Candelight vigil in Karachi for Malala. Video by The Telegraph.

Yesterday Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty had a Facebook chat on Pakistan and the case of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old girl shot and seriously wounded by the Taliban because she campaigned for girl's education.

I asked this:

when
Western states or NGOs give prizes to activists like Malala, when the
US ambassador meets with her or when an NGO awards her an honor, does
this help or hurt by making her a target?

And the answer was:

I knew the answer to the question already, in a way, because I've always heard activists advocate publicity for themselves and their cause, and solidarity, and that they would be the judge as to the risks involved.

Yet when it comes to Pakistan, the risks are so high, I wondered really if that advice stood. It seems it does. It was always good advice in the Soviet-style countries but they didn't resort to violence as much; when the non-state actors came on the scene capable of murdering journalists and human rights defenders, and when we began to deal with deadly suppression of countries like Iran, I wondered if the same rules did appply. I felt I had to ask and hear it from those in the region in their own words.

Not everyone agrees. Amna Buttar is a human rights activist who left her career as a doctor
in the United States to work with Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. She writes in the Times "Room for Discussion":

We need to keep our attention fixed on the women and children of
Pakistan. They don't need special envoys, drones, or even foreign aid.
What they need is for ordinary citizens of the world to see them through
a new lens. What Pakistanis need is compassion. Ordinary citizens of
the world have to make Malala and others feel their sympathy for them.

Well, how can we really help without special envoys and aid — is it really enough merely to hold a sympathy candlelight vigil? And what's the plan to get rid of the Taliban anyway, if it doesn't include drones?

Still, I think there is likely a balance and some lines of risk regarding how close the West embraces the dissidents of Pakistan. I was mindful of a haunting post at Skateistan about the Afghan children who used to hang around near the American base and do skating. Six of them were killed in a Taliban suicide bombing near the ISAF base; four of them were in the Skateistan program. The suicide bomber himself was a child of 12 or 13. I keep seeing the image of Khorshid,  the defiant 14-year-old girl in the red sneakers and skating helmet.

The Taliban claimed they didn't kill children and didn't aim at children but targeted the ISAF base which they said was a CIA station. Yet they did kill the children. There's been enormous — and cunning — ideological spin from the Taliban and Islamist supporters and lefty anti-Western agitators on this — even claiming Malala was supposedly injured by a drone. She wasn't. She was shot by the Taliban.

Did the "adoption" of these children and fraternization in fact put them at risk? It seemed so, at least indirectly. I recently read a thoughtful blog called Hot Milk for Breakfast by a man who worked in Afghanistan  for three years — one of the best I've read in a long time. He blogged about the Skateistan kids being killed, and mused on the subject of whether we bring help or harm by our proximity — he knew these children, and worried about them being near the ISAF base. Here's another sad blog of a worker in Afghanistan.

I might have gone on worrying about whether the West was helping or harming someone like Malala, but then so many outpourings of sentiment and demonstrations of sympathy began occurring in Pakistan itself.

This surprised me, because I was used to seeing such dissent against the Taliban rather mutely expressed, if at all, and lots of politically-correct anti-sentiment, at least staged by the government, with little or no criticism of the Taliban.

The rally organized by Imran Khan was typical of this one-sided political agitation, and I felt CODE PINK walked right into this  — one of the leftist movements in the US that never seemed to grow beyond Port Huron on their obsession with anti-American and anti-Israel campaigning. I asked on Twitter whether CODE PINK was going to rise to the occasion while they were on a march of solidarity with the Pakistani people over the drones issue whether they'd condemn this shooting.

Interestingly, they did about two days later. They may have felt pressure to do so — critiques of the Taliban aren't part of their repetoire.

This blog by Jahanzaib Haque illustrates the political pressures in Pakistan — in this case the Taliban supporters began to demand "equal time" and "equality" of treatment on other cases.

