FROM the late 1940s and up to the early 1970s, Pakistan had a reasonably efficient system of education, not much different from that in other countries of the South Asian subcontinent. It was dominated by the public sector; educational departments in the provinces administered schools and colleges while a small number of public sector universities provided post-graduate instruction.

A few schools were run by local governments. The public sector also had teacher training schools and colleges. The main purpose of the system was to prepare students for government service. The government including the military was the single largest employer in the country.

There were not many private schools within the system of education for several decades following the birth of Pakistan. Those that existed were run mostly by Christian missionaries and Islamic organizations, each producing graduates for two completely different segments of the society. The first set of schools catered mostly to the elite. They followed their own curricula, taught from the textbooks written mostly by foreign authors, brought in experienced teachers from outside.

The students who graduated from these schools usually took examinations administered by Cambridge University in England. A significant number of graduates from these schools went abroad for higher education. Upon return or after graduating from institutions such as Lahore’s Government College and Forman Christian College they joined one of the superior civil services or entered the army.

At the opposite end of the educational spectrum were religious schools, called ‘deeni madressahs’ that imparted religious instruction. Some of the better institutions belonging to this genre were either imports from India or were patterned after the old madressahs in what was now the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The best known of these was the Darul Uloom at Deoband that had developed its own curriculum and taught a highly orthodox or fundamentalist interpretation of Islam.

Following the partition of India and the birth of Pakistan, a number of ulema (Islamic scholars) from Deoband migrated to Pakistan and established seminaries in the new country. Two of these, a madrassah at Akora Khattak near Islamabad called Darul Uloom Haqqania and the other in Banori township of Karachi played prominent role in bringing an austere form of Islam to Pakistan.

This was not the type of Islam that had been practised in the country. Islam was brought to the areas that now constituted the state of Pakistan by a number of Sufi saints from Afghanistan and Central Asia. The religion they spread, not by the force of arms, but by setting personal examples of piety, simplicity, and respect for members of other faiths. Consequently, even to this day non-Muslims visit shrines such as the one at Ajmer Sharif in Rajasthan. This was not the version of Islam that appealed to the seminaries patterned after Deoband. We will return to the subject of these madressahs in a later article.

The private schooling system of that era imparting western style education, therefore, produced members of what later came to be known as the Pakistani establishment — the military and the civil services. The religious schools, on the other hand, produced imams (preachers) for the mosques, teachers for the madrassah system of education, and political workers for the Islamic parties.

These two very different systems with very different ideologies and pedagogic techniques have produced two very different social classes with very different world views and views about the way Pakistan should be managed. The two groups are now clashing in the political and social arena. One recent example of this is the controversy over the deletion of a box in the newly designed and machine readable passport that initially did not have a column indicating the religious affiliation of the passport holder.

This step was taken by the government headed by General Pervez Musharraf as one small move towards what he has called “enlightened moderation”. He was, however, beaten back by the religious parties and the “religion column” was reinserted in the passport. Another example of the clash of cultures came in the form of street violence which the religious groups resorted to in order to stop women from participating in sporting events in Gujranwala. Once again, the government stepped back rather than press forward with the modernization of society. Education, therefore, has begun to create deep fissures in Pakistani society.

In between these two active social classes is a large inert group, the product of the public educational system. The large public school system includes all aspects of the system of education. It starts with kindergarten and primary schools at the bottom, includes secondary and higher schools, and has, at its apex, semi-autonomous but publicly funded universities. For several decades the standard of instruction provided by this system was adequate; the system’s graduates were able to provide a workforce for the large public sector and also for the rapidly growing private sector of the economy.

Those graduates of the system who went abroad for further education either at their own expense or on that of various donor supported scholarship schemes did not experience much difficulty in getting adjusted to the foreign systems. Some of Pakistan’s better known scholars and professionals such as the Nobel Prize winning physicist Professor Abdus Salaam and the well known economist Mahbubul Haq were the products of this system.

