Today in Pakistan, the world's largest failed state

The Taliban’s narrative also resonates with many people, wrote Zubair Torwali, head of the Centre for Education and Development in the Swat Valley, where Malala attended school and was nearly assassinated last October.

“At the social level, Taliban apologists have quite successfully managed to spread a warped mindset among ordinary Pakistanis, which sees the militants as pious people striving to establish an Islamic state, and their opponents as Western-educated liberal heathens,” he wrote in Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper.