Malala Yousafzai Returns to Pakistan Six Years After Being Shot by the Taliban
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and girls' education advocate Malala Yousafzai has returned to Pakistan nearly six years after she was shot in the head by the Taliban. The 20-year-old activist arrived Thursday at Benazir Bhutto International Airport and is expected to meet with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi while she is in Islamabad, CNN reports. Security in the capital has reportedly been tightened for her visit. This is Yousafzai's first trip back since 2012, when masked gunmen stopped her school bus and shot her. The assassination attempt was claimed by the Pakistani Taliban in retaliation for Yousafzai's vocal support for girls' education. A spokesman for the militants said Yousafzai, then just 15, was targeted because "she was pro-West, she was speaking against Taliban, and she was calling President Obama her idol.", At the age of 11, Yousafzai began writing for the BBC Urdu service about life under strict Taliban rule and the importance of girls' schooling. After surviving the attack, Yousafzai was put in a medically induced coma and airlifted to Britain for surgery. Read more Girls Can Change the WorldBut We Have to Invest in Them First, The world's youngest Nobel laureate continued championing girls' rights to education, and started the Malala Fund, which supports secondary education initiatives for girls in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and Nigeria, as well as in countries hosting Syrian refugees. Yousafzai is continuing her own education studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University.