Let it not be lost in the great deluge of election diaries that a 14 year old girl was the victim of an attempted assassination for the crime of being an advocate for the rights of women and children.
Malala Yousafzai was tracked down by a Taliban militant who specifically targeted her among a group of young girls, confirmed her identity and then shot her in the head.
Current news reports suggest she may make a full recovery. Taliban spokespersons have confirmed responsibility for the atrocity and threatened to target her again if she survives.
This is not intended as a partisan diary and some more details are below the fold.
Dealing with atrocities of this nature doesn't -and shouldn't - fit neatly within the competing foreign policy narratives. And yes, I am fully aware of the diplomatic problems inherent in dealing with a situation that is subject to the sovereign jurisdiction of a nominal ally. All of those caveats aside I am shocked and horrified. Malala has been publicly identified with the cause of education rights for young, female children in the Swat Valley since she was 11.
I refer all of you to the brief article in the New York Times with the accompanying video profiling Malala and her father detailing the closure of her school in 2009.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/...
The video documentary link is here: http://video.nytimes.com/...
I see many comments and calls for financial assistance for her recovery and suggestions of assisting her by finding a place for her and her family to live outside of Pakistan and those all seem perfectly well intentioned proposals that are in no way solutions to the underlying problem.
I am not arrogant enough to suggest that I know how to deal with this problem. I am confident that we need to be talking about this problem and how to fix it and that the problem should be receiving at least as much attention as the most recent daily tracking poll.