IN last week’s column, I discussed some of the major initiatives General Pervez Musharraf’s administration was taking in the area of higher education and education at the primary level. I said that the two programmes I had begun to discuss and analyse were likely to profoundly affect the state of education in the country — for education’s reach, its quality, and its impact on the economy and society.

Unlike some of the other initiatives launched by the government which were more in the nature of responses to quick developing situations, these two programmes were well thought out. They started after a careful review of the situations to be addressed.

There was a clear philosophy behind the approach that led to the launch of these two initiatives. The government decided that if education was to be given a high priority, the task of turning around the sector could not be assigned to the established institutions and bureaucracies. These were tried, on several occasions in the past, as harbingers of change but had failed spectacularly each time to produce any palpable difference in the state of affairs.

They failed because of the built-in inefficiencies, corruption and the fact that they worked under the influence of the interests that were indifferent, if not altogether hostile, to introducing change. It was change — a revolutionary change — that was needed to get the sector of education to deliver the human resources needed desperately by the economy, society and the political system. But established systems could not be trusted to bring about the needed change.

The government turned to new organisational forms that were answerable essentially to the president whose objectives they were entrusted to achieve. The two agencies that were established were semi-autonomous bodies with their own budgets, programmes, staffs and leadership, and were given the mandate to raise a part of their resources by directly working with the donor community. The two programme leaders had the direct encouragement and support of the president. That they succeeded in bringing about some impressive change was because the president was prepared to step in whenever the programme leaders felt that their forward movement was being blocked by vested interests.

The two bodies that received these mandates were the Higher Education Commission working under the leadership of Dr Attaur Rehman and the National Commission on Human Development that was founded and is operating under the direction Dr Naseem Ashraf. If they succeed in their two very separate missions, they will do so for the remarkable dynamism and charisma of the two leaders made responsible for these two efforts and the fact that they were using entirely different organisational forms and structures in order to achieve their objectives and those of a reformist president.

There is precedence in Pakistan’s history when a reformist regime tried to institute change by moving away from established bureaucratic structures and established new institutions that could work independently of the establishment and under the direction of the senior leader. This was done by the reformist regime of Ayub Khan during the first part of his presidential tenure.

It was during this period that Pakistan’s military leader was able to develop a programme of reform that touched on many aspects of the country’s life. In order to do that it relied on new institutional devices. The government of Ayub Khan scored some remarkable successes with the Water and Power and Development Authority, a new public sector entity with its own staff and leadership, its own programme and resources, and led by series of remarkable men.

The same was true of the Pakistan Industrial Development Corporation which was established before Ayub Khan took over the country’s administration but that received a new mandate and new leadership once the military was in power. The third was the Pakistan International Airlines led by another remarkable individual who created an airline that was then the envy of the developing world. When a comprehensive and unbiased history of Pakistan’s development as an economy is written, Wapda, PIDC and PIA will be assigned important roles in bringing about massive economic and social changes.

There are a couple of other points that should be emphasised. One, new organisational forms succeed if they continue to be reinvigorated by new thinking, if they have the flexibility to respond to the new dynamics they are unleashing as a consequence of the changes they are introducing into the systems they are attempting to reform, and if they can be kept separate from the established bureaucracy. Two, if the new organisational forms succeed, it does not follow that the same device will work in other areas that also need change.

The initial successes scored by Wapda, PIDC and PIA led to the adoption of this approach in a number of other areas. Ayub Khan and some of the successor governments established new autonomous bodies. These were less successful; not only that, they were easily captured by the political system. Over time some of them became more corrupt and inefficient than the bureaucratic system they were allowed to bypass. That fate befell the numerous organisations established by the administration of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Education is the only area in which the government headed by Pakistan’s fourth military ruler opted for new organisational forms to bring about much needed change. The early indications are that the Higher Education Commission and the National Commission on Human Development are succeeding in achieving the results that are part of their mandates.