However, the system has deteriorated over time to the extent that it has become common to describe Pakistan as the country that has done the least for the social development of its large population. There is considerable apprehension around the world — perhaps best articulated by the report of the 9/11 commission — that without major investment in education, Pakistan may well become a large exporter of manpower to the stateless Islamic organizations — Al Qaeda being the most prominent among them — that will continue their struggle against the West, western values, and anything else they see from their narrow prism as anti-Islamic.

How did Pakistan travel the distance from a moderate Muslim country with a reasonably efficient educational system to a country in which the public system of education has virtually broken down and in which a large number of educational institutions are providing instruction that teaches hate for those who hold different points of view and encourages jihad against them? Pakistan’s gradual transformation from one state to the other occurred slowly under many different impulses. As such, the country offers a good case study of how a society can get derailed and, once off the track, how difficult it is put it back on it again.

The Pakistani educational system collapsed slowly; at times its progressive deterioration was not even noticed by the people who later were to be most seriously affected by it. The collapse occurred for basically four reasons. The first jolt was given in the early 1970s by the government headed by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who decided to nationalize private schools, in particular those run by various Christian missionary orders.

His motive was simple. He was of the view that private schools encouraged elitism in the society whereas he wanted equality and equal opportunity for all. By attempting to create a level playing field in the educational system he unfortunately took out the peaks without which no system can remain truly dynamic.

Bhutto was also responsible for delivering the system the second shock and this time around the motive was political expediency. His rise to political power was viewed with great apprehension by the religious forces in the country. They considered the socialism Bhutto espoused as “godless” and were determined to prevent him and the Pakistan People’s Party founded by him from gaining ground in the country. The two sides — Bhutto and the Islamists — chose to use the college and university campuses to fight the battle for the control of the political mind in the country. Both sought to mobilize the student body by establishing student organizations representative of their different points of view.

For a number of years campuses of the publicly run institutions became the battleground for gaining political influence at the expense of providing education. It was in this battle, waged in educational institutions, that Pakistan witnessed the birth of another organization — the Mohajir Qaumi Movement — that was to use violence in order to spread its word and make its presence felt. The MQM significantly contributed to making the public educational system in Karachi largely dysfunctional.

The third development to turn the system of education further dysfunctional occurred in the 1980s when a coalition led by the United States and that also included Pakistan and Saudi Arabia decided to use the seminaries as training grounds for the mujahideen being instructed to battle the Soviet Union’s troops occupying Afghanistan. There was an unspoken understanding about their respective roles among these three partners.

The United States was to provide equipment and training for the foot soldiers of the jihad. Pakistan was to set up madressahs in the Afghan refugee camps and along the country’s long border with Afghanistan. Its military with better knowledge of the Afghan terrain was to be actively involved in training the mujahideen.

The government in Islamabad also reserved the right to choose among the various groups that were prepared to do battle in Afghanistan. The Saudis were happy to aid the effort with money as long as they were allowed to teach Wahabism, their brand of Islam, in the seminaries that were to be used for training the jihadis. This proved to be a potent mix of motives: the United States was able to recruit highly motivated fighters to battle the occupying forces of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Pakistan was able to further its influence in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia was able to introduce its extremely conservative interpretation of Islam into a large Muslim country that had hitherto subscribed to a relatively liberal, accommodating assimilative form of religion.

The fourth unhappy development to affect the sector of education was the political confusion that prevailed in the country for more than a decade, from the death of President Ziaul Haq in August 1988 to the return of the military under General Pervez Musharraf in October 1999.

In this period, four elected governments and three interim administrations governed the country. Preoccupied with prolonging their stay, the elected governments paid little attention to economic development in general and social development in particular. Under the watch of these administrations, public sector education deteriorated significantly.

