Malala Yousafzai returns to Pakistan for first time since assassination attempt

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PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Malala Yousafzai, the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, on Thursday returned home to Pakistan for the first time since the Taliban tried to end her campaign for female education by shooting her in the head.

Instead of being silenced by the 2012 attack that gravely wounded her, she went on to become a globally recognized advocate for moderation and girls' education.

Malala Yousafzai at U.N. headquarters in New York last year.Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images

"The visit was kept a secret due to security issues," a relative said on condition of anonymity after 20-year-old Yousafzai was greeted at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad by government and security officials. She was taken to a hotel under tight security, the relative said.

Yousafzai, who as an 11-year-old started an anonymous diary describing a girl's thirst for education and is now a student at Oxford University in England, will be reunited with some family members in Pakistan's capital of Islamabad during the four-day visit, according to relatives. She will not visit Swat because of the concerns for her safety, they said.

She is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi and other government officials later on Thursday.

"It was a month ago when she decided to visit Pakistan at any cost," said a second relative who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of a Taliban reprisal. "Pakistani authorities allowed her to visit Pakistan on condition that she will not go to Swat ... because of serious security concerns."

Once known as the Switzerland of Pakistan, Swat was under the Taliban's harsh rule between 2007 and 2009, during which they banned music and tried to halt female education. In 2009, the army launched a massive offensive against militants, pushing them largely out of the valley. Still, some fighters and sympathizers remain to this day, threatening or killing critics.

Yousafzai had already won international acclaim as an advocate for women's education when she caught the attention of the Taliban. On Oct. 9, 2012, a gunman stormed her school bus in the city of Mingora and shot her in the face at point-blank range and also wounded two schoolmates. The Taliban said at the time that the attack was meant to punish Yousafzai for promoting western culture and speaking out against the militants.

She was critically wounded but recovered at a hospital in Britain.

Since then, she has become a worldwide symbol of female empowerment, founding the Malala Fund, a charity dedicated to giving all girls access to education, with her father, Ziauddin.

Yousafzai told David Letterman in a recent episode of his Netflix interview series that she had been searching for an opportunity to return to Pakistan.

"I want my feet to touch that land and to be there," she said.

Mushtaq Yusufzai reported from Peshawar, Ethan Sacks from New York and Alex Johnson from Los Angeles.

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