A supporter of Pakistani political party Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), reacts while holding a poster of 14-year-old schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai, who was shot last Tuesday by the Taliban for speaking... (Associated Press) 
 
 Tens of thousands rallied in Pakistan's largest city Sunday in the biggest show of support yet for a 14-year-old girl who was shot and seriously wounded by the Taliban for promoting girls' education and criticizing the militant group. 
 
 The Oct. 9 attack on Malala Yousufzai as she was returning home from school in Pakistan's northwest horrified people inside and outside the country. At the same time, it gave hope to some that the government would respond by intensifying its fight against the Taliban and their allies. 
 
 But protests against the shooting have been relatively small until now, usually attracting no more than a few hundred people. That response pales in comparison to the tens of thousands of people who held violent protests in Pakistan last month against a film produced in the United States that denigrated Islam's Prophet Muhammad. 
 
 Demonstrations in support of Malala _ and against rampant militant violence in the country in general _ have also been fairly small compared with those focused on issues such as U.S. drone attacks and the NATO supply route to Afghanistan that runs through Pakistan. 
 
 Right-wing Islamic parties and organizations in Pakistan that regularly pull thousands of supporters into the streets to protest against the U.S. have less of an incentive to speak out against the Taliban. The two share a desire to impose Islamic law in the country _ even if they may disagree over the Taliban's violent tactics. 
 
 Pakistan's mainstream political parties are also often more willing to harangue the U.S. than direct their people power against Islamist militants shedding blood across the country _ partly out of fear and partly because they rely on Islamist parties for electoral support. 
 
 One of the exceptions is the political party that organized Sunday's rally in the southern port city of Karachi, the Muttahida Quami Movement. The party's chief, Altaf Hussain, criticized both Islamic and other mainstream political parties for failing to organize rallies to protest the attack on Malala. 
 
 He called the Taliban gunmen who shot the girl "beasts" and said it was an attack on "the ideology of Pakistan." 
 
 "Malala Yousufzai is a beacon of knowledge. She is the daughter of the nation," Hussain told the audience by telephone from London, where he is in self-imposed exile because of legal cases pending against him in Pakistan. His party is strongest in Karachi. 
 
 Many of the demonstrators carried the young girl's picture and banners praising her bravery and expressing solidarity. 
 
 The leaders of Pakistan's main Islamic parties have criticized the shooting, but have also tried to redirect the conversation away from Taliban violence and toward civilian casualties from U.S. drone attacks. 
 
 Cyril Almeida, a columnist for Pakistan's Dawn newspaper, said this type of "obfuscation" prevents Pakistanis from seeing "there is a continuum from the religious right to violent Islamism." 
 
 "The religious right creates an enabling environment for violent Islamism to recruit and prosper. And violent Islamism makes state and society cower and in doing so enhances the space for the religious right," Almeida wrote in a column Sunday. 
 
 Malala earned the enmity of the Pakistani Taliban for publicizing their behavior when they took over the northwestern Swat Valley, where she lived, and for speaking about the importance of education for girls. 
 
 The group first started to exert its influence in Swat in 2007 and quickly extended its reach to much of the valley by the next year. They set about imposing their will on residents by forcing men to grow beards, preventing women from going to the market and blowing up many schools _ the majority for girls. 
 
 Malala wrote about these practices in a journal for the BBC under a pseudonym when she was just 11. After the Taliban were pushed out of the Swat Valley in 2009 by the Pakistani military, she became even more outspoken in advocating for girls' education. She appeared frequently in the media and was given one of the country's highest honors for civilians for her bravery. 
 
 The military carried out its offensive in Swat after a video surfaced of a militant flogging a woman who had allegedly committed adultery, which helped mobilize public support against the Taliban. 
 
 Many hope the shooting of Malala will help push the military to undertake a long-awaited offensive in the Pakistani Taliban's last main sanctuary in the country in the North Waziristan tribal area. 
 
 The Pakistani Taliban said they carried out the shooting because Malala was promoting "Western thinking." Police have arrested at least three suspects in connection with the attack, but the two gunmen who carried out the shooting remain at large. 
 