To put the educational system back on the track will need more than money; it will require a change in the way society views education and in the way it is prepared to impart knowledge that would be useful not only in the marketplace. The education system must aim to change people’s mindset so that all citizens begin to recognize that it is not right to declare your religion on the front page of the passport, or to stop women from participating in public sporting events.

WHEN it comes to the nomination of John Bolton to be US representative at the United Nations, the mystery is not why a UN-hater was chosen or why someone with the management skills of the late Alphonse Capone was tabbed or even why so undiplomatic a person would be picked for the most diplomatic of all posts.

Rather, it is why he was not first awarded a presidential medal and fulsomely praised by none other than George Bush himself. Bolton has been that wrong.

“That wrong” is a high standard indeed. It is the standard of George “Slam-Dunk” Tenet, the former CIA director who managed to tell the president precisely what he wanted to hear: that Iraq was awash with the most awful weapons of mass destruction, all of them so advanced and futuristic we still can’t see them. It is the standard of Condi Rice, who made similar assurances to the American nation, and, of course, of Colin Powell, who told the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons galore — so many weapons in so many secret, mobile locations that had the expression not already been used, I would call it a slam-dunk.

Most important, it is the standard of Dick Cheney, who not only said Iraq had “reconstituted” its nuclear weapons programme but insisted on it even after UN inspectors had concluded otherwise. Earlier, Cheney had said it was “pretty well confirmed” that Mohamed Atta, the lead September 11 terrorist, had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence official. It has since been pretty well confirmed that no such meeting took place.

Bolton was hardly a departure from such smoke-blowing. He was wrong not only about Iraq but about Syria and Cuba as well — a trifecta of bad judgment. In all these cases, he apparently — or so goes the gravamen of the allegation — goosed the intelligence data to fit his views, sometimes browbeating subordinates to go along. This, of course, is the mark of a juvenile personality who, when his way of thinking is rejected, simply raises his voice. He attempts to do with volume what he cannot do with reason.

In the Washington of the moment, this sort of behaviour is considered both bizarre and rare. It is, however, nothing of the sort. The reason the administration nominated Bolton is that his method of operating — the exaggeration, the bullying — was commonplace. It was the music by which the Bush administration marched us all to war. More specifically, it was the tune played by Cheney, Bolton’s chief champion. The vice president, it is both authoritatively and repeatedly said, is the one who pushed Bolton on a presumably reluctant Secretary of State Rice. (Her predecessor, Powell, refuses to endorse Bolton’s nomination.)

Note that it was Cheney who belligerently told the two most important arms inspectors, the United Nations’ Hans Blix and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Mohamed ElBaradei, that if the Bush administration found their judgment questionable, “we will not hesitate to discredit you” — a Boltonesque piece of diplomacy if there ever was one. Note also that it was Cheney who applauded when he got intel he liked and growled when he was told something he didn’t like.

Now, all these months later, it is Cheney who has been discredited. Just last week Charles A. Duelfer, the administration’s chief Iraqi weapons hunter (head of the Iraq Survey Group), reported that UN sanctions and inspections had actually “dampened the regime’s ability to retain its WMD expertise” — just as Blix and ElBaradei had maintained. Oops.

But taking the nation to war for false reasons is not a minor blip. It is an unpardonable feat of hubris for which, on a daily basis, Americans die in Iraq. American voters, though, have been oddly forgiving (see the last election), and the Bush administration has neither apologized nor fired anyone for getting things so very, very wrong.

The conclusion is inescapable: This was not a war for the wrong reason; this was a war for any reason.

So, in a way, I feel a bit solicitous toward the embattled Bolton. He must wonder why, of all the fibbers and exaggerators and outright liars in the Bush administration, he alone is being asked to account for what he said and what he did. It is a fair enough question and leads me to amend a recent column in which I called Bolton a nut. He is, instead, Cheney’s acorn. He did not fall far from the tree. —Dawn/Washington Post Service

AFTER seven years of negotiations, the 191-member UN General Assembly adopted, by consensus, an international convention for the suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism, on April 13. It will open for signature from September 14 this year to December 2006.

