New York: The rage and furor over the Taliban’s shooting of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old women education activist, has now apparently passed in Pakistan, an editorial in an American daily has said.
According to the editorial in the New York Times, in the immediate aftermath of the October 9 assault, some Pakistanis hoped it could set off a sea change in their society.
For years, the country’s ability to resist Taliban militancy has been hamstrung by a broad ambiguity that undermined a national consensus against Islamist violence, the paper said.
But after Yousafzai was shot, heart-rending images of the wounded child bounced against cold-blooded Taliban statements that the militants would shoot her again, if they had a chance. The country suddenly spoke with a unified, furious voice, it added.
The editorial, however, claimed that Pakistan’s “Malala moment,” and the possibilities it briefly excited, has now passed.
According to the paper, people in Pakistan now have ‘mixed feelings’ about Malala.
Some people even think that the attack on the teenage women rights activist was nothing, but an ‘American publicity stunt’ to make their point against the Taliban, the paper said.
Several young in the country are ambivalent about the attack on Malala, and believe that people have ignored Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman convicted on charges of trying to kill American soldiers and FBI agents by a New York court in 2010 and sentenced to 86 years in prison, the paper added.
ANI
