Pakistan Taliban's letter to Malala Yousafzai: We tried to kill you because you were smearing our cause -
but we regret attack
OMAR WARAICH WEDNESDAY 17 JULY 2013
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/pakistan-talibans-letter-to-malala-yousafzai-we-tried-to-kill-y
ou-because-you-were-smearing-our-cause--but-we-regret-attack-8714640.html
A leading commander of the Pakistani Taliban has written to Malala Yousafzai – the 16-year-old schoolgirl
and education advocate who survived a near-fatal assassination attempt last October – to express his
regret at the attack.
The letter is written by Adnan Rashid, a prominent member of the Pakistani Taliban who joined the militant
group after a career as a technician in the Pakistan Air Force.
“When you were attacked, it was shocking for me,” wrote Mr Rashid, according to the letter published by
Channel 4. “I wished it would never happened[sic] and I had advised you before.”
The 1,863-word letter, dated 15 July, doesn’t condemn the incident, however. Mr Rashid also declines to
say whether the attempt to kill Malala was “Islamically correct or wrong, or you were deserved to be killed
or not”. Instead, he writes, “Leave it to Allah… He is the best judge.”
In 2012, the Pakistani Taliban sprang Mr Rashid out of Bannu jail along with nearly 400 other militants. In
the letter to Malala, Mr Rashid makes a fleeting reference to his escape. In 2005, he had been given a
death sentence for his involvement in a plot to assassinate former military ruler General Pervez Musharraf.
Throughout the letter, Mr Rashid is by turns conciliatory, defensive and belligerent. He wants to reassure
Malala that she wasn’t targeted for demanding education. “It is amazing you are Shouting[sic] for
education,” he writes. Malala’s real offence was not her calls for schooling, he writes, but “running a smear
campaign to malign” the Taliban.
Mr Rashid also accuses Malala of using her writing in a “provocative” way, which he says is a form of
violence. “You are using your tongue on the behest of others,” Mr Rashid writes, echoing widespread and
lurid conspiracy theories about Malala. “You must know that if the pen is mightier than the sword, then the
tongue is sharper… and in wars, the tongue is more destructive than any weapon.”
The Taliban commander adopts an almost wounded tone when trying to respond to the list of the militants’
crimes. He writes that the Taliban alone are not responsible for blowing up schools, blaming the Pakistan
army for using them as bases, and venal local officials for allegedly staging school explosions to siphon off
cash.
The former Pakistan air force technician also tries to defend the gruesome murders of polio vaccination
teams across the country, invoking anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Nearly 20 polio workers have been
killed in recent months. Pakistan remains one of just three countries where polio is still an epidemic, with
nearly 60 cases reported last year.
Mr Rashid didn’t write the letter on behalf of the Taliban, he was careful to stress, but in a “personal
capacity”. He ends it by inviting Malala back to Pakistan, and to join a local madrassa for girls.
Speaking at the UN headquarters in New York last Friday, Malala – who is considered a contender for the
Nobel Peace Prize – said books and pens frighten extremists, and urged education for all, including “for
the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists”.
She has not commented publically on the letter.
Taliban letter of ‘regret’ to Malala Yousafzai was a ‘pack of lies’ says schoolfriend who was also shot
Rob Crilly in Islamabad and Ashfaq Yusufzai in Peshawar, The Telegraph | 13/07/18 | Last Updated:
13/07/18 9:57 PM ET
More from The Telegraph
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/07/18/taliban-letter-of-regret-to-malala-yousafzai-was-a-pack-of-lies-sa
ys-schoolfriend-who-was-also-shot/
A teenager wounded alongside the campaigning schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai has condemned the
Pakistan Taliban’s letter of regret as a “pack of lies”.
Kainat Riaz, 16, said the letter — in which Adnan Rasheed, a notorious terrorist, said he had wanted to
warn Malala against criticizing the movement out of “brotherly” concern — was nothing more than a public
relations stunt. “There’s no truth that writer Adnan Rasheed is shocked at Malala’s attack,” she said. “The
Taliban consider her a great enemy and what has been described in the latter is a pack of lies.”
The four-page letter, which surfaced on Wednesday, claimed that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)
did not oppose education for girls and that Malala was attacked because she was running a smear
campaign against the group.
Rasheed, who escaped from prison last year, drafted the letter after Malala addressed the United Nations
last week to worldwide acclaim.
He invited her to return to Pakistan but only if she attended a madrassah, an offer dismissed out of hand by
those who know her best. “Malala would never come to Pakistan upon the Taliban’s invitation and would
never seek admission to a Taliban-run seminary,” said Kainat, who was wounded in the shoulder as she
sat alongside her friend in the school bus.
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Malala was shot in her home town of Mingora in the Swat Valley in October last year. Afrasiab Khattak, a
family friend, said Rasheed’s letter was in part a threat to Malala and in part an attempt to wrest back the
limelight. “People like him can’t tolerate Malala’s appearance at the UN and the response she got,” he
said. “He knows how much this costs their cause so this is damage control.”
Mushtari Begum, a student at Khushal Public School, where Malala studied, said her friend would not be
intimidated by Taliban threats. Instead, she said, the letter served as a reminder of her values.
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