UN Secretary-General, Kofi Anan, hailed the convention as a vital step forward in multilateral efforts to prevent terrorist groups from gaining access to the most lethal weapons known to mankind. A number of member states, welcoming the adoption of the convention, have also described it as an affective tool to combat the nuclear terrorism which is the most dangerous form of terrorism.

There are, however, many loopholes in the convention, which may impair the chances of its success. The most glaring weakness is that the convention does not address the issue of legality of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons by states. As a matter of fact, the activities of the armed forces of a state, undertaken during an armed conflict, are exempted from the purview of the convention on the ground that they are governed by other rules of international law.

The experts, however, interpret it to imply that the convention virtually condones the use of nuclear weapons by the nuclear states — which is not only discriminatory in favour of these states but also makes it a controversial document. They have, therefore, voiced their scepticism over the convention’s capacity to achieve its objective.

The use of nuclear weapons, which poses a great danger to human beings and the natural environment, constitutes a grave violation of international law and undermines the normative and moral stance against the nuclear terrorism. It also involves obligations and responsibilities of states and individuals, alike, under international law, in particular, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and humanitarian law.

As the use of nuclear weapons by the states or individuals could lead to catastrophic consequences, both should have been treated even-handedly in order to achieve a comprehensive convention on the prevention of nuclear terrorism.

It also follows from this that all members of the international community should participate, on an equal footing, to fully eliminate the menace of nuclear terrorism. As a matter of fact, the nuclear states have a greater responsibility in this regard than the non-state actors and this is why the International Court of Justice, in its landmark advisory opinion of 1996, reaffirmed that there existed an obligation on the part of the acknowledged nuclear states to conclude negotiations, in good faith, on nuclear disarmament, in all its aspects, under an effective and strict international control.

Needless to say, complete elimination of nuclear weapons is an essential prerequisite to eradicating nuclear terrorism. Regrettably, however, the United States, which claims to be the pioneer of nuclear non-proliferation, itself continues to proliferate and modernize its nuclear arsenal that is outside the safeguards regime.

It has also developed a new generation of nuclear weapons, to be used by it in conventional war theatre against the so-called rogue states and terrorists. The Pentagon has described these weapons as “harmless to civilians” which are actually the weapons of mass destruction by any definition.

The Pentagon has also contemplated a Falcon programme, describing it to be of “global reach”, which is to be used for America’s global economic and political domination. This system would allow the US to strike, from its own territory, either in support of its conventional forces, engaged in a war theatre, or in punitive action directed against countries which do not comply with Washington’ s economic and political diktats.

According to the Bush administration’s pre-emptive doctrine, nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort, as was the case during the cold war era. However, to justify pre-emptive military actions, ostensibly in self-defence, which is permissible under Article 51 of the UN Charter, Washington required the fabrication of a threat of nuclear terrorist attack on it by an external enemy.

It also needed to link these terrorist threats to state sponsorship by the so-called rogue states. It may be pointed out that the perceived Iraqi threat to the United States, which was neither imminent nor established as a possibility, was the justification put forward by Washington for a pre-emptive attack against that country.

However, impeccable evidence is now available that the war against Iraq had been in the planning stages since the middle of 1990s. A 1995 -US National Security document clearly states that the objective of the war against Iraq was to protect the United States’ uninterrupted and secure access to its oil.

In a classified Pentagon document “Nuclear Posture Review”, presented to the US Senate in the early 2000, the Bush administration also developed the so-called “contingency plans” for an offensive “first strike use” of nuclear weapons not only against the “axis of evil” but also against Russia and China. It follows from this that America’s war on terrorism is only a fiction and constitutes a cover-up of the objectives related to its military and economic agenda and other strategic interests, particularly in the Middle East, South Asia and Central Asia.

