I TAUGHT subjects relating to government and politics for some forty years (thirty-two of them at the University of Massachusetts), but I can’t say that I ever thought of myself as a “technocrat”. Nor did my colleagues in the humanities, social sciences, and natural and biological sciences. Even a professor of medicine would not have wanted this designation. Who then is a technocrat?

The word appears to be related to the adjective “technical”, which refers generally to practical knowledge of scientific or mechanical subjects, including various crafts. Then, it relates to technology, which means technical methods of achieving the means to provide for human sustenance and comfort. Its adjectival form (“technological”) refers to technical processes that increase the productivity of machines and diminish or eliminate the need for manual labour. A “technocrat” (according to my dictionary) is a person who is an adherent of “technocracy” which, in turn, denotes government and/or management of society by technical experts.

Considering the import of these related terms, it may be fair to conclude that a technocrat is a craftsman whose work involves machines, mechanical skills and processes. An engineer of one kind or another is undoubtedly a technocrat, a mathematician is not. Persons working in some of the applied sciences may also be regarded as technocrats.

If we use the term loosely, all kinds of specialists — certain types of economists, bankers, accountants and auditors, lawyers, religious scholars, perhaps even classical musicians and dancers — can be counted as technocrats. But why use words loosely when language enables you to be precise and specific. The meaning of words used in law should be made as precise as possible, for loose usage opens the way to distortion and abuse. The constitution Gemal Abdul Nasser gave Egypt required each electoral district to send two deputies to parliament, one of whom must be a “peasant” or a “worker”. During Anwar Sadat’s rule the terms, peasant and worker, were construed broadly enough to cover entrepreneurs and large landowners. So, if we want a few bankers in our parliament, why not say so, instead of disguising them as “technocrats”?

Why do we have to have technocrats — howsoever defined — in our legislative assemblies? The expectation must be that they will contribute authentic knowledge and insights to discussion when it relates to matters in which they have special competence. Our assemblies have always had plenty of lawyers and at least a sprinkling of other types of specialists. Let us recall a few: Dr Ishtiaq Hussain Qureshi, Dr. Mahmood Hussain, and Dr. Omar Hayat Malik (educationists), A.K. Brohi (jurist), Mohammad Ali Bogra (diplomat), Chaudhry Mohammad Ali (bureaucrat), Syed Amjad Ali and I.I. Chundrigar (businessmen) during our first parliamentary regime; Z.A. Bhutto and J.A. Rahim (diplomats), Dr. Mubashir Hasan (engineer), Mahmood Ali Qasuri (jurist), and Kausar Niazi (journalist) in our second parliamentary regime; Dr. Mahboobul Haq (economist and planner) in Ziaul Haq’s assembly; Nawaz Sharif (industrialist), Sartaj Aziz (bureaucrat and economist), and Dr. Javed Iqbal (jurist) in our third round of parliamentary government.

These “technocrats” are not known to have made any contribution to the work of the Assembly or the Senate related to their fields of expertise. One cannot even be sure that they spoke their minds freely. It is probable that they used their skills to devise arguments in support of the position that the government or their party chiefs had chosen to take on any given issue. There is no reason to think that they will act differently in the future. The issue of whether it is a good idea to build the Kalabagh Dam has been in debate for years, but the “technocrats” from the concerned provinces are still nowhere near agreement.

How will a technocrat reach an assembly? If he is to be elected, not appointed, he will first need the Election Commission’s certification that he is indeed what he claims to be. But how will the Commission know? Has it been provided an authoritative definition that will enable it to dismiss invalid claims? Or will any holder, let us say, of a master’s degree in any discipline qualify? Now ask another question. If a person is a productive and distinguished member of his profession, why in God’s name would he want to go through the hassle and expense of contesting an election to a legislative assembly?

