The courage shown by Malala Yousafzai in speaking out against Taliban human rights abuses in Pakistan was remarkable and inspiring, and it is good to see that the British Government paid for her transfer to a hospital in Birmingham after she was brutally shot by the Taliban. However the arrival of one swallow does not indicate the start of a summer of peace and justice. Just over a week ago a senior UN official voiced grave concern about reports that three children may have been among those killed during an airstrike by the US-led military forces in neighbouring Afghanistan. And in recent days Amnesty International have highlighted the deaths of at least 100 children in Afghanistan from freezing last winter, and warned that this may occur again this year.

We should be wary of children such as Malala Yousafzai being used for Western propaganda purposes. The reality is that far too few such injured or suffering children are evacuated from war zones, especially when these injuries have been inflicted by Western bombs in unjustified wars. Malala’s injuries, although inflicted by the Taliban, are part of the “collateral damage” from the US and UK led invasion of Afghanistan. In 1993 little Irma Hadzimuratovic was evacuated from Sarajevo to England amid worldwide publicity, yet she died from her injuries two years later around the time that the international community stood idly by as up to 8000 men and boys were massacred at Srebrenica.  In the Iraq war a similar media event surrounded the evacuation of little Ali Abbas who had witnessed seven of his family being killed by Western troops.

In Iraq up to 250,000 children may have died due to Western imposed sanctions from 1992 to 2003 and a similar number of children have died as a result of the Iraq war. Thousands of Afghan and Pakistani children have died as result of Western bombing and drone attacks and other war related reasons. The over-publicised rescue of three children from three wars does little to compensate the other victims of these wars, which could and should have been avoided if even a fraction of the money spent on making wars was instead spent on genuine efforts to make peace.

“Suffer the little children”?