As discussed in the article last week, the HEC has given the highest priority to improving the quality and quantity of teachers at all levels of education. While its mandate does not include primary and secondary education, some of its initiatives will improve the standard of lower level education. One such move is the establishment of the National Education University which was created by combining several teacher training institutions. These institutions were previously responsible for training teachers by putting them through modest one-year programmes.

The NEU has been designed to function as a high class teacher training institute that, in addition to improving pedagogic skills to teachers at all levels, will also build the capacity to do research in this very important area. Five years ago, there were only a handful of teachers with PhDs in education; now there are 200 students at the NEU studying for PhDs in education.

If the NEU succeeds in its mission, there is a very good possibility that the private sector will also come into the area of teacher training. This will especially be the case since teaching as a profession is now set to bring handsome economic rewards to those who take it up. If teachers are slated to do well economically (they have access to very good remuneration provided they meet the required standard) and socially (that the teachers in well regarded institutions receive social recognition is now evident), the teachers’ teachers should also do well.

The HEC’s other activity of high priority is to improve both the quality of the physical infrastructure of education and to also improve the access of students and teachers to new technologies that have become vital for the acquisition of knowledge. The Commission’s Digital Library project is aimed at making thousands of academic journals and many books available online. The impact of this on teaching and knowledge accumulation should be enormous as students as well as teachers find an easy and inexpensive way of gaining access to cutting edge research on a variety of subjects. The Commission will have to ensure that its digital archives are not only up to date but that new subjects are added.

In this area, the Commission should give serious consideration to first digitising government reports and then making them available online to researchers, analysts, students and teachers. Just to take two examples: it would be extraordinarily valuable for students if the past issues of the Pakistan Economy Survey, the government’s flagship document on the economy, and all issues of the Pakistan Development Review, the quarterly journal of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, were archived and brought on line. Similarly, scholarship on Pakistan would benefit greatly if the past issues of major newspapers were to become available in the digital library.

I continue to be troubled by inadequate data and information available even to a newspaper columnist such as myself. Its lack must be a serious problem for those who wish to study in-depth some aspect or the other of the Pakistani experience. I have recently completed preparing the third edition of my book, A Historical Dictionary of Pakistan. Collecting data and information for the new edition was not an easy job although the entries I was adding had to do with the country’s recent history.

The Commission also has plans to upgrade the laboratories in the various science and technology institutions in the country. Their deterioration over time was one manifestation of the neglect of education and the reduced capacity to provide quality instruction in the country. When I was a student of physics at Government College, Lahore, the “high tension” laboratory in the physics department was among the best facilities for particle research in Asia. It was allowed to lapse into a state of disrepair. It is only recently that the new leaders of Government College University have begun to pay attention and spend resources on rebuilding this valuable research resource.

One other aspect of the programme of reform the HEC is currently implementing is to encourage the development of an interface between research and industry. Investment in higher education will produce highly educated and skilled people. There would be great frustration if they don’t have jobs waiting for them when they graduate. One way of eliminating a possible mismatch between the output of the institutions of higher learning and the skill inputs required by industry, commerce and finance is to work actively with these sectors of the economy in designing educational programmes.

I will quote once again (as I did last week) from the work done by Grace Clark, the American expert who is deeply associated with the reform of higher education in Pakistan. “Previously there was an almost complete disconnect between the university and industry,” she wrote in an essay on Pakistan’s higher education. “Now, universities are actively encouraged to work with industries and the military on projects of critical national importance. Some current priorities are food processing, packaging and marketing, combating the salinisation of soils that is currently destroying vast acres of productive farmland, computer design and innovation to help Pakistan duplicate India’s IT success, and research on geology and mineralogy to take advantage of Pakistan’s natural mineral wealth.”

In sum, the work of the Higher Education Commission and that of the National Commission on Human Development has already begun to change the Pakistani landscape. Before I discuss the latter institution, there is one aspect of the HEC’s work that needs further attention: the need to improve the teaching of social sciences. That will be the subject for next week, the concluding article on the HEC.

