The leader of the Pakistani Taliban has sent a letter to a schoolgirl that the Taliban tried to assassinate in 2012.

Adnan Rasheed doesn’t apologize but says he wishes the attack “had never happened” and that she was not attacked for advocating for girls’ education but because she an ran “an anti-Taliban smear campaign.”

Rasheed said he was writing in a “personal capacity” because he felt a “brotherly” emotion toward Malala since they belong to the same “tribe”.

Malala Yousafzai survived the assassination attempt after being rushed to western countries to receive critical medical care. She has become a spokeswoman against the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups saying that “books and pens” scare them.

The Taliban leader encouraged Malala to “come back home, adopt the Islamic and Pashtun culture and join any female Islamic madrassa, use your pen…and reveal the conspiracy of the tiny elite who want to enslave the whole of humanity.”

“It’s taken her to put the Taliban completely on the defensive, and that’s why they’re issuing this statement now,” former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC. “But we know that they’re still bombing schools, they’re still destroying classrooms, they’re still murdering teachers, and they’re still massacring groups of students.”