 The young girl was shot in the neck, and the bullet headed toward her spine. Two of her classmates were also wounded in the attack. 
 
 Doctors at a military hospital operated on Malala to remove the bullet from her neck, and she was put on a ventilator. Her condition improved somewhat on Saturday when she was able to move her legs and hands after her sedatives were reduced. 
 
 On Sunday, she was successfully taken off the ventilator for a short period and later reconnected to avoid fatigue, the military said. Doctors are satisfied she is making slow and steady progress and will decide whether to send her abroad for treatment. They have not said whether she suffered any brain damage or other type of permanent damage. 
 
 The United Arab Emirates plans to send a specialized aircraft to serve as an ambulance for the girl in case doctors decide to send her abroad, the Pakistani ambassador to the country, Jamil Ahmed Khan, said Sunday. 
 
 Visas are being finalized for the air ambulance crew and six doctors who will accompany the flight, Khan told Pakistan's Geo TV. Arrangements have been made to treat the girl at three hospitals in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, he said. 
 
 The UAE Embassy in Islamabad could not immediately be reached for comment. 
 
 No decision has yet been taken to send the girl abroad, but the air ambulance is part of the contingency plan, the Pakistani military said. 
 
 Afghan President Hamid Karzai has written letters to top political and religious leaders in Pakistan denouncing the attack on Yousufzai and asking them to help battle extremism in both countries, the president's office said in a statement issued late Saturday. Karzai wrote that he views the shooting as an attack on Afghanistan's girls as well. 
 
 ____ 
 
 Abbot reported from Islamabad. Associated Press writers Asif Shahzad, Zarar Khan and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Deb Riechmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report. ||||| We WILL defy the Taliban and go back to school, says friend shot with brave Malala 
 
 Shazia Ramzan was hit in the shoulder and hand on the school bus 
 
 
 
 Malala had told her she thought she would be targeted by the Taliban 
 
 Speaking out: Shazia Razman, 14, was shot twice at the same time as her best friend Malala Yousafzai (inset) who is now in hospital 
 
 The best friend of the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot in the head by the Taliban yesterday vowed to defy the extremists again and return to school with her. 
 
 Shazia Ramzan watched in horror as classmate Malala Yousafzai was shot beside her on their school bus, before the gunman turned and shot her too. 
 
 Speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday, brave Shazia, also 14, who was hit in the shoulder and hand, said: ‘She will recover and we will go back to school and study together again.’ 
 
 
 
 As Shazia sat up in her hospital bed, Malala was yesterday still critically ill in a hospital in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, after being shot by the Taliban gunman as she travelled home on a school bus in Mingora in the strife-torn Swat Valley on Tuesday. 
 
 Malala, who from the age of 11 defied the Taliban to write a blog for the BBC championing education for girls, was targeted by the extremists, who believe girls should be kept at home and barred from school. 
 
 
 
 In hospital in Peshawar, Shazia said Malala had told classmates she might be a target but refused to hide from the Taliban. 
 
 She also described the callous way the gunman shot Malala in the head and then turned his gun on her and another of Malala’s classmates before fleeing. 
 
 Support: Afghan students show their support for Malala who was shot on the school bus by Taliban extremists 
 
 ‘Malala told us she had been threatened by the extremists,’ she said. ‘She said she had been speaking too much against mujahideen [Taliban] and they might do something to her.’ 
 
 Describing Tuesday’s attack, she said: ‘It was just a normal school day. We were coming home after our second-term exams. The bus was taking the usual route. 
 
 ‘Then it suddenly stopped and two men confronted us. They asked, “Which one of you is Malala?” Some of the girls started to talk and then one of the men opened fire. All the girls started crying and shouting. Malala was hit in the head and fell to the floor unconscious. There was blood everywhere. I was in total shock. 
 
 ‘Then the man with the gun fired at me and another girl and ran away. We were all just so traumatised and shocked. Everything happened so quickly. 
 
 
 
 Solidarity: People light candles to pray for the recovery of Malala Yousafzai in Lahore, Pakistan. Her best friend has vowed that they will return to school 
 
 ‘The bus driver raced us to hospital. It was chaotic because everyone was screaming and crying and Malala was lying on the floor in front of me.’ 
 