The International Atomic Energy Agency’s latest report has faulted Iran for refusing to stop enriching uranium within the 30-day deadline that was set by the United Nations Security Council.

It is, however, important to note that the report in question has not established conclusively that Iran was developing its nuclear capabilities to make nuclear weapons.

Iran has categorically rejected the belief that it possesses a nuclear weapons programme and has expressed its willingness to allow inspections of its nuclear installations by IAEA experts to dispel misgivings about the nature of its nuclear programme.

Iran’s nuclear programme, which began in 1970 when it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has been under the supervision of the IAEA which plays a key role in assisting the international community in curbing nuclear proliferation. In view of this, the reports systematically carried by the western media that in the past 10 years or so Iran has deceived the international community to conceal its build-up of nuclear weapons do not carry conviction.

In this connection it may also be pertinent to mention that, in April last year, when the then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon presented President Bush with intelligence reports indicating that Iran was only a few months away from developing military nuclear capability, he was told that according to US intelligence evaluations, Iran was still years away from acquiring this deterrent. It is apparent, therefore, that Israel was behind the baseless propaganda campaign against Iran’s nuclear programme. It is also clear that Israel has succeeded in making President Bush believe that Iran’s nuclear programme is of military nature and poses a serious threat to its security.

Israel does not acknowledge the nuclear capability it is widely believed to possess and that it has acquired with the active support of the United States. Its security depends on its ability to manufacture nuclear arms and in order to retain its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East, it has been persuading Washington to prevent Iran from pursuing its perfectly legitimate nuclear programme.

Washington should, however, realise that in case unnecessary obstacles are placed in its path in pursuing its nuclear programme for peaceful purposes, Iran may be prompted to withdraw from the NPT, as is permissible under Article X (1). Following economic reforms, exploiting the existing and exploring new sources of energy has become a necessity for Iran.

President Bush has not ruled out military action against Iran to prevent it from pursuing its nuclear programme. It is widely believed that in case the United States fails to muster sufficient support in the Security Council in order to take punitive action against Iran it might itself strike pre-emptively to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations or Israel may do so at its behest. In either case, both Iran and the United States would be entangled in a widening military confrontation leading to extremely serious consequences in the region as neutral hostilities could provoke a negative reaction in other Muslim countries giving rise to more anti-American movements dominated by militants and extremists.

The United States should, therefore, carefully weigh the pros and cons of a military confrontation with Iran. Realising the magnitude of the negative consequences of such an undesirable course of action it is hoped that President Bush will show circumspection and allow diplomacy to resolve the matter in an amicable manner which is the only forward to ward off a devastating armed conflict between Iran and the United States.

Iran and the United States are not destined to be rivals forever. The two countries cannot remain in a state of war in perpetuity. The geo-political interests of both countries demand that they improve their relations. Regrettably, however, Israel continues to be a major obstacle in achieving this objective. It may be recalled that Iran’s foreign policy had entered a new phase, moving from confrontation to conciliation during the tenure of President Khatami who had declared that Iran was not an enemy of the people of the United States and that relations between the two countries should be based on mutual respect, trust and sovereign equality. Regrettably, President Bush did not grasp this historical opportunity to improve the years old embittered Iran-US relations, and declared Iran a part of the ‘axis of evil’.

After his election as president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a conservative, also declared that his country favoured a rapprochement with the US. It was hoped that President Bush would reciprocate these sentiments and that the diplomatic stalemate of more than 25 years would come to an end. However, the US president remained persistent in his hostile attitude towards Iran and unleashed a vicious propaganda campaign against it, particularly on the nuclear issue.