Considering that the National Assembly is required to meet for something like a hundred and twenty days every year, even a halfway decent scientist or engineer will not want to take that much time away from his own work. It is conceivable that competent technocrats, who have retired from active service, may become available. But it should not be taken for granted that even then they would want to undergo the toil of contesting elections.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that technocrats willing to contest elections can be found, who would their constituents be? Our people have been familiar with politicians for almost a hundred years. They have witnessed and participated in election campaigns for several decades. They have a fairly good understanding of political speech. But what will two contending engineers say to the voters on issues with which legislatures normally deal — for instance, relations with India, the future of Kashmir, authority of district nazims, reducing crime, efficacy of a sales tax on black pepper — that lay politicians cannot say better? If they limit themselves to issues that fall within areas of their special competence, will there be much to talk about and, in any case, will they be understood well enough for the voters to have a basis for assessing their relative merits? I doubt it. The technocrat’s way to the assemblies through the normal electoral process would appear to be wholly dysfunctional.

If we must have technocrats in our legislatures, and if they are not to be appointed but elected, special constituencies consisting of their peers should be created for the purpose. This can be done in several ways. The first order of business should be to figure out which specializations must be represented in the assemblies. Then the most appropriate way of sending them to these august bodies should be determined. Some of our political parties are suggesting that they should each be entitled to send in a number of technocrats proportionate to their overall electoral performance (meaning the total number of votes it has received, not the number of assembly seats it has actually won).

This is not a good idea. It would tend to bring the “elected” technocrats under the concerned party’s discipline and limit their freedom to express their professional judgment. A better procedure may be to allocate one or more assembly seats to the relevant professional or occupational associations — for instance, those of physicians, lawyers, bankers, industrialists, scientists, engineers. A quota of seats might be allocated to universities to send in types of experts who are not professionally organized on a national scale. If some such method is adopted, the constituents will be able to understand and assess this or that candidate’s message. It would minimize divisiveness in the professions if the election of technocrats were limited to retired persons.

None of the democracies with which most of us are familiar has reserved seats for technocrats in their parliaments. This is partly because very little of the work the legislatures do requires a high level of technical expertise. Some measure and variety of expertise is usually available within the legislature’s own ranks. Moreover, its committees can have recourse to expert opinion on almost any subject within the bounds of human knowledge and understanding — normally free of cost.

Why then have our system builders (the NRB folks) come up with the idea of placing technocrats in our assemblies? Once in the assembly, they will not be limited only to technical issues; they will be free to speak and vote on all issues that come before the assembly. Their constituents may criticize them if they speak incompetently on a professional subject, but they are not likely to hold them accountable for their statements and votes on the issue of tax collection. These men are not professional politicians, and they don’t have the ingenuity required for exerting or resisting pressure.

The likelihood then is that they will be more amenable to the government’s advice than, let us say, the ordinary politicians in the assembly might be. In this connection, it may be instructive to recall the voting behaviour of groups that have occupied reserved seats in the past. The FATA (federally administered tribal area) member usually sided with the government of the day except when its intended policy might work to their detriment. The same was true of members belonging to non-Muslim minorities. During visits to the National Assembly I noticed that women occupying reserved seats on the treasury benches showed extraordinary deference to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: they stood up each time she entered the floor. The male members, who had contested and won general seats, did not do the same. It may then be fair to conclude that the government of the day can count on having the support of members holding reserved seats.

Why General Musharraf and his advisers are resorting to devices of such dubious value is another matter we can consider later. Suffice it to say now that it reminds one of excesses in the pursuit of power that brought grievous harm both to their authors and to the country: Iskandar Mirza’s abortive attempt to oust his “partner in crime” (Ayub Khan); Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s determination to have the election of March 1977 give him a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly; and Nawaz Sharif’s lust for absolute power, the specifics and consequences of which are too well known to be narrated here.

WHENEVER President Musharraf says or does something unusual, the thought that arises is: Did he jump himself or was he pushed? Either way it ends up in an abyss. It started with his idealizing of Kemal Ataturk (which was a jump), and the last in the series was the referendum to which he was, perhaps, pushed.

Now, on hand is the protest and litigation caused by the order which requires the legislators to be no less than university graduates. Hard on its heels is the law in the making on the registration of madressahs.