The current and future US nuclear plans call for the development of increasingly sophisticated nuclear weapons to establish its nuclear supremacy with a view to intimidating its political adversaries and achieve its strategic goals. For obvious reasons, America’s opponents will not be able to compete with it in this race but, given the availability of advance nuclear technology in black market, they are likely to use nuclear terrorism as an asymmetric response to its growing power and influence.

If the United States is indeed interested in eradicating the scourge of nuclear terrorism, which it says has become a critical global issue, it should fulfil its commitment to non- proliferation and disarmament. Only then would it have the moral ground for seeking global support for its fight against nuclear terrorism.

The writer is a former ambassador.

AS the population of developed countries is aging and more learned people are retiring, many brilliant young scientists from developing countries like Pakistan are finding lucrative employment opportunities abroad.

In the process, brain is being drained from the developing to the developed world. To reverse this trend, some bold steps are needed in order to address the challenge and preserve Pakistan’s most precious human resource against strong forces of globalization.

I have been following the debate in the national media regarding the role of the Higher Education Commission in reversing this trend and in reforming higher education in Pakistan. I am one of those foreign professors who have been placed at different public sector universities and higher learning institutions under the HEC’s reverse brain drain programme of educationists, scholars and researchers from overseas. This is one of the many programmes that have been launched by the HEC recently to improve teaching and research.

In view of the fact that there is an upward thrust in the realm of science and technology, the pace of breaking new grounds has accelerated beyond limit, so that countries like Pakistan have to address this global change in a thoughtful manner. Economies of countries such as France, Germany, Korea, the UK, China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc. are based on knowledge and technology and they are embarking on the highway of growth and dominance in the world today. Knowledge is now emerging as the engine for socio-economic development whereas the importance of natural resources has been greatly reduced. Investment in knowledge is a prerequisite for national growth.

Pakistan, like other agrarian countries, is facing an acute deficit of knowledge and none of its universities ranks among the world’s top 500. The establishment of Higher Education Commission (HEC) on September 11, 2002, was in recognition of the contribution of higher education to socio-economic development of Pakistan. However, HEC has a stupendous task in transforming Pakistan from an agrarian society to a knowledge and technology-based economy. It requires substantial and sustainable investment in achieving the goal. These efforts would require whole-hearted support of the intellectuals and politicians.

Recent statistical figures are alarming. Out of 7,000 faculty members in our universities, only 1,700 possess PhD degrees. Only 2.9 per cent or so of the students in the 18-23 years age group have access to higher education in Pakistani universities. This speaks of the quality and quantity of education in our country. The HEC is aiming to improve this situation by expanding the capacities of the existing higher education institutions as well as by establishing new ones.

It plans to train some 20,000 students for the PhD level education in the top universities in the West so that each of our 60 public sector universities can have 300 to 400 PhDs as faculty members, which will form the core faculty so essential for improving the quality of education in our research institutions. But the aim of producing a larger number of PhD graduates with purpose-oriented education will not be achieved without transforming institutions of higher learning into creative and vibrant places.

The vision and professional preparedness of a teacher have to be improved manifold so that he can play a constructive role in transforming students into productive citizens. This can only happen if swift actions are taken on two fronts — namely, faculty and educators. University faculties are needed to be strengthened to perform teaching and research effectively in an environment marked with basic facilities.

The Higher Education Commission under Prof Dr Attaur Rehman is playing a constructive role in improving higher education in Pakistan by launching a number of relevant projects and inviting universities to formulate and submit projects for funding in order to strengthen their research environment as well as potential leading to a more congenial ambience for research and teaching. Faculty members should make best use of this opportunity by taking stock of their present facilities and submitting PC-1 for improving their infrastructures and capacity to conduct research. The HEC has established a digital library which provides free access to 17,000 international journals. This is now available to all universities and educational research institutes in Pakistan.