In the wake of the ongoing stand-off between Iran and the United States on the nuclear issue, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a bid to ease the growing tensions and to resolve the matter peacefully sent a personal letter to President Bush on May 8. In this letter, while analysing the world situation and tracing the root causes of the problems between Tehran and Washington, the Iranian leader has proposed ways of ending the present predicament. It was generally believed that this unprecedented diplomatic initiative would break the ice and give way to a new process leading to better ties between Tehran and Washington. Regrettably, however, the United States has summarily dismissed this initiative by stating that it does not address US concerns about Iran’s nuclear programme.

Apparently, Washington has not felt the need and urgency to move ahead to deflect an extremely volatile situation. Its outright refusal to engage Tehran in diplomacy, even after the Iranian president’s laudable initiative, is likely to be a precursor of worse to come. The world is, for obvious reasons, astounded by Washington’s unrealistic and myopic attitude in letting a rare moment of opportunity pass.

The writer is a former ambassador.

NO one has received as much attention — or blame — for Washington’s increasingly unpopular war in Iraq as the coterie of neoconservative intellectuals around President Bush.

The group — including the cerebral former deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, and such bookish colleagues as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and Elliott Abrams — has been widely denounced for naively believing that Saddam Hussein’s ouster would lead to Middle East democracy, for arguing that the road to peace between Israel and the Palestinians “runs through Baghdad” and for encouraging Iraqi and Palestinian elections that in retrospect seemed destined to lead to the victory of radicals and Islamic fundamentalists.

If these guys are so smart, their critics want to know, how did they get it so wrong?

But, in fact, Wolfowitz and his colleagues are part of a long tradition. Since the end of World War II, successive White Houses have repeatedly brought in intellectuals and scholars to provide thoughtful moral and theoretical underpinnings for foreign policy decisions — and the experience through the years has been a mixed one at best.

George Kennan, the brilliant young Sovietologist, was the first, immediately after WWII, and he was followed in subsequent years by, among others, the scholars affiliated with the Rand Corp. in the 1950s; President Kennedy’s “best and the brightest” — including McGeorge Bundy, Robert McNamara and Walt Rostow — in the 1960s; and, of course, the famous house intellectual of the Nixon-Ford years, Henry Kissinger.

Although they generally professed deep understanding, these intellectuals who arrived in Washington with the imprimatur of the nation’s greatest universities and think-tanks often found themselves groping in the dark. Much of the time, fashion was more important to their thinking than validity, and often they lacked elemental political common sense.

All too often, they articulated ideas designed to exculpate policymakers — or themselves — or to provide politicians with the fictions that could be used to give meaning to policies for the public. It’s no contradiction to say that they also, in some administrations, had little actual effect on policy — or less, in any case, than was widely believed.

One of the earliest and most curious cases is that of Kennan. In 1947, at the age of 45, Kennan became the first modern intellectual in residence in the Department of State after publishing his famous article, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” which ran in “Foreign Affairs” under the anonymous byline “X.”

The article painted a lurid picture of the pathological mental world of the Russian leadership, foretold a worldwide struggle between the West and communism and advocated “unalterable counterforce” to oppose a wicked ideology around the globe. As the creator of the Democratic Party’s guidelines for the “containment” of Russia, Kennan became head of the planning staff in the department, a new position designed specifically for a thinker on foreign policy.

But the ideas that got him his job, it later turned out, were ones that Kennan himself barely believed. In his memoirs, he lamented the careless statement of his views and said his writing sounded like that of the strident right wing, which he detested.

Perhaps more important, Kennan was quickly relieved of his duties. Dean Acheson, who became secretary of state to President Truman in 1949, eased Kennan out of his job less than two years after he was given it. Acheson, the architect of American policy in the early Cold War, said Kennan had an “abstract” sense of the national interest and a “Quaker gospel.” Kennan, wrote Acheson, had a “mystical attitude” toward the realities of power, “which he did not understand.”

During the 1950s, scholars in the famous Air Force think tank known as the Rand Corp. were consequential in advising out-of-power Democrats during the Eisenhower administration.

