The mullah behind the Pak school attack
Once, if you wanted to speak with the man known as “Mullah Radio”, you had to travel to the remote, mountainous lands of Swat province in north-west Pakistan. There, between radio segments, a bearded preacher who would later assume command of a Taliban insurgency that on Tuesday killed more than 100 schoolchildren, would perhaps drop by on his white horse.
That's what happened when the journalist Nicholas Schmidle arrived at the mullah's compound in 2007. At the time, the mullah, Maulana Fazlullah, was riding high.
Tens of thousands of people in Swat were tuning in to his illegal FM radio station, from which he excoriated the evils of female education and urged jihad. A cult figure was born.
By Fazlullah's twisted logic, the attacks made sense. The killings were a response to a recent military crackdown on Taliban activities.
In 2012, Fazlullah claimed responsibility for an assassination attempt on Malala Yousafzai. So Fazlullah allegedly dispatched a gunman who shot her in the head.
Born in 1975, he grew up with the name Fazle Hayat in a simple rural family, according to a New America Foundation report.
In 2004, Fazlullah launched an unauthorised radio channel people took to calling “Maulana Radio”. His conservative, anti-American, anti-technology, anti-vaccination message resonated with the local population.
The fervour he inspired made him an attractive candidate to take over the Taliban late last year when the CIA killed his predecessor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in a drone strike.
And then came Tuesday's assault on the school in the north-western city of Peshawar.
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