 Shazia had been hit by two bullets. By yesterday, however, she was well enough to walk around her bed in the Combined Military Hospital. The third girl had comparatively minor injuries. 
 
 Target: Malala had been told extremists wanted to harm her after she spoke out against them 
 
 Explaining the build-up to the attack, Shazia said: ‘Malala would talk to us about the dangers she was facing but refused to change the way she lived. She just said the extremists might do something to her because she had spoken out against them so much and they might want to harm her. 
 
 ‘She knew something might happen but she never let it affect her. She refused to be anything other than a normal schoolgirl.’ 
 
 Shazia said she was disgusted with the men who carried out the attack. ‘We don’t know who they were but I am sure they were the people Malala had been warned about,’ she said. 
 
 As she prepared to go home to her family, Shazia said her greatest wish was to return to school with Malala – even though the Taliban has threatened to return and kill Malala. 
 
 ‘With the grace of God, I am completely all right now. Malala will recover soon too, I hope. We will go back to school and study together again. 
 
 ‘I am praying for Malala and praying she can join her school friends again as soon as possible. The whole nation is praying for her and I am sure she will make a full recovery.’ Shazia’s father Muhammad Ramzan, 50, who runs a bakery in Mingora, said he was horrified by the attack. 
 
 ‘We have never been enemies with anyone,’ he said. ‘I don’t know who did this. Malala was outspoken and she had told her classmates something like this could happen but we never imagined it would happen in this way.’ 
 
 Injured: Hospital staff assists Malala at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in the Swat Valley 
 
 Malala’s uncle Mehmood-ul-Hassan Yousafzai said her condition was improving. Doctors said the next 48 hours would be critical to her recovery. ||||| A Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taleban showed signs of improvement by moving her limbs Saturday, the military said, though she remains unconscious and on a ventilator. 
 
 The shooting of 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai, who campaigned for the right to an education, has been denounced worldwide and by the Pakistani authorities, who have offered a reward of more than $100,000 for the capture of her attackers. 
 
 “The sedation given to Malala was reduced on Saturday so that neurosurgeons could do their clinical assessment and as a result of it Malala responded and moved her hands and feet,” military spokesman Major General Asim Saleem Bajwa said. 
 
 “It is a positive development,” Bajwa told a press conference near Army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, close to the capital Islamabad, where Malala is being treated in a military hospital. 
 
 “As per doctors, (the) condition of Malala is stable.” 
 
 A team of specialist doctors are providing “constant care” to Malala and all “contingencies” were in place in case they decide to move her abroad for further treatment, the general said. 
 
 “It is a case of serious head injury and the progress is very slow in it.” 
 
 Two other girl students wounded with Malala were “also being taken care of at places where they can get best treatment”, he said, without elaborating. 
 
 Bajwa said that all available resources were being used to investigate the incident and some arrests had been made, but he declined to say how many people were currently in custody and how many had been let go. 
 
 Asked whether the military might now consider launching an offensive against the Taleban in their tribal area stronghold of North Waziristan, on the Afghan border, Bajwa said: “Such decisions are not taken overnight.” 
 
 A military statement earlier said: “(The) health condition of Malala continues to remain satisfactory. Her vitals are okay and she is still on ventilator.” 
 
 Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf visited Malala on Friday, paying tribute to her and two friends who were also wounded when a gunman boarded their school bus on Tuesday and opened fire. 
 
 “It was not a crime against an individual but a crime against humanity and an attack on our national and social values,” he told reporters, pledging renewed vigour in Pakistan’s struggle with Islamist militancy. 
 
 Bajwa Friday said the next 36 to 48 hours would be critical for Malala. 
 
 The attack has sickened Pakistan, where Malala won international prominence with a blog for the BBC that highlighted atrocities under the Taliban who terrorised the Swat valley from 2007 until a 2009 army offensive. 
 
 Activists say the shooting should be a wake-up call to those who advocate appeasement with the Taleban, but analysts suspect there will be no seismic shift in a country that has sponsored radical Islam for decades. 
 
