Malala’s Noble ‘Dynamite’ & Nabila’s Bombing Drone

Malala’s Noble ‘Dynamite’ & Nabila’s Bombing Drone

By Dr Shahid Qureshi : -


The announcement of 50% Noble prize to Malala Yousafzai a Pakistani teenager, a victim of terrorism and later abuse by people around her has excited people especially the elite in Pakistan. She is the youngest to receive such an award. However people are questioning the credibility of the awarding itself and agenda behind this? Obviously when Malala was hanging around with infamous Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen of Bangladesh surely raised eyebrows. So what kind of company Malala is keeping?


Malala did not utter a word of condemnations about the killings of innocent children also small girls and bombing of schools in Gaza or probably her over ambitious father did not dare to go against the PR Company hired for her. The co-author of Malala’s book Christina Lamb was deported from Pakistan for planting a story that Osama Bin Laden was travelling from Queeta by air to Islamabad.


The Nation reported on 21 October 2001:
“The Federal Ministry of Information’s External Publicity Wing summoned the British journalist, Christina Lamb, for explanation about her involvement in an anti Pakistan conspiracy to illegally prove Osama’s presence in the Pakistan, officials said:


“Lamb offered an unqualified apology and pledged not to commit any such ugly act in future, the official said. Meanwhile, Christina Lamb and her photographer colleague, Mr. Justin are said to have decided to pack up after this incident and they are likely to leave Pakistan.  The government has broadened the scope of investigations and tightened the surveillance of foreign journalists after Ms. Lamb’s episode to malign Pakistan through fake travel documents in the name of Osama bin Laden.”


Malala’s father was offered a high profile job by the government of Pakistan in the Birmingham consulate out of all rules. Since her arrival in the UK government of Pakistan is religiously paying her school fees and all expanses as a special case. One source told that, ‘the hospital in Birmingham asked for advance payments when she was requested to change the room’.


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.”
Pakistani elite is naïve and will do anything to get an award when even their actions bring shame or undermine the country’s honour and interests for example a Canadian resident Sharmeen Chnoy won Oscars by making a film on acid victim in Pakistan by promising large sum of money about Rs. 3 million.


The Express Tribune reported 28 June 2012: “Acid victim Rukhsana, featured in Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s Oscar winning documentary Saving Face, has alleged that the filmmaker promised to give her Rs3 million and a house, and also promised to help her with plastic surgery for working in the film, but did not fulfil any of her promises.
Rukhsana told the media that Obaid-Chinoy made her sign blank papers but a year has passed and none of her promises have been fulfilled. “In our family we wear the topi-burqa… When she [Obaid-Chinoy] got the Oscar, the film was shown across the world. When my husband saw it, he expelled me from the house and even my parents stopped talking to me,” Rukhsana said. The acid victim also claimed that she had sent a legal notice to the filmmaker through a lawyer… What kind of journalism and award is that?


Similarly another Pakistani citizen resident in Italy who got the Nobel Prize was Dr Abdus Salam. However, as Anthony Tucker’s obituary in The Guardian (22 November 1996) noted that ‘in spite of his powerful influence in world physics, his eminence in the West and lifelong commitment to science in developing countries, in his own country Abdus Salam is blamed for the starvation of important areas of science through encouraging theoretical and nuclear physics and by inference, weapons research’. Anthony Tucker also said that Abdus Salam `was a vigorous supporter of Pugwash’ and he `sought nuclear disarmament’. His unwillingness to contribute to the development of science in Pakistan can also be attributed to his being a committed and proselytising member of the heretic Qadiyani community.


The Chinese received Dr Salam as an eminent Pakistani scientist and, it is probable, that they might spoke to him freely about their cooperation with Pakistan’s nuclear program. It may have been a coincidence that Pakistan’s ‘Islamic bomb’ became news soon after his visit. The BBC-1 TV current affairs program, ‘Panorama’, aired in June 1980, mentioned Abdus Salam as one of those who were present at a 1972 ‘ meeting where Zulfikar AIi Bhutto had ‘ allegedly taken a decision to make a nuclear bomb.


Dr Abdus Salams’s position as scientific adviser, however, came to an abrupt end in 1974 when upon orders from Zulifqar Ali Bhutto the ministry of interior told the PAEC not to allow him anymore into its laboratories?
There are similarities between the characters of Ann Frank a 2nd World War character that also wrote diaries during the war like Malala Yousafzai. Surely she is part of the psychological warfare operation against the Taliban terrorists.


