prior to being educated in the United Kingdom], my mind was closed. I thought education just related to my family. But now I think about all girls. I want to stand up for them."
"I believe I should go back to my country and try to make change there."
Kainat Riaz, 19, Pakistani woman studying in the United Kingdom

    Malala Yousafzai with Kainat Riaz (left) and Shazia Ramzan (right) in 2012. Photo by Jane Barlow

The two young women now studying abroad were 14 (Shazia) and 15 (Kainat) when they became victims of an infamous attack by Pakistani Taliban against young girls living in the Swat Valley who claimed an education for themselves. They were seated alongside their friend, 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, when the encounter took place: "The Taliban stopped us, two boys -- or men. One was in the front and the other one came to the back (of the bus).

"He said: Who is Malala? [We had our faces covered (with niqabs) but Malala didn't. We were looking at him and then he shot Malala in the forehead. He shot me on my hand and shoulder, and Kainat's shoulder as well. Then he started shooting randomly", explained Shazia. The girls had been in fact, returning from a chemistry exam and the bus they were in was actually a converted truck, the girls sitting among others, on benches, when their attackers stopped the truck and entered it, searching for Malala.

Malala had gained a reputation for herself as a campaigner for girls' right to an education. She had deliberately made a target of herself by speaking up in an interview on Pakistani television, and by expressing her determination to become educated in an online blog posting, where she also emphasized that girls had a right to an education. Kainat went to a local hospital, and Shazia was treated in Peshawar, in a military hospital which hadn't the wherewithal to treat Malala.

Her injuries were too seriously life-threatening and too complicated and she was flown to the United Kingdom where surgeons there saved her life. The infamy of the attack spread like wildfire around the world, and focused on the plight particularly of Malala. Though other girls were in a similar position to Malala's own, it was she who had brought attention to herself through her public proclamations of dissent and defiance, supported by her father.

When Kainat and Shazia returned home to the Swat Valley after their recovery, the locals viewed them as unwelcome. Neighbours informed Kainat's family they should leave; her presence endangered the rest of the villagers because she had become a target for the Taliban. Neither bus nor taxi drivers would take her to school.The shooting of the girls took place in October of 2012, but by July of 2013 when Malala turned 16, she was invited to address the United Nations to deliver her message.

Offers came flooding in to her from prestigious schools eager to grant her the education she sought, at no charge to her family. Malala settled with her family in Birmingham, England and was enrolled at the private Edgbaston High School for Girls. Mindful of her two injured friends, she asked the international boarding school UWC Atlantic College in the Vale of Glamorgan which had extended an invitation to her which she declined for herself, if her friends could be offered the same opportunity.

And this is how Shazia and Kainat were recognized with full scholarships (paid attendance for a two-year period amounts to $100,000). Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, at that time a UN special envoy on global education, helped the girls procure visas. The girls settled in to study at Atlantic College, accustoming themselves to their newfound freedom to go wherever they wished, along with the pleasure of learning to swim.

Malala is now expected to go on to study at Oxford University. Both Shazia and Kainat have been given offers to study nursing at Edinburgh University, with mentor Gordon Brown assisting in finding the required funding. They both plan, on graduation, to return to their country of birth, to do what they can to ensure that all girls and young women have the opportunity to receive an education, and to never have to face the dread situation that they had encountered.

Malala's friends Shazia Ramzan (left) and Kainat Riaz (right) were also shot by the Taliban Credit:  JAY WILLIAMS

One Child, One Pen, One Book

"When you were attacked it was shocking for me. I wished it would never happened and I had advised you before."
"Taliban believe that you were intentionally writing against them and running a smearing campaign to malign their efforts to establish Islamic system in Swat and your writings were provocative. You have said in your speech yesterday that pen is mightier than sword, so they attacked you for your sword, not for your books or school."
"At the end, I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your hometown, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah [community] and reveal the conspiracy of tiny elite who want to enslave the whole humanity for their evil agendas in the name of new world order."
Adnan Rasheed, Pakistan Taliban commander

They were, after all, tribally related. Malala Yousafzai and Adnan Rasheed; both Pashtun, Pakistani, of the Yousafzai tribe. He experienced the shock of brotherly feelings at the news that a sister had been morbidly wounded. So he sat down to pen a four-page letter to the young girl who was fortunate to have survived a deadly attack; where medical intervention in the international arena saved her life. And has given her the opportunity to further her academic education in Britain.

Where she will have the freedom to select whatever area of the sciences, the arts and humanities, law and justice, philosophy and history she wishes to become more familiar with. She has already familiarized herself with the very basics of human rights, heritage, female empowerment and social studies. How many young women of 17 have addressed the United Nations? How many seventeen-year-olds have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize?