 Schools opened with prayers for Malala on Friday and special prayers were held at mosques across the country for her speedy recovery at the country’s top military hospital in the city of Rawalpindi. 
 
 The Defence of Pakistan Council, an Islamist alliance which earlier this year carried out major rallies across Pakistan against the resumption of NATO supply lines through the country cautioned against the attack on Malala being used as a reason to launch fresh military offensives against militants. 
 
 “We strongly condemn this attack, but it should not be used as a pretext to launch military offensive in North Waziristan,” alliance chairman Maulana Samiul Haq told a press conference in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir. 
 
 “It would be suicidal and affect the entire country. We appeal to the military not to commit any such mistake,” Haq said. 
 
 “The way (US President Barack) Obama has responded to the incident clearly indicates the intentions. We will not let it happen,” Haq said. 
 
 “The world does not see or condemn killing of countless innocent girls and children in drone attacks by America, but now they are reacting to this incident,” Haq said. 
 
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 ERROR: Macro /ads/dfp-ad-article-new is missing! ||||| Malala Yousafzai did not trade in her modest head scarf for a pair of skinny jeans. She wanted to go to school. 
 
 
 
 For that, the Taliban tried to kill her. When her attackers learned that the freckled 14-year-old Pakistani might survive, they promised to finish the job. Malala, they explained, had been "promoting Western culture." 
 
 
 
 The Taliban has committed all manner of atrocities over the years, many of them aimed at women. This time, the militants created an icon for a global movement — for the notion that the most efficient way to propel developing countries is to educate their girls. The idea has been flourishing in some of the world's most destitute and volatile places. Today, courtesy of the Pakistani Taliban, it has a face. 
 
 PHOTOS: Malala Yousafzai 
 
 "People think 'Western values' is wearing jeans and sipping pop. Malala was doing none of that," said Murtaza Haider, a Pakistan native and the associate dean of research and graduate programs at the Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto's Ryerson University. "All she said was: 'Would you be kind enough to reopen my school?' This is what the Taliban thinks is a 'Western value.' This is not a Western value. This is a universal value." 
 
 
 
 Pakistan's Swat Valley, where Malala grew up, is rich in agriculture and minerals, and ringed like a halo by mountains with perennial snow. There are falcons and peridot-colored lakes, and, for a time, there was the country's only ski resort. Queen Elizabeth II visited in the 1960s. 
 
 
 
 Then, in 2003, came an arm of the Taliban, which imposed strict religious law, as it had in neighboring Afghanistan. Music was banned. Men would wear beards. And girls would no longer go to school. 
 
 
 
 This last bit did not sit well with Malala. When she was all of 11 years old, she started a diary about life under the Taliban's thumb. 
 
 
 
 Entries in that diary were published by the BBC. Malala became something of a celebrity, featured in documentaries, insisting to visiting journalists that she still had rights — "to play," she said, "to sing." Most of all: "I have the right of education." She knew she was risking her life, telling a reporter at one point that if the Taliban tried to kill her, "I'll first say to them: 'What you're doing is wrong.'" 
 
 
 
 The communications revolution that is the hallmark of Malala's generation has not yet lived up to its promise of transforming the world economy. But it has ushered in an age of instantaneous, worldwide conversation. When replacement referees in the NFL bungle crucial calls, the debate is won at the moment it begins, and the regular refs are promptly brought back in. When politicians dismiss half the country as "victims" or deliver a lackluster debate performance, the public verdict is delivered swiftly. 
 
 
 
 Malala lived in one of the few places where that conversation still doesn't resonate. But she had unwittingly tapped into that revolution — and was back in school when she was shot and critically wounded last week. She didn't know it, but she had a voice powerful enough to contest the Taliban. 
 
 
 
 Years before she was born, anecdotal evidence collected by development programs suggested the importance of educating girls. Knowledge in girls' heads often meant money in their pockets. And women tended to invest not in themselves, but in their communities — in healthcare, for instance, or nutrition. 
 
 
 
 Researchers developed metrics to measure the effect. Educated women were more skilled and could make more money, but they also married later and raised healthier children. They had lower rates of disease. Extrapolate from there and the results ballooned from primary education to more efficient local government, even democratic reform. 
 
