A FEW years ago, an old friend, who plans and designs airports, invited me to address the annual meeting of the University of Karachi Alumni Association (UKAA) of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. It seems that whatever I said then went well enough with my listeners for them to have adopted me.

I was never a student at the University of Karachi, and thus I am not formally an “alumnus.” But my teaching career began at a school which was the parent of the institution that later came to be known as the Institute of Business Administration (IBA). It was then a part of the University of Karachi. I taught there for five years (1957-1962), and that way my connection with that university is as deep as that of its former students.

As far as I know, this is the only association of its kind in America. Medical colleges in Pakistan (King Edward in Lahore, Nishtar in Multan, Liaquat in Hyderabad, Dow in Karachi, among others) have alumni associations that function as bodies corporate. But no other Pakistani university (not even the University of the Punjab, not even the Government College in Lahore) has an alumni association.

Former students of the University of Karachi in other American cities may have banded together as “clubs” to chat over dinner once or twice a year. But the one I am talking about today, the one in the Washington metropolitan area, is unique in that it has a noble mission.

It is committed to the advancement of education in Karachi. It helps some of the city’s needy young people to get educated and thus reach their full potential, which they might otherwise not be able to do. It is trying to “light the torch of enlightenment at the grass roots level,” and raise a generation of students who can make a meaningful contribution to the country’s progress. It is dedicated also to the qualitative improvement of the University of Karachi and its affiliated colleges.

As is often the case, a few persons meeting at dinner once thought of setting up this organisation