PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai returned to her Pakistan home village on Wednesday, 13 years after surviving an assassination attempt by militants.
Yousafzai was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when Pakistan Taliban militants boarded a bus and shot her in the head in the remote Swat Valley near the Afghanistan border.
She has made rare visits to the valley since, but it was the first time she returned to her childhood home in Shangla since being evacuated to the United Kingdom after the attack.
“As a child, I spent every holiday in Shangla, Pakistan, playing by the river and sharing meals with my extended family,” she said on X.
“It was such a joy for me to return there today — after 13 long years — to be surrounded by the mountains, dip my hands in the cold river and laugh with my beloved cousins. This place is very dear to my heart and I hope to return again and again.”
In this picture taken on May 18, 2018, shows houses in a forest area of the Swat valley of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in northwest Pakistan. (AFP/File)
Yousafzai was accompanied by her father, husband, and brother for the high-security visit by helicopter which lasted just three hours.
Authorities have been cautious in allowing her to return to Shangla district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where militancy has soared following the return of the Afghan Taliban in Kabul in 2021.
The area was sealed off for several hours to provide security for her visit on Wednesday, which included a stop at local education projects backed by her Malala Fund.
“Her visit was kept highly secret to avoid any untoward incidents,” a senior administration official told AFP on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
“Even the locals were unaware of her plans to visit.”
The Pakistan Taliban is a separate but closely linked group to the Afghan Taliban and controlled swaths of the border regions at the time Yousafzai was shot.
Militants had ordered girls to stay home, but she continued to secretly go to school and wrote a blog about her experience.
She went on to become an education activist and the world’s youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner at age 17.
In January, she addressed Muslim world leaders at an education conference in Islamabad where she called for action against the Afghan Taliban, who have banned teenage girls from going to school.
Her hometown visit comes in a week marred by violence in Pakistan, with 18 civilians and soldiers killed in an overnight suicide attack on a military compound in the same province.
“I pray for peace in every corner of our beautiful country. The recent attacks, including in Bannu yesterday, are heartbreaking,” Yousafzai said of the attack.
