Case Study: The Story of Malala Yousafzai  

1. Provide an overview of your case study (social, political, economic circumstances, if applicable) :

The home province of Malala Yousafzai is called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as North West Frontier Province or Waziristan (by the locals) and is situated in the northern region of Pakistan. The militant group of Taliban has created a stronghold in certain secluded valleys of the region and has been creating disturbances and violating human rights for a long time. They are also allegedly responsible for hundreds of suicide bombing attacks all over the country for years, which now have significantly reduced and even stopped in majority of the cities.                            

In October 2007, the Pakistani Army launched an attack to clear the Taliban from the valleys of Swat and Upper Dir of the Khyber province, then called NWFP. The fighting continued until late 2008 when the Pakistani army had cleared a majority of the areas of Taliban and were planning to launch a major offensive until political pressure led them to sign a peace treaty with the Taliban to let them maintain a stronghold in remaining few localities.

Unfortunately, in 2009, the Taliban broke their peace treaty and gained morale and recaptured the districts and started governing them again, with their iron fists.

Malala’s town of Mingora in Swat was one of them. Her school had been repeatedly closing and reopening due to the threat of the Taliban. In the vacations of winter 2008, the Taliban had finally begun to restrict girls’ education by imposing laws against reopening. Malala saw that the boys’ schools had already got a reopening date but the fate of girls’ schools was not known.

As early as September 2008, Malala had begun to speak up for her education rights. In January 2009, when her schools remained shut, she was prompted to do more. Finally, the BBC approached a girl to write a diary but her parents refused. Later, Malala was asked to do so and she started writing diaries under a pen name for BBC Urdu.

2.What form of technology was used in your case study and how wide-spread was the usage and access to this

particular form of technology?

Malala used to write handwritten diaries and give them to BBC Urdu reporters who translated them into English and published the entries onto the official BBC website where hundreds of viewers read and commented and shared them onto social networking websites. BBC, being a primary source of news worldwide, ensured that access to her diary entries was open to people all over the world.

3. Which groups of citizens were involved in its usage and why? 

Malala, an eleven year old was its sole user.

She firmly believed in the right to education for everyone.  Education was her first priority and she did not stop thinking about it, even under the harsh Taliban rule and their threats. Her father took her to a press club in the city of Peshawar where she stated, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?" Malala told her audience. She explained how she would never bow to the Taliban's demands and how she hid her textbooks under her clothes while walking to school.

She was the sole user and voice of her people in the valley, mainly because the others were apprehensive of speaking out so boldly against such a strong, barbaric force of Taliban.

4.What is the particular political context of your area? Why do you feel this form of technology was utilized?

The political situation of the Swat region, in fact the entire northern part of the province is extremely tense and the Pakistani government does not have any kind of influence in those areas. To date, the Taliban have been ruling strongly and creating laws that violates basic human rights. Apart from banning education for girls, the Taliban had also prohibited women from going shopping and also banned music in the districts, citing the reason that these things were ‘unIslamic’. In short, the political context of the region is hardly democratic or impossible to describe as a part of Pakistan-controlled region.

The types of technology utilized by Malala:

• BBC Urdu Diary: Malala did not directly use the internet at that time to write her experiences, mainly because the original users of her story were the BBC journalists, who wanted the world to know about the everyday lives of the ordinary people in the troubled region. Hence, it was BBC Urdu’s journalists’ initiative to present a diary.The probable reason that they chose to publish a diary as opposed to just writing articles of their own and just citing her was because they perhaps felt that the direct words of a normal child, writing about her experiences in such a war like situation would impact the readers more, and give out a better picture of the situation there.

• TV and Radio Shows: Though her only contact with the outside world, beyond the borders of her town, Mingora, was this diary. But when Malala gained popularity, she started appearing on local radio stations and even a popular Pakistani TV talk show, Capital Talk. She spoke strongly about her views and activism against the Taliban on these shows.(Just days after her appearance on the talk show, the leader of the Taliban in her area announced the lifting of the ban on women’s education, although they were supposed to wear a burqa; a cloak worn by devout women in South Asia and Middle East.) 

I personally believe this strategy was taken in to educate the general Pakistani public, both in her locality and all over the country in their own mother tongue where she could be easily understood on a social platform. 

• Documentaries: She also raised her voice by featuring in a documentary, months later. All her activism were recorded and shared on social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Documentaries provide in-depth knowledge to the actual situation and are usually accurate when it comes to facts. Journalist know that documentaries are one of the few trusted sources of information in the media, and they felt they could accurately portray Malala in a documentary.

• Facebook: She later created her own Facebook account and communicated with her followers and supporters and posted regular updates of her work. Initially, she did not directly and openly communicate with her supporters. But as her support base grew along with her popularity, it was felt that she needed a more direct, modern and convenient way to communicate with the world.

5. How successful do you feel that citizens were in terms of making their voices heard and receiving positive change? What evidence do you have to demonstrate this?

Under a strict barbarian iron fist of a rule which Malala lived, not many women were able to make their voices heard in protest of the events that were going on.  Not just women, in fact, men too, did not speak publicly against the outrageous activities of the Taliban, with a fear for their lives. They may have been strongly opposing the acts committed by the Taliban, or their heavily misinterpreted ‘religious’ laws but outside, their fear stopped them from doing anything.

In such a situation, the story of Malala Yousafzai is an extremely inspirational one.  Her courage to write against the Taliban, record it and send it to be published for the whole world to read is admirable. Especially since another, much older girl was asked to write a diary, but she refused, fearing for herself and her family’s lives. Nobody can blame the other girl; the Taliban had inculcated a mindset of fear from the people in these troubled regions. But Malala’s determinance, love for education and her strong view that education was a basic right brought a lot of difference. I believe she made an extreme difference in the regular dreary lives of the people. The way a young seventh grader in such a war-torn valley, with few resources and facilities, managed to tell the world her story, with simple words and innocent diary entries is remarkable. Of course the BBC had set the stage for her but her activism later on showed that all she needed was a little boost to show her true potential. Attending talk shows, radio station interviews and speaking in public conferences was the route she took before she got proper access to internet. Media, once again, aided her but she also knew how to handle it to create awareness of the difficult lives that the people in the valley face.