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls, celebrated her 16th birthday on Friday by demanding, in her first public speech since the attack, that world leaders provide free compulsory schooling for every child. (AP)

 

How many girls and young women have urged their peers to settle for nothing less than their own educated futures and that of others in a collective determination to find their way and assume their rightful place in the world? Now, a senior figure in the Pakistan Taliban, the very group that planned for her death because of her irritation factor in their narrative of withholding the power of education from girls and women, professes patience for her misguided and errant ways, urging a return to the study of the Koran, instead.

That instead is what Malala Yousafzai rebelled against. It was her informed choice as the child of mind-liberated parents, to study language, history, mathematics, science and whatever else struck her interest. As a Muslim, she could study the Koran in a separate part of her busy lifestyle. "One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution", she chanted in a poetic essay aimed at world leaders.

• 
• Malala and fellow teenage girls struggle not to stall out in school

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who survived a Taliban assassination attempt, has become a leading voice for girls' education and spoke at the UN today.

By Ryan Lenora Brown, Correspondent / July 12, 2013

• 

Malala Yousafzai signs United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's guest books as Ban Ki-moon (c.) and youth delegates look on, Friday, July 12, at United Nations headquarters. Malala, the Pakistani teenager shot by the Taliban for promoting education for girls, will celebrated her 16th birthday on Friday addressing the United Nations.   Mary Altaffer/AP

The hooded Taliban gunman stepped onto the bus full of schoolgirls in northwest Pakistan and barked a single question.
“Which one of you is Malala?” he demanded, referring to Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year-old education activist. “Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all.”

Before anyone could answer, he saw her, raised his gun, and fired. Then he ran, leaving the girl and two of her friends for dead on the crowded bus.

But she was not dead. Today, almost nine months to the day later – on her 16th birthday – Malala stood before the United Nations Youth Assembly in New York to deliver her first public speech since the assassination attempt, calling on the global community to rally behind the cause of universal educational access.

“They thought that the bullet would silence us, but they failed – and out of that silence came thousands of voices,” she said. “The terrorists thought that they would change my aim and stop my ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear, and hopeless died. Strength, courage, and fervor were born.”

But the confidence radiating from the young activist, who wore a vivid pink shawl once owned by assassinated Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, belies the staggering challenges that still face education activists around the world.

Some 57 million primary school-aged children worldwide were out of school in 2011, according to a study released yesterday by the international NGO Save the Children, half of them in countries embroiled in violent conflict.

Meanwhile, between 2009 and 2012, the percentage of international humanitarian aid devoted to education dipped from 2.2 percent to 1.4 percent.

And most prescient to the teenage activist making her case at the UN today, there are also 69 million adolescents not enrolled in secondary school. This cohort's educational crisis has often lingered just beyond the reach of international campaigns and funding.

“Secondary education is a particularly difficult issue because you’re dealing with infrastructural issues, but you’re also dealing with great social malaise in many cases,” says Orla Kelly, an expert on gender and education in South Asia at Harvard's François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights. “There’s a great consensus in much of the world that children should go to school, but there’s a lot less agreement about if they should continue during those later years, especially if they are girls.”

It’s no coincidence, she says, that the Taliban targeted a 15-year-old well on her way to her ambition of becoming a doctor. That, after all, is the moment when education – particularly the education of girls – threatens to tip the balance of a conservative social order.

The Taliban “are afraid of women,” Malala said. “They were and are afraid of change and the equality we will bring into our society. They think God is a tiny conservative being.”

Malala first rose to international attention in 2009, when the 12-year-old authored an anonymous blog for the BBC on her experiences growing up in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt, where the Taliban has attacked more than 800 schools in the past four years.

“I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban,” she wrote in one entry. “I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation…. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.”

But it was the news of the fearsome attempt on her life, and her unexpected recovery in a London hospital late last year, that elevated the activist and her cause to international célèbre. The UN declared Friday, Malala’s birthday, “Malala Day.”

But history rarely pivots on a single newsworthy event, Ms. Kelly notes.
“When the cameras go away, the problems are still there,” she says. “There has to be grassroots organizing on the ground to make change.”

In places like Pakistan’s tribal belt, she says, many want that change. But many rightly see the prospect of defying Taliban edicts against girls’ education as literally a matter of life and death. After all, they say, look what happened to Malala.

For her part, the 16-year-old now attends school in Birmingham, England. The school she attended in Pakistan, which was started by her father, is still open, despite threats of violence. And she says the Taliban’s retaliation has only strengthened the resolve of young people there to get an education.

“We realize the importance of light when we see darkness. We realize the importance of our voice when we are silenced,” Malala said. “In the same way [in Pakistan] we realized the importance of pens and books when we saw the gun.”

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