Making election to a legislature subject to academic qualification of the candidates is unknown to the democratic system. Almost every democracy keeps the adolescent, insane and insolvent out of its legislature but not the illiterate — not even in countries where every citizen is not just literate but educated. To do so would be an outright anachronism in a country like Pakistan as it would restrict the right of representation to less than one per cent of the population.

This condition would operate to the particular disadvantage of women, the poor and the peasantry whom the president intends to have a greater say in public affairs.

Ironically, the first to challenge the Chief Executive’s order is what is the so-called king’s party and among the petitioners are Gohar Ayub, a former speaker, Abida Husain, once ambassador to the US and Gen. Majid Malik, a minister in Nawaz Sharif’s government who, it is rumoured, missed being the chief of army staff because Z.A. Bhutto, preferring obeisance to ability, chose his junior Ziaul Haq. Now they, and many others like them, can’t even be members. It is so ludicrous.

No connection has ever been established between formal education and the competence of a member to represent his constituents in the legislature. For that commitment and common sense are more important ingredients than a university degree which, in any case, is of little worth these days.

The most damaging aspect of this condition is that the people in it discern a motive other than the public interest. Some suspect it is intended to keep out only Benazir Bhutto who has been to Oxford and Radcliffe and yet is not technically a graduate.

The loyalists have gone to the court contending that the condition negates a basic human right and alters an essential feature of the Constitution which the government cannot change under the very Supreme Court order which gave it legitimacy. The hostile political parties may boycott the elections and the religious groups, which do not have many seats to win whether the condition goes or stays, may take to the pulpit and street to disrupt the whole process. The polling thus might look like a replay of the referendum. The plea raised in the court by the Muslim League (Q) has a lot of substance. The government should grasp any opportunity arising in the course of its hearing and withdraw the graduation condition. It will improve and make the atmosphere conducive for peaceful polls without harming the prospects of the president or his allies.

It seems that the advisers who have persuaded Gen Musharraf that the graduates will be on his side more than the less educated are the same who assured him of a large turn-out in an aimless referendum. He should be wary of changing once again the standard democratic norms at their coaxing.

The impending confrontation with the sectarian elements on the enactment of the madressah law looks more ominous than a likely one with the political parties on the qualification requirement. What benefit will flow to the community, or even to the administration, by the registration of the madressahs is difficult to comprehend.

Intervention in the management and syllabuses of the madressahs goes against the Musharraf government’s own declared view on the link between the political and religious activities. Only the other day, the interior minister, Moinuddin Haider, said that the use of a religious platform for political ends will not be allowed. By the force of the same logic, the legislators should not make inroads into the domain of the priests.

If the government interferes with the academic courses or system of examinations, it will be stirring up a hornet’s nest. It will not bring about uniformity either since the course content varies with each sect or school of thought (and they are numerous) which controls a madressah.

If the intention is to introduce the teaching of modern sciences and arts alongside the religious subjects, that too wouldn’t happen because, firstly, the government lacks the resources and capacity to do so and, secondly, the number and variety of madressahs in existence wouldn’t permit it.

The guess-timate of the number of madressahs is 8,000. Their wide dispersal and sizes include the one at Akora Khattak where, according to press reports, the visiting minister Nisar Memon was so “stupefied” by the standards of education and discipline that he invited the world press to see that the madressahs produce scholars and not saboteurs. It also includes many one-room madressahs attached to mosques where many pupils are chained to their cots lest they run away.

Registering madressahs like the one at Akora thus is unnecessary, and to register a much larger number which extract more labour from the poor, abandoned children than educate them would be impossible. The corruption inherent in the government control would inevitably follow. In course of time the grant will become a tool of bribe or harassment.

The failure of the government’s supervision and the inadequacy of its financing are clear from the state of private institutions before and after nationalization.

These show themselves also in thousands of schools that never existed, yet the salaries of the teachers were charged on the government account. The government recognition and grant would inevitably give rise to “ghost” madressahs without benefiting those that are running well and do not need it.

