Malala Returns to Pakistan for First Time Since Attack

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for girls’ education and the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, returned to Pakistan early Thursday in her first visit since an attack by Taliban militants gravely wounded her in 2012.

Her homecoming was wrapped in relative secrecy, and details of her visit have not been publicly confirmed.

But Ms. Yousafzai, now 20 and studying at Oxford, is expected to stay mostly in Islamabad, the capital, during her four-day visit, where she met with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi on Thursday.

“I still can’t believe that it is actually happening,” Ms. Yousafzai said in a visibly emotional speech at the prime minister’s office. “In the last five years, I have always dreamed of coming back to my country.”

As the audience erupted into applause, Ms. Yousafzai broke into tears and for a moment cupped her hands to cover her face.

“I am just 20 years old, but I have seen a lot in life,” she continued with a choked voice, recalling how she grew up in the picturesque Swat region only to watch it slide into extremism and terrorism. “I never wanted to leave my country.”

She is expected to visit her childhood home in the Swat Valley and the site where the Taliban attacked her. And in a nearby district, Shangla, she will inaugurate a large school for girls being built with aid from the Malala Fund, an advocacy organization for girls’ education worldwide that she founded in 2013.

“She does not want to make it a very public, official homecoming,” said Marriyum Aurangzeb, Pakistan’s state minister for information. “She wants to meet her friends and family members.”

Ms. Aurangzeb called Ms. Yousafzai’s visit a “big, big moment for Pakistan.”

“She is a person who had the guts to stand up against militants,” she added, “and her coming back to Pakistan is also symbolic that we are winning in our fight against extremism and militancy.”

Ms. Yousafzai and two other schoolgirls in Swat were shot by Taliban militants in October 2012.

They were specifically targeting her: Though only 15, she was already widely known for her advocacy for girls’ education, placing her in defiance of militant leaders who had banned such schooling in areas they controlled. One of the gunmen shouted, “Who is Malala?” as he boarded her school bus.

All three girls survived, but Ms. Yousafzai was critically hurt, with a bullet grazing her brain and lodging in her neck. Doctors in Britain spent months rebuilding her skull, and she soon returned to her advocacy work — this time with a global audience of admirers. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014.

Despite that, she has been harshly criticized by some Pakistanis, particularly those on the far right who accuse her of being a dupe for the West’s agenda.

Security during her visit in Pakistan was heavy from the start, when she and her family arrived at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in the dark of the early morning.

The local news media reported that Ms. Yousafzai was brought to Islamabad with a large security contingent.

During her stay, she plans to meet with two Peshawar-based doctors who performed the first surgeries on her after the attack, Ms. Aurangzeb said.

Ms. Yousafzai had originally planned to come to Pakistan in November, but the visit was postponed, Ms. Aurangzeb said. Mr. Abbasi, the prime minister, met with Ms. Yousafzai in September on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly session in New York, and discussed her plans to visit, Ms. Aurangzeb said.

Sana ul Haq contributed reporting from Mingora, Pakistan.

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