Why do Pakistanis living abroad flourish very well in their respective academic fields and fail to do so in Pakistan? It is not that they lack in intelligence but it is the lack of training and appropriate environment for conducting research in the higher education sector. Pakistan has been left behind in the field of science, technology and education because a low priority has been given to education in this country by most of the earlier governments.

The solution to this problem calls for action on many fronts. The HEC is taking many steps in the right direction, including inviting highly qualified Pakistani specialists living and working abroad. These expatriate Pakistani professionals can significantly contribute in producing skilled manpower in Pakistan by transferring their knowledge to our youth in the country.

Now that the limiting factor, namely, the availability of funds for implementing higher education policy in Pakistan, is no longer a problem, the HEC has taken some bold initiatives in undertaking reforms to bring the standards of higher education at par with international standards. It has also launched a programme of free access to sophisticated instrumentation under which scientists and engineers can send samples for analysis to any institute in the country of their choice. These analyses are carried out free of cost. The efforts for improving the standard of higher education in Pakistan should be commended. Hopefully, the foreign faculty members would act as catalysts in achieving some of these reforms.

For the first time in Pakistan’s history, education is being given rightful priority in terms of funds provided by the government. Steps taken by the HEC such as equipping labs and providing better access to scientific journals and books will facilitate research and the results will be reflected in the years to come.

For faculty development, the HEC is offering various teacher development and training programmes, both in Pakistan and abroad. Various PhD scholarship schemes have been initiated by the HEC to promote research and development in all fields of studies. Another important step in this direction is to offer PhD students enrolled in Pakistani universities fellowships to spend six months in laboratories of reputed foreign universities and bring back the latest knowledge and research experience. This Pak-foreign university support programme will have long-term relations between our universities and international institutions of higher learning.

A Starter Support for Research/Teaching Programme for fresh PhD scholars, who do not have permanent and regular jobs, but want to engage in research and/or teaching has been launched by the HEC to discourage brain drain of qualified scientists and technologists. This is another step in the right direction. Under this, a training programme for technical or scientific staff initiated by HEC, grants have been made available to meet the scientific and technical staff shortage in Pakistani universities and institutes, for accelerating the quantum of research and development in our institutions of higher learning.

However, despite all the good intentions and the enterprising programmes, it is yet not clear whether the administrators of our universities are ready to respond to the challenges of higher level teaching and research in new and emerging scientific fields and exploit their full potentials. Will inviting accomplished expatriate academicians in institutions with antique laboratories and outdated equipment and asking them to assist in teaching and research activities in local universities produce the desired results?

My own experience as a foreign professor under foreign faculty hiring programme of the HEC in a Pakistani university is very frustrating. Securing the services of talented Pakistanis working abroad for promotion of teaching and research in the country can only be accomplished if the existing infrastructure of the universities is improved and the bureaucratic system in our institutions is completely overhauled. It will be quite useful if the chairman of the HEC holds an orientation session with the VCs, CEOS and research directors of Pakistani institutions of higher learning to raise their level of response to the HEC initiatives.

It is equally important to look at the situation from the point of view of those who are at the other end of the spectrum, namely, foreign professors who have left the comfort and research-productive environment and amenities of their workplaces, homes and families abroad in order to be a part of nation-building efforts. Foreign faculty members should be seen as ‘resource persons’ bringing in new technologies and skills to supplement and enhance the existing facilities in their respective faculties. In the end, they will return to their respective countries leaving behind all the equipment and resources for future use by the indigenous institutions. After all, all of us including foreign and indigenous faculty members, are aiming at improving higher education in Pakistan.

The above-expressed sentiment and reservations may be valid in some instances, but I am certain that the many-pronged initiatives taken by the HEC to break the stagnation and the deadlock, will bear fruit and improve the present unsatisfactory state of affairs in the universities of Pakistan by overcoming the long-standing problems of poor teaching and lack of research within the next decade or so and bringing it at par with the international standards.