The leader of these defence intellectuals was Albert Wohlstetter, a nuclear strategist trained in mathematics, philosophy and symbolic logic. Guided by Wohlstetter, the men of Rand argued that the Soviet Union, because of its evil nature, was a malevolent enemy that would attack the United States even if there were no geopolitical issues between the two countries.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Rand again and again urged increases in the American nuclear arsenal. These students of national security envisioned complicated ways to threaten the Soviet Union with atomic weapons or to deploy conventional arms in minor skirmishes. Wohlstetter’s additions to the canon included the “second strike” and “fail-safe” concepts for deterring nuclear war.

President Eisenhower fought these “theologians of nuclear war” for most of his presidency. The president’s close advisors found Rand’s concepts to be “dream stuff.” Eisenhower himself, who had, after all, presided over the western assault on the Nazis and had extricated the United States from Korea, said specifically that he did not want “a lot of longhaired professors” to examine nuclear policy. “What the hell do they know about it?” he exclaimed. When Kennedy took over the White House in 1961, many of these Rand intellectuals followed him to Washington as assistants to McNamara in the Department of Defence. The “whiz kids” now had some clout after eight years of scoffing at the slow-witted foreign policies of Eisenhower.

In subsequent years, many historians found these wizards of foreign affairs to blame for the Vietnam War, and they are a tempting target. The civilian strategists advocated the “graduated incrementalism” that became the hallmark of the failed US policies in Southeast Asia. The policy prolonged the war in a tit-for-tat series of escalations to bomb North Vietnam and to fight on the ground in threatened South Vietnam.

Under Kennedy — and his successor, Lyndon Johnson — many top administration officials came from the academic world. Bundy had been dean of arts and sciences at Harvard before being tapped as national security advisor; McNamara had a Harvard MBA and taught briefly at the business school there before becoming an executive at the Ford Motor Co. (and then secretary of defence); and Rostow, an MIT economist, was named head of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council.

But Johnson was uncertainly committed to Vietnam, and for any number of reasons he was only going to take the US to war bit by bit. His theorists had lots of fancy names for it — graduated escalation was one, or flexible response, or sustained reprisal, or proportionate response, or controlled escalation, or war-fighting, or counterforce, or even quasi-guerrilla action — but in the real world of Washington, they all boiled down to going slow, and one or all of them might serve as a rationale for what would have been done on other grounds.

The intellectual strategists in the 1960s, including Bundy, Rostow and the whiz kids, merely provided Johnson with a respectable label for what he was doing. The administration needed some moral and political speech to validate their efforts, to have policies make sense to themselves and others.

The defence intellectuals in the Johnson years provided that talk. They fabricated an acceptable vocabulary and grammar in which the participants formulated decisions. But had one justification not been available, leaders would have found another to realize the same decisions. If they wanted to make other decisions, they would have found other justifications.

In the years that followed, one intellectual was undeniably important to the making of foreign policy: Kissinger, who, over a 20-year period at Harvard, developed a sense of how the real world might absorb his thought about foreign policy. When he went to the Nixon White House, he put his ideas into practice, most effectively from 1969 to 1972.

As many of Kissinger’s critics have pointed out, he did not have a “theory.” What he had was an unappetising but often accurate sense of the way statesmen and their states behaved that reflected his own self-aggrandising and opportunistic personality. Had Kissinger’s ideas not been applied to US-Soviet relations in the early 1970s, the outcomes would certainly have been different than they were. He made the scholar count in foreign policy — although this is not to say that the outcome was desirable.

In the long period of the Cold War, there is little evidence that the authority of intellectuals was benign. They usually offered up self-justifying chatter to the powerful. Sometimes they displayed a tin ear for politics and lacked elementary political sense. Academics in the corridors of the Defence Department often substituted what they learned in the seminar room for what only instinct, experience and savvy could teach.

One thing they did not lack was hubris. Scholarly strategists always thought that their education and expertise made them immune from error.

The writer is a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, US.