PESHAWAR: A Pakistani Taliban commander has written a letter to Malala Yousafzai, the teenage girl activist shot in the head by the group, saying he wished he could have warned her to stop criticising the militants so she wouldn't have been attacked.
The commander, Adnan Rashid, did not say the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai last October was wrong, only that he found it ''shocking'' and wished it hadn't happened.
Rashid, who has close relations with Taliban leaders, said the letter expressed his own opinion, not that of the group.
Adnan Rashid was the prime convict in an attack on former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf and was freed by Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) fighters during the Bannu Jail break last year.
The former junior technician of Pakistan Air Force, Rashid was a resident of Chota Lahor area of Swabi district. He is fluent in English, Pashto and Urdu. He used to contribute to several social networking sites including Blogs and Facebook from the prison. He had joined PAF in 1997. He was around 24 when he was arrested in early 2004.
Gunmen from the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) shot Malala, now 16, in the head in her home town in Swat, in the country's northwest, where she campaigned for the right of girls to go to school, last October.
The Taliban's attack on Malala, who was 15 years old at the time, sparked international condemnation of the militant group.
Malala made a powerful speech to the UN on Friday in her first public appearance since the attack which almost killed her, vowing to continue her struggle for education and not be silenced by the militants.
In an open letter released Wednesday, Rashid said he personally wished the attack had not happened, but accused her of running a smearing campaignagainst the militants.
It is amazing that you are shouting for education, you and the UNO (UN) is pretending that you were shot due to education, although this is not the reason ... not the education but your propaganda was the issue, Rashid wrote.
What you are doing now, you are using your tongue on the behest of the others.
He accused Malala of seeking to promote an education system begun by the British colonialists to produce Asians in blood but English in taste and said students should study Islam and not what it called the satanic or secular curriculum.
I advise you to come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture, join any female Islamic madrassa near your home town, study and learn the book of Allah, use your pen for Islam and plight of Muslim ummah (community), Rashid wrote.
He said he had originally wanted to write to Malala to warn her against criticising the Taliban when she rose to prominence with a blog for the BBC Urdu service chronicling life under the militants' 2007-9 rule in Swat AP/AFP/Dawn.com
Nobody will believe a word the Taliban say about the right of girls like Malala to go to school until they stop burning down schools and stop massacring pupils, said Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister and now UN Special Envoy for Global Education, who has supported Malala since she was shot
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