Will Malala Yousafzai's Shooting Be Pakistan's Rosa Parks Moment? asked Mahawish Rezvi. She writes:

The country's anger is not only directed towards the gunman – though it
has spurred a massive hunt for those responsible for the shooting, with
news breaking on Friday that police had arrested
four suspects in the Swat Valley, where the attack occurred, and had
identified a mastermind, who remained at large. The fury is also
directed towards the Taliban as an organization that would mastermind
such an attack, and that has said it would hurt Malala again if she
survives. More than 50 Islamic scholars affiliated with the Sunni
Ittehad Council (SIC) have issued a joint fatwa calling the attack
un-Islamic. Political party leader Ataf Hussain, from the powerful
Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), appealed to his supporters to not attend
prayers led by any cleric that does not condemn the attack.

When was the last time you heard of 50 Sunni scholars issuing a fatway *against* violent attacks?!

There is talk that this case will galvanize an internal Pakistani movement to unite more to oppose the Taliban. I have to wonder how that will fare. If the powerful intelligence agencies themselves support the Taliban, how much can ordinary people oppose this?

Yet even the Taliban is mindful of its image and perhaps will "evolve"? There are some who think they can, and aren't the same Taliban of 2001, and that they have even been forced to concede the existence of girl's schools.

The moral opposition to drones emphasized by CODE PINK is one that I share, although I disavow the radical nature of their acts and one-sidedness. I always live in hope that a better left will appear that will not be attached to Marxism and anti-Westernism and "enemy of my enemy is my friend". This month they traveled to Pakistan to demonstrate with a political leader against drones, but then got blocked from moving into the tribal areas anyway.

It's creepy to me how those in think thanks (like the non-senior fellow Joshua Foust, leading the pack in drone apologetics) or universities, like Christine Fair, my nemesis, can coldly take the Administration's side on this, all the way making it appear as if this isn't the conservative or neocon view, but the smart, cool "progressive" think to do.  What do you call the political stance of these people who so scorn the right but adopt pro-Administration, pro-Russian, etc. positions?  If "neoliberal" wasn't already taken as the Marxists' favourite adjective to describe evil Amerikan capitalism, could they be called neo-liberals? Or Democratic hawks? I'm going to ponder this.

Fair, in a discussion in The New York Times makes a number of brainy observations to try to knock down reporting by journalists or human rights advocates, but she has no more information than they do. She says that the NGOs, like those who wrote the report Living Under Drones, are using local NGO numbers — and they are. I do believe that the Pakistani lawyer who traveled in the US and made a number of presentations has real clients and real cases including real dead or injured kids. To be sure, CODE PINK then exploits his more tethered information and exaggerates it.

Fair notes:

The Central Intelligence Agency and Pakistan’s intelligence agency and
military have revealed little about actual targets and outcomes, so we
cannot assess whether the people they were trying to kill were “drone
worthy.”

But then she goes on — in that vacuum of information! — to blast those trying to nevertheless work with this issue:

Most journalism relies on dubious Pakistani reports that exaggerate
innocent civilian casualties and discount terrorist fatalities. There
are few efforts to independently verify “first-hand accounts,” which are
always assumed to be true.

How were they supposed to do that when the CIA is secretive?! And how are they supposed to conduct independent verifications, in a place where the Taliban shoots 14-year-old girls and suicide bombers kill kids? Look, I have a better idea rather than sending NGO investigators into harm's way: let the CIA be willing to take compensation claims and they can research their bona fides. After all, the US military pays compensation for their "collateral damage". Why can't the CIA in the drones program?

Fair claims that drones are needed because there are no police, just a lot of militias and fighters, and that to have ground operations would risk more troops. OK, but one also has to examine whether repeated drone strikes that may be killing hundreds of innocent people could also start to really backfire in the "hearts and minds" department.

The US finds the outpouring of Pakistani support for Malala the "silver lining" in this tragedy — and I would have to say that it outpaces drones in terms of winning support, although it comes at a terrible price, Malala's injuries and the insecurity of all the other girls trying to get educated. She has been flown to the UK for further treatment.

The outpouring of sympathy in Pakistan isn't just an RFE/RL report, the national media has also reported it.