 
 
 That movement has caught fire. 
 
 
 
 In 2009, the book "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide" made the compelling argument that this is the defining social issue of the 21st century, as rejecting slavery defined the 19th and fighting totalitarianism defined the 20th. 
 
 
 
 The book spawned a television series that aired this fall. A film, "Girl Rising," documenting the struggles of girls seeking an education, is to arrive in theaters next spring and air on CNN. The movie is the centerpiece of 10x10, a global action campaign for girls education. 
 
 
 
 Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has steered the weight of the U.S. government toward the issue, and more foreign aid has been earmarked for girls education. Corporate partners have signed on to the cause. 
 
 
 
 "It's just that moment, the moment when you put your finger on the pulse of the problem," said Maro Chermayeff, executive producer of "Half the Sky's" outreach effort. "People are starting to understand that incredible untapped potential: the army of change that girls can be." 
 
 
 
 Richard Robbins, director of "Girl Rising," now has a photo of Malala on his desk in Los Angeles. Traveling to Haiti, Sierra Leone and elsewhere for the film, Robbins said he found that girls encountered a host of obstacles to education: geographic isolation, for instance, or the sense that school is not a good investment because there's no job at the other end. 
 
 
 
 "But there are very few people in the world now who are actually against education," Robbins said. "This idea that it's dangerous for a girl to have knowledge — this is the last gasp of that idea, which was pretty prevalent 200 years ago, everywhere in the world." 
 
 
 
 There is always room for cynicism in Malala's corner of the world. Pakistan has blown numerous opportunities to combat extremism. With the planned withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan, some see an opening for more Taliban influence in the region, not less. As one Pakistani journalist tweeted: "For everyone who seems to think Malala's assassination attempt is some 'moment' — Pakistan had lots of them and guess what happened? Nothing." 
 
 
 
 But even some hardened observers see suggestions of lasting effects. Women have protested with signs assailing the Taliban by name — unthinkable in some pockets of Pakistan. Few thought that a promised reward for information leading to Malala's assailants would do any good. On Friday, police announced that several men had been detained. 
 
 
 
 "There's definitely international condemnation, but in equal amount there's condemnation in Pakistan," said Shamila Chaudhary, a former director for Pakistan and Afghanistan at the White House National Security Council, now a senior South Asia fellow at the New America Foundation. 
 
 PHOTOS: Malala Yousafzai 
 
 Some believe the attempt to kill Malala could propel the girls education movement into the Swat Valley — and then, perhaps, pose an existential threat to the Taliban. 
 
 
 
 Shabana Basij-Rasikh attended college in the U.S. and has returned home to Afghanistan to open one of that nation's first boarding schools for girls. Students who live in regions under Taliban control attend in secret, she said. Some hide their school books in grocery bags, just as she did when she grew up under Taliban rule. 
 
 
 
 "What Malala has achieved, the military could not," Basij-Rasikh said. 
 
 
 
 scott.gold@latimes.com
– The Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for promoting girls' education rights is in stable condition at a military hospital, the AFP reports. Malala Yousufzai, 14, moved her limbs yesterday but is still unconscious on a ventilator. Doctors had reduced her sedative to let neurosurgeons assess her, "and as a result of it Malala responded and moved her hands and feet," said a military spokesman. "It is a positive development." In other developments: Tens of thousands today marched through Karachi, Pakistan's most populated city, in Malala's name—bringing public outcry to the level of protests over Innocence of Muslims, the AP reports. Pakistan's right-wing Islamic parties may be responsible for the delay; they have shied from criticizing Malala's shooting because they share the Taliban's desire for Islamic law. In Swat Valley, where Malala lived, one of her classmates promised she will return to school with Malala one day. "She will recover and we will go back to school and study together again," Shazia Ramzan told the Daily Mail. In trying to kill Malala, the Taliban turned her into a global icon for the girls' education movement, writes Scott Gold at the LA Times. "The idea has been flourishing in some of the world's most destitute and volatile places," writes Gold. "Today, courtesy of the Pakistani Taliban, it has a face." Click for his full article.