The Pakistani woman who defies the Taliban every day
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Version 0 of 1. A widow has spent the past few years openly defying the Taliban's strict rules designed to control women's appearance and behaviour. Gul Jima, a mother-of-six, has lived in South Waziristan in Pakistan for ten years after fleeing from her native Afghanistan. But she seemingly refuses to obey the strict rules imposed by the Taliban rebels - who had control of the province between 2007 and 2009 - which forbid women from going out in public without a male relative and a burqa. Ms Jima is spotted near every day sitting at a village market in Wacha Khawarah and telling stories about her past to anyone who stops to listen and give her some loose change, the Daily Pakistan reports. This is despite the Taliban continuing its insurgency after being overthrown and repeatedly threatening women who do not obey their commands. Men with Kalashnikovs patrol the streets but seem to pay no attention to the elderly woman sitting and telling her stories. Some locals say she is mentally ill and call her names, but she is regarded as a lovable feature of the town. The Pakistan Express Tribune reports that people say she reminds them of a time before the Taliban arrived where women could move freely and work in the fields in peace. Ms Jima lives in the region where education activist Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for campaigning for young girls’ right to go to school in 2012. The Taliban has blown up several schools across the Peshawar region including the massacre of 141 people, including 132 schoolchildren, at a military-run school in 2014. She had been writing and campaigning on the importance of girls’ education in the Swat Valley since 2009 and was shot by Taliban insurgents while on a bus with her school friends. After several months in intensive care in the UK, Ms Yousafzai recovered and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for her work campaigning for girls’ education. |