History Today: How the Taliban tried to silence Malala Yousafzai but failed

One bullet. This one bullet made history when it pierced the head of 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai as she was returning home from school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. This one incident turned a relatively unknown teenager into a worldwide household name as she received the Nobel Peace Prize and shone a spotlight on the barbarity of the Taliban.

We take a walk down memory lane as part of Firstpost’s _History Toda_y and recount how Malala Yousafzai was shot at, almost killing her.

October 9 is also marks the day when India’s perhaps ‘kindest’ businessman Ratan Tata breathed his last, as well as when socialist revolutionary and guerrilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, was killed by the Bolivian army.

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Taliban tries to silence Malala Yousafzai

Malala Yousafzai was like any ordinary girl living in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. However, raised by progressive parents, Malala chose not to remain silent against the prohibition on the education of girls that was imposed by the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP; sometimes called Pakistani Taliban).

In early 2009, when she was 11, she wrote a blog under her pseudonym Gul Makai for the BBC Urdu to detail her life during the Taliban’ s occupation of Swat. Her continuous activism for girls’ education soon caught the attention of the Taliban.

On October 9, 2012, when she was just 15 years of age, she was returning home from school in a bus full of girls when gunmen halted the van. One of the gunmen then yelled, “Which one of you is Malala? Speak up, otherwise I will shoot you all.”

Upon being identified, Yousafzai was shot at three times. One of the bullets entered and exited her head and lodged in her shoulder. Malala was seriously wounded.

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Two other girls were also wounded in the shooting: Kainat Riaz and Shazia Ramzan. However, they escaped with minor injuries.

Malala was quickly rushed to a military hospital in Peshawar and later airlifted to Germany and finally to the United Kingdom where she received the best medical treatment possible. Less than three months after being gunned down, she was discharged from the hospital to continue her rehabilitation at her family’s temporary home.

And beyond her hospital room, a world sympathetic with her ordeal transformed her into a global symbol for the fight to allow girls everywhere access to an education. The United Nations even declared November 10, Malala Day as a day of action to focus on “Malala and the 32 million girls like Malala not at school.”

The shooting sparked outrage in and outside of Pakistan. In Pakistan, initially supporters gathered in small vigils to pray for her. Later, support snowballed and even then Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani took a stand, declaring: “We refuse to bow before terror.”

In October 2014, Malala, along with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, was named a Nobel Peace Prize winner. At age 17, she became the youngest person to receive this prize. Accepting the award, Malala reaffirmed that “This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.”

Today, Malala is a married woman and an active proponent of education as a fundamental social and economic right. And last year, she added another feather to her cap: she became a film producer with the documentary, The Last of the Sea Women.

India says ‘tata’ to its kindest businessman

October 9 will also be forever remembered in India, as it was the day when Indian tycoon Ratan Tata, the head of the Tata Group, passed away in Mumbai at the age of 86.

As news broke, tributes poured in from the industry and beyond. Prime Minister Narendra Modi led the tributes, hailing the industrialist as “a compassionate soul and an extraordinary human being”.

During his tenure as chairman of the Tata Group, the conglomerate made several high-profile acquisitions, including the takeover of Anglo-Dutch steelmaker Corus, UK-based car brands Jaguar and Land Rover, and Tetley, the world’s second-largest tea company. UK Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said in tribute that Tata was a “titan of the business world” who “played a huge role in shaping British industry”.

Even after retiring from business, Tata remained a popular figure on social media, with heartfelt posts about animal rights (particularly dogs) and appeals to Indian citizens. He even carried on a tradition dating back to the time of Jamsetji Tata, that Bombay House, the Tata group’s headquarters, remained a haven for stray dogs.

Che Guevara killed by Bolivian army

On October 9, 1967 is also the day when Cuba’s socialist revolutionary and guerrilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, was killed by the Bolivian army.

His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara’s remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.

But who was Guevara?

Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna was born to a well-off family in Argentina in 1928. While studying medicine at the University of Buenos Aires, he took time off to travel around South America on a motorcycle. It was during his travels that he witnessed the poverty and oppression of the lower classes.

He received a medical degree in 1953 and continued his travels around Latin America, becoming involved with left-wing organisations. In the mid 1950s, Guevara met up with Fidel Castro and his group of exiled revolutionaries in Mexico. Guevara played a key role in Castro’s seizure of power from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and later served as Castro’s right-hand man and minister of industry. Guevara strongly opposed US domination in Latin America and advocated peasant-based revolutions to combat social injustice in Third World countries.

Following his death, Guevara achieved hero status among people around the world as a symbol of anti-imperialism and revolution. A 1960 photo taken by Alberto Korda of Guevara in a beret became iconic and has since appeared on countless posters and T-shirts. However, not everyone considers Guevara a hero: He is accused, among other things, of ordering the deaths of hundreds of people in Cuban prisons during the revolution.

This Day, That Year

1986: The Phantom of the Opera written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Richard Stilgoe opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London’s West End. The plot of the musical was inspired by French author Gaston Leroux’s novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, which follows the life of Erik or the Phantom, a disfigured musical genius. The musical is the longest running show on Broadway.

2004: On October 9, for the first time in Afghanistan’s history, voters went to the polls to choose a president, selecting Hamid Karzai, who served as the interim president after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001.

2009: US President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Norwegian Nobel Committee called “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”