The madressahs have been there all the time in Pakistan and elsewhere in the subcontinent. The repressive rule of the Taliban and their ultra-orthodox behaviour have brought them into the world focus as the places where hatreds are nurtured and training in arms is imparted. Minister Memon may have seen peace reigning in the Akora madressah but he must remember that this madressah, along with some others, had churned out all the Taliban warriors who today have become synonymous with intolerance and terror.

The legislation on madressahs would not change that image. Instead, the government will also come to share the blame for the growing sectarian strife within the country and insurrections in the region. The approach has to be simpler but broader.

The government and local councils should improve their own schools and give stipends to the students to save them from being dumped by their poor parents in madressahs only for free food. For that much more have to be spent on education than the present 2.7 per cent of the public expenditure which is one of the lowest in the world. Once the standards and capacity of the public schools improve, the private charity money which now goes to madressahs will also be diverted to them.

To check the training in arms and militant behaviour the registration of madressahs is not necessary. Illegal activities in the madressahs should be checked just as they have to be at any other place. The real problem is that the writ of the government being weak everywhere is especially weaker when it comes to dealing with sectarian establishments. General Musharraf himself has been yielding to clerical pressures when it was neither legally compelling nor morally right. To enact a new law while existing laws lie in disuse, or are disobeyed, will only aggravate the problem.

Two lessons from the past that Gen Musharraf can ignore at his peril are: First, not to confront the clerics nor cavort with them and, secondly, not to provide an opportunity to diverse and feuding opponents to forge a front against the government.

The laws on madressahs and elections are doing exactly that. The president will be well-advised to put an end to both these irksome and unnecessary controversies before he takes a deeper plunge into the quagmire of constitutional amendments.

WHAT should the priorities be in Afghanistan? Ask an American and he/she will answer: ‘Destroying Al Qaeda and the Taliban, finding Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar’ (though not necessarily in that order). Ask an ordinary Afghan and you will be told: ‘Peace, ethnic harmony, poverty eradication, economic development, democracy’ (probably in that order). The gulf between American and Afghan answers is vast. And its consequences could be disastrous.

American goals are of course driven by the war on terror. Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network carried out the attacks of September 11. They operated from Afghanistan under Taliban protection. Both the Taliban and Al Qaeda therefore need to be destroyed.

So far, the Taliban have been ousted from power and most ordinary Talibs have reverted to becoming ordinary Afghans. Mullah Omar, though, remains at large. The war on terror’s victory over Al Qaeda is even less clear-cut. Osama bin Laden (whether dead or alive) has not been found. Instead of being eradicated, many Al Qaeda activists have left Afghanistan and dispersed to other countries, possibly establishing links with local militant Islamic groups. Others remain in southern Afghanistan, occasionally engaging US and allied forces. So the American war goes on.

For most ordinary Afghans the war on terror is America’s war — not theirs. The enemies these people are battling are ethnic conflict, displacement, poverty and deprivation. The primary reason they welcomed the end of Taliban rule was not liberalization, but the hope it brought of international assistance to create a peaceful, stable Afghanistan. So far, that remains just a hope.

It would be wrong to conclude that America and the Afghans are fighting completely separate wars. In fact, there is a considerable degree of overlap between them. Both wish to see an end to Al Qaeda, for example, and stable government in Kabul. The difference is in motives and priorities. Afghans support American attempts to destroy Al Qaeda because they hope to be rewarded with international aid; Americans are motivated by fear of another 9/11. The Americans support a stable multi-ethnic government in Kabul because they know it will be far harder for their forces to operate in a civil war environment; the Afghans want it because it is a prerequisite for rebuilding and development.

Washington calls the shots in Afghanistan and therefore, not surprisingly, it is American goals, motives and priorities that are setting the agenda on the ground. American forces are not battling powerful and notorious warlords like Abdur Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan, who pose the biggest threat to ethnic harmony and the Karzai government. They are solely engaged in a — largely futile — effort to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan and prevent them crossing into the comparative shelter of Pakistan’s tribal belt.

