In 2001, at the start of the American-led 'War on Terror,' a new leader came into power in Pakistan: General Pervez Musharraf. It was during Zia’s reign that Osama Bin Laden traveled to Pakistan to help in its fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. As a result, Pakistan began to receive large amounts of foreign aid and military training from the United States. Zia skillfully made an alliance with the United States by promising to aid the U.S. This rapid growth came to an abrupt end in the 1980s, when the country came under the control of General Zia, a violent dictator who oversaw a general radicalization of the Pakistani population. In the 1950s and 60s, the supposed “Golden Age” of the country, Pakistan’s economy grew rapidly. While Gandhi had proposed a one-state successor to British rule, India and Pakistan ultimately became two separate countries, with Pakistan home to a larger percentage of Muslims and India home to a larger number of Hindus. In the 1940s, following the end of World War II, the British Empire abandoned its imperial territories in Asia. During the 1920s and 30s, the great Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi led a nonviolent resistance against the British Empire, which, at the time, controlled the area that would eventually become India and Pakistan. I Am Malala alludes to a great number of events in Pakistani history, beginning with the story of the country’s founding in 1947. In 2014, she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in its 114-year history. Malala made a full recovery from her bullet wounds, and continued to actively campaign for women’s rights and education. She was treated in Pakistani military hospitals, and afterwards, thanks to her international fame, taken to superior medical facilities in Birmingham, England. In the fall of 2012, Malala was shot by a Taliban soldier. She gave interviews in which she criticized the rise of the violent religious extremist group, the Taliban, in her country. Following these two projects, Malala became increasingly active in the media, in spite of her young age. She also made an appearance in a New York Times documentary on life in Pakistan under the Taliban. At the age of 11, Malala began writing a diary for a BBC blog, thanks to contacts her father had established. From an early age, Malala was conscious of the inferior position of women in her society: she was especially conscious of the difference between her mother, Tor Pekai, a woman with no formal education, and her father, a man with considerable training in writing, poetry, and oration. Growing up, Ziauddin encouraged Malala to study literature and rhetoric, and to express herself freely. Malala Yousafzai was born in the town of Mingora, Pakistan to a poor but prominent Muslim family, headed by Ziauddin Yousafzai.

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