More Pakistani girls attending school and Malala had nothing to do with it

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When the Pakistani Taliban shot Malala Yousafzai in the head, their message to the world was simple: girls have no right to an education and their dreams of a better future should be crushed.

The attack portrayed the world's only Muslim nuclear power in an appalling light as Western leaders and celebrities fell over themselves to turn Malala into a global icon of child rights.

But while she gears up to address the UN General Assembly on Friday - her 16th birthday and nine months since the shooting - more girls than ever in her home, Pakistan's northwestern Swat valley, are in school.

Educationalists say it has less to do with Malala's fame and more to do with a growing confidence that far from being resurgent, Taliban influence is declining in Swat.

"Many students were actually scared when the government named a college after Malala," said Anwar Sultana, head mistress of Government Girls High School No 1, the oldest in Mingora, the main town in Swat.

Last December, around 150 girls at another school protested against the renaming of their college after the injured schoolgirl, fearing it would make them a target for militants.

They tore up and stoned pictures of Malala, since nominated for the Nobel Peace prize and now being privately educated in Britain, accusing her of abandoning Pakistan.

But Sultana says more girls are now going to school because people feel more liberated as more time passes since the Pakistan army quashed a 2007-9 Taliban insurgency in the valley.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Girls-throng-to-school-in-Swat-as-Malala-addresses-UN/articleshow/21032389.cms