Why So Many Pakistanis Hate Their Nobel Peace Prize Winner

While official reaction was overwhelmingly positive, on Facebook and especially Twitter, Pakistan’s middle class dredges up old conspiracy theories.

After Pakistani Malala Yousufzai and Indian child advocate Kailash Satyarthi jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, official reaction in Pakistan was overwhelmingly positive. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called her the “Pride of Pakistan” and said girls and boys should “take the lead from her struggle and commitment.”

The spokesman for Pakistan’s powerful army, Asim Bajwal, weighed in with a congratulatory tweet, saying “Except for terrorists, all Pakistanis want their children in school.”

Even Imran Khan, the playboy cricketer-turned-politician who has been criticized for being soft on the Taliban and whose political party banned Malala’s autobiography in the part of Pakistan it controls, fêted her:

But in the darker regions of the Pakistan social media space, reaction was as scornful as it was celebratory, with many dredging up old theories that Malala was a plot by American, Indian, or Israeli intelligence agencies to defame Pakistan.

The BBC quoted Tariq Khattack, editor of the Pakistan Observer, condemning the prize and Malala:

“She is a normal, useless type of a girl. Nothing in her is special at all. She’s selling what the West will buy.”

Where does this animosity come from? Why isn’t she universally praised?

Malala came to prominence as an anonymous blogger for BBC Urdu in the deeply conservative Swat region of northwest Pakistan, where she bravely defied Taliban dictates that girls should not go to school. In 2012, after she had gone public with the support of her father, she was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen while on a bus. Rushed to Britain for treatment, she miraculously recovered and became an international campaigner for the rights of children—and especially girls—to get an education.

For Malala to be so uniquely honored when so many young girls in the Swat Valley face similar dangers engendered a lot of jealousy among many in Pakistan.

(thedailybeast.com)

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