Washington: The outpouring of nation-wide sentiment in Pakistan against the Taliban following its attack on teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai is a “silver lining” from this horrible tragedy, United States has said.
“Well we’ve seen in the past in Pakistan that when the Taliban commits truly heinous and outrageous acts like this, it galvanises popular opinion against them not only in the cities, but also in those towns and neighborhoods where they plot and hide,” the State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, told reporters here yesterday. “So obviously, the degree to which the Pakistani people turn against them help their government to go after them. That would be, perhaps, a silver lining from this horrible tragedy,” Nuland told reporters in response to a question at her daily news conference.
Meanwhile in an op-ed in Huffington Post, the former British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, wrote that Malala, who is struggling for her life in an hospital in Pakistan should be adopted by the world.
“As she fights the Taliban — who labelled her campaign for girls’ education an ‘obscenity’ — her courage should be celebrated and we should think of her as everyone’s daughter.
“Giving messages of support for Malala from all over the world, I have asked Pakistan’s President Zardari to pledge that Malala’s suffering will not be in vain,” Brown wrote.
“A few days ago I received a promise from him that his government will now do everything — providing teachers, resources and financial help for families — to get girls to school. “We agreed that the office of the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education would send a delegation to Pakistan to agree practical proposals to turn the promise of education for every girl into a reality by the end of 2015, the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goal of education for every child,” he said. (PTI)
