Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai has come a long way since she was shot at point blank range by Taliban gunmen on her way home from school in October 2012. The event prompted an immediate backlash against the Taliban in Pakistan, and subsequently thrust her onto the international stage. Now, after months of recovery in England, the 15-year-old is writing her first book: “I am Malala” will chronicle her traumatic shooting, as well as her campaign for girls’ education.
But despite past support from nearly all quarters, news of Yousafzai’s forthcoming memoir has aroused a backlash back home. While some of the anti-Malala rhetoric published in local newspapers, like the Pakistan Tribune, has taken the form of a vague anti-West discourse (dismissing the book as “western propaganda”), most of the negative reactions seem to focus on the large paycheck the young activist will reportedly earn: $3 million, or a sum that would take the average Pakistani 24,000 years to earn, based on Pakistan’s 2011-2012 per capita income. Additional critiques posted by anonymous Tribune readers dryly reflected resentment that the Pakistani government paid for the entirety of Yousafzai’s medical bills: “I guess it’s time to pay back the medical expenses!”
Reports of the backlash (still small in scope) are sure to please the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — the faction who countered widespread anger after Yousafzai’s attack with largely ineffective, not to mention contradictory, propaganda. Namely, conspiracy theories (i.e., the C.I.A. faked the shooting), boastful justifications for the act, and attempts to blacken Yousafzai’s character by casting her as a Western puppet (using a video of Madonna sporting a bra, thong, and “Malala” written on the swatch of skin in between, as fodder for the latter argument.)
Despite the public outcry in Pakistan in the wake of Yousafzai’s shooting, Islamabad has yet to crack down militarily on the TTP. However, with Malala’s global stature mounting — she will likely be nominated for the 2013 Nobel Peace — Yousafzai and her supporters could be positioned to exert more force, especially in the wake of the book’s publication. $3 million will make a major running start for the young activist. The question is whether she can keep ahead of local attempts to spin it.
