ISLAMABAD _ A 14-year-old girl who became a national heroine when she protested the Pakistani Taliban’s ban on education for girls in her home district was shot in the head Tuesday as she waited for a ride home from her beloved school, according to officials and witnesses.

Malala Yousufzai, who was only 11 when she stood up to the Taliban over their ban, was sitting in a school van in Swat with other students, waiting to go home, when an assailant approached, asked which student was Malala, then opened fire. She was airlifted to a hospital in the provincial capital, where she was reported in critical condition. Fortunately, doctors said, the bullet did not enter her brain.

Claiming responsibility, Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, the main faction of Pakistan’s home-grown Taliban, warned that if she survived, it would return to attack her again. Earlier this year, the TTP had stated that she was on its hit list for her “secular” views.

“She was young, but she was promoting Western culture,” TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told local news media, adding that it was a warning to other youngsters.

The Pakistan military supposedly cleared Swat, a district in northern Pakistan, of Taliban in 2009, but the area still has a heavy military presence.

Two girls who were in the van and injured when the gunman opened fire described the attack to local reporters from their hospital beds.

Malala came to the world’s attention when her diary, written under a pseudonym, was the basis for a series of reports by the local Urdu language service of the BBC. In it she described what was happening in Swat, which was then under Taliban control. Then, with the Taliban menace still present, in early 2009 Malala spoke out on television, always sticking carefully to her demand only for schooling.

In a Pakistani television appearance in Swat, with Taliban sympathizers in the audience, the then-preteen Malala had said, “I don’t mind if I have to sit on the floor at school. All I want is education. And I am afraid of no one.”

Malala said then that her ambition was to become a politician. “This country is in crisis, and our governments are lazy,” she said.

The shooting of the girl more than three years later immediately renewed debate over what to do about the Pakistani Taliban. Despite their relentless violence since 2007, some Pakistanis see the extremist group as nothing more than a reaction to the central government’s support for the American presence in Afghanistan and U.S. drone missile strikes in the country’s tribal area, the Taliban’s traditional area of operation.

The creeping control of the Pakistani Taliban over several years, from at least 2005. The extremists’ domination was complete by 2007, seemingly accepted by Pakistan’s central government, which in February 2009 signed a treaty with the Taliban that effectively handed them Swat. It was only after U.S. pressure, and the Taliban’s decision to stage a takeover of the neighboring district of Buner, that the Pakistani military launched an operation to dislodge them in May 2009.

By Saeed Shah

McClatchy Newspapers

Shah is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent.

Distributed by MCT Information Services