Nabila Rehman another Pakistani victim of terrorism this time by the US drones did not receive a warm reception in Washington as Malala because she was showing the real face of hypocrisy of the warmongers.
Unlike Malala Yousafzai, Nabila Rehman did not receive a welcoming greeting in Washington DC, wrote Murtaza Hussain a Tronrto based analyst wrote on 1st November 2013 in Al-Jazeera.


“Nabila, a slight girl of nine with striking hazel eyes, asked a simple question in her testimony: ‘What did my grandmother do wrong?’” writes Murtaza Hussain [Reuters].



On 24th October 2012, a Predator drone flying over North Waziristan came upon eight-year-old Nabila Rehman, her siblings, and their grandmother as they worked in a field beside their village home. Her grandmother, Momina Bibi, was teaching the children how to pick okra as the family prepared for the coming Eid holiday. However on this day the terrible event would occur that would forever alter the course of this family’s life. In the sky the children suddenly heard the distinctive buzzing sound emitted by the CIA-operated drones – a familiar sound to those in the rural Pakistani villages which are stalked by them 24 hours a day – followed by two loud clicks. The unmanned aircraft released its deadly payload onto the Rehman family, and in an instant the lives of these children were transformed into a nightmare of pain, confusion and terror. Seven children were wounded, and Nabila’s grandmother was killed before her eyes, an act for which no apology, explanation or justification has ever been given.


This past week Nabila, her schoolteacher father (like Malala’s father), and her 12-year-old brother travelled to Washington DC to tell their story and to seek answers about the events of that day. However, despite overcoming incredible obstacles in order to travel from their remote village to the United States, Nabila and her family were roundly ignored. At the congressional hearing where they gave testimony, only five out of 430 representatives showed up. In the words of Nabila’s father to those few who did attend: “My daughter does not have the face of a terrorist and neither did my mother. It just doesn’t make sense to me, why this happened… as a teacher, I wanted to educate Americans and let them know my children have been injured.”


The translator broke down in tears while recounting their story, but the government made it a point to snub this family and ignore the tragedy it had caused to them. Nabila, a slight girl of nine with striking hazel eyes, asked a simple question in her testimony: “What did my grandmother do wrong?” There was no one to answer this question, and few who cared to even listen. Symbolic of the utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.


Selective memory
It is useful to contrast the American response to Nabila Rehman with that of Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was nearly assassinated by the Pakistani Taliban. While Malala was feted by Western media figures, politicians and civic leaders for her heroism, Nabila has become simply another one of the millions of nameless, faceless people who have had their lives destroyed over the past decade of American wars. The reason for this glaring discrepancy is obvious. Since Malala was a victim of the Taliban, she, despite her protestations, was seen as a potential tool of political propaganda to be utilised by war advocates. She could be used as the human face of their effort, a symbol of the purported decency of their cause, the type of little girl on behalf of whom the United States and its allies can say they have been unleashing such incredible bloodshed. Tellingly, many of those who took up her name and image as a symbol of the justness of American military action in the Muslim world did not even care enough to listen to her own words or feelings about the subject.


As described by the Washington Post’s Max Fisher:
Western fawning over Malala has become less about her efforts to improve conditions for girls in Pakistan, or certainly about the struggles of millions of girls in Pakistan, and more about our own desire to make ourselves feel warm and fuzzy with a celebrity and an easy message. It’s a way of letting ourselves off the hook, convincing ourselves that it’s simple matter of good guys vs bad guys, that we’re on the right side and that everything is okay.


But where does Nabila fit into this picture? If extrajudicial killings, drone strikes and torture are in fact all part of a just-cause associated with the liberation of the people of Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere, where is the sympathy or even simple recognition for the devastation this war has caused to countless little girls such as her? The answer is clear: The only people to be recognized for their suffering in this conflict are those who fall victim to the enemy. Malala for her struggles was to be made the face of the American war effort – against her own will if necessary – while innumerable little girls such as Nabila will continue to be terrorized and murdered as part of this war without end. There will be no celebrity appearances or awards ceremonies for Nabila. At her testimony almost no one even bothered to attend.


But if they had attended, they would’ve heard a nine-year-old girl asking the questions which millions of other innocent people who have had their lives thrown into chaos over the past decade have been asking: “When I hear that they are going after people who have done wrong to America, then what have I done wrong to them? What did my grandmother do wrong to them? I didn’t do anything wrong.”


May it be Malala, Sharmeen or Salam they all got something for themselves but shamed the whole nation at international stage?


So the officials of Pakistan must read the small print before signing as it always the case of ‘buyer be-aware’.