Malala Yousafzai, extremism, and Pakistan’s response

I wrote a long feature for the New Statesman last week, looking at the response to the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, attitudes to the Taliban and to girls’ education, and the situation for female activists in Pakistan. The article is now online – you can read it online here. (Cutting below).

For the article, I had the privilege of interviewing Mukhtar Mai, a woman who was gang-raped, fought the case, and became an iconic advocate of womens’ rights. As only a small section of the interview made it into the final feature, I’ve published the rest of the transcript over at my New Statesman blog.