Pakistan and Heroes

 Abu Bakr Agha 

When I heard Malala Yousafzai was going to be a guest on The Dai­ly Show I was ner­vous. I love The Dai­ly Show, I’m a fan of Jon Stew­art and I think he’s a genius, but I was afraid to watch this episode. I was afraid because I knew if Malala was going to be bril­liant, I would be left frus­trat­ed out of my mind once again because of the on-going vil­i­fi­ca­tion cam­paign against her on Pak­istani pub­lic forums.

That’s exact­ly what hap­pened.

I watched this six­teen year-old, so elo­quent, so mature, so calm and con­fi­dent. I saw her laugh and it was beau­ti­ful, but even more so because of the slight bend in her smile caused by the dam­age to her skull from the bul­let fired by the Tal­ib. That sim­ple ges­ture of laugh­ter spoke a thou­sand words; escap­ing death, liv­ing again, such puri­ty and brav­ery. But that’s not what makes Malala Yousafzai spe­cial. What makes her spe­cial is the way she speaks about her poten­tial killers. On The Dai­ly Show she spoke of the hor­rif­ic things the Tal­iban were doing in Swat Val­ley: She spoke about how she heard they want­ed to attack her and how she thought about it to her­self and was com­ing up with ways to defend her­self. She said she thought about hit­ting the Tal­ib with a shoe if he came for her, but then she changed her mind. “What would be the dif­fer­ence between me and the Tal­ib if I had done that?” she said to Jon Stew­art, leav­ing him, the stu­dio audi­ence and me watch­ing from home absolute­ly speech­less.

Malala Yousafzai wants to edu­cate the mon­sters that tried to kill her and have threat­ened her again. In her address at the Unit­ed Nations a few months ago she said she want­ed edu­ca­tion for all; for girls and boys, even for the Tal­ib that shot her.

Since the war on ter­ror has com­menced, ter­ror­ism has increased in the world-over expo­nen­tial­ly. The very project that was ini­ti­at­ed to counter ter­ror­ism has result­ed in noth­ing but more vio­lence. In my opin­ion a major rea­son for this coun­ter­pro­duc­tive­ly is the fail­ure for pol­i­cy mak­ers to tack­le the root caus­es of ter­ror. Wash­ing­ton has always remained the land of the ‘quick fix’, and it is always eas­i­er and more stress-reliev­ing to drop bombs than to study the psy­chol­o­gy and moti­va­tion for ter­ror­ism.

For Malala Yousafzai vio­lence was not the answer. The Unit­ed States and NATO are no dif­fer­ent from the ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the sense that they sel­dom thought twice about the use of force in sit­u­a­tions where it could have been avoid­ed. Civil­ians have died because of the use of might by both sides. Diplo­ma­cy and nego­ti­a­tion was nev­er an option. It’s just like Malala said about hit­ting the Tal­ib with the shoe. It turns into an end­less cycle.

Of course direct com­par­isons can’t be made but the Tal­iban, The Unit­ed States and the world can learn a valu­able les­son from a 16-year old. Maybe retal­i­a­tion isn’t always the answer. Maybe reli­gion and self-pro­claimed polit­i­cal ideals are not the rea­sons for the con­flicts in the world; instead the con­flicts arise because of a lack of edu­ca­tion, a revenge­ful men­tal­i­ty, unfair for­eign poli­cies and the pow­er pol­i­tics. Instead of respond­ing force with force, maybe there is anoth­er way. At least Malala gave peace a chance.

It’s not uncom­mon to hear that Pak­istan is a coun­try with­out gen­uine role-mod­els. I’ve often been told that the pub­lic has no one to look up to. I dis­agree with this. I think that we rather have some great heroes. The prob­lem is that we choose to demo­nize them. Any social media post about Malala Yousafzai I read any­where is met with an abun­dance of love and prais­es except on those orig­i­nat­ing from Pak­istan. This teenag­er is adored all around the world except for the very coun­try she hails from.

I find it rather trag­ic. But I also think the trends are chang­ing. As time went on I saw pub­lic opin­ion regard­ing Salman Taseer change from extreme­ly neg­a­tive to bear­able, and the oppo­site for once much-loved Dr. Aamir Liaqat. There are oth­er exam­ples but the point is that the peo­ple need a lit­tle time for every­thing to sink in. Pak­istan as a nation has been let down time and time again and many of our heroes seem to have dis­ap­point­ed the peo­ple. The pub­lic is let-down hence pes­simistic. It has seen con­tin­u­ous decep­tion, cov­er-ups and has heard bla­tant lies by its own gov­ern­ment. Per­haps peo­ple feel that Malala sit­u­a­tion is too good to be true.

What­ev­er the case, still in no way is abus­ing a 16-year old girl who was near­ly killed and is cam­paign­ing for female empow­er­ment accept­able. Malala Yousafzai makes me proud to be Pak­istani but her ‘haters’ make me feel embar­rassed to be Pak­istani. Pak­ista­nis do not need to search for heroes. They’re all right in front of our eyes, if only we could just give them a chance.