The International Assistance Security Force has no Americans in its ranks. American forces are deployed in Afghanistan to fight a war: not for lowly peacekeeping duties. That task was assigned to the ever-willing British, and now to their successors, the Turks. Under the British, ISAF did a commendable job in bringing order to the capital, Kabul. Hamid Karzai has pleaded for it to be deployed in other parts of the country, like Paktia where local warlord Padsha Khan is in open rebellion. It is a plea that has fallen on deaf ears: American goals don’t require peace in Paktia; Afghan goals can be ignored.

The same prioritization of American over Afghan goals was seen at this month’s Loya Jirga. The Jirga was supposed to be an opportunity, albeit imperfect, for Afghans to choose the government that will rule them for the next eighteen months. Unlike the interim administration chosen in Bonn, the transitional government would be an Afghan creation.

But allowing Afghans to choose could have given a powerful role to someone other than Hamid Karzai, the interim leader who has served Washington so well. Former King Zahir Shah could have secured an executive position; Burhanuddin Rabbani could have mounted a credible challenge for his old seat. The chances were slim, but they were there. Rather than take the remote risk of losing Karzai, American and UN officials applied pressure on Zahir Shah and Rabbani to rule themselves out of the leadership race. The arm-twisting in Zahir Shah’s case was particularly overt: US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad announced the king’s decision to stay out before the king himself had.

When the Loya Jirga finally convened, it was presented with a fait accompli. Outspoken women’s minister Sima Samar summed up the mood of many delegates: “This is not democracy. This is a rubber stamp. Everything here has already been decided by those with the power.” (Little surprise that Karzai left her out of his new cabinet.) An opportunity to promote badly needed participation and pluralistic decision-making — the essence of democracy — was lost simply because it endangered American goals.

Tajiks of the Northern Alliance dominated the interim administration. The new cabinet was supposed to redress that ethnic imbalance and give a more prominent role to Pukhtoons. The Loya Jirga was supposed to be consulted on, and approve selection of the new cabinet.

Reality again proved quite different. Karzai picked a cabinet dominated by Tajiks (defence, foreign affairs, one of the three vice-presidencies) and steamrolled it through the Jirga. He also offered two Vice-Presidential positions to warlords Rashid Dostum and Ismail Khan (who sat in on the jirga, even though it was supposed to exclude anyone accused of human rights abuses.)

Karzai has no great love for the Panjshiris or other warlords. But his hands are tied by the unaltered (since Bonn) reality that they hold power on the ground. Karzai does not have a military force to defeat Muhammed Fahim, Dostum, Ismail Khan or Padsha Khan. The US will not give him one because its goals do not require the warlords to be disarmed, but merely cooperative. Karzai therefore has to accede to Tajik demands for leading positions in the cabinet, and he has to accept that it is Dostum and Ismail Khan — not him — who give the orders in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat.

Afghans need international assistance to rebuild their country. As a priority they need food and health care; refugees returning to their villages need housing; roads, electricity, clean water, telephone lines. More than two decades of conflict have left Afghanistan in ruins. At Tokyo, the international community pledged billions of dollars of aid to meet the needs of Afghanistan’s people. But little of that money has made its way to Afghanistan — something else that undermines Karzai’s power. Again, the reason is that rebuilding Afghanistan is an Afghan, not an American, priority.

The dangers of pursuing American objectives and ignoring Afghan ones are already becoming apparent. The writ of the Karzai government runs only in Kabul. Beyond the capital, warlords rule over regional fiefdoms. Crime and lawlessness are on the rise in the north. Atrocities have been committed against Pukhtoons, forcing many to flee their homes. The World Food Programme, UNHCR and other aid agencies are predicting a humanitarian disaster unless more aid reaches the country. Poppy production is back in full swing. Pluralism, ethnic harmony and democracy are as alien as ever.

What the Americans fail to realize is that the war on terror and the war on conflict and poverty in Afghanistan are the same thing. Instability, endemic conflict, poverty, frustration created the Taliban-Afghanistan petri dish that nourished Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. Should Afghanistan continue along the path it is following now, it is only a matter of time before it again reverts to factional fighting, lawlessness and desperation — breeding grounds for terrorism. Washington needs to start prioritizing Afghan goals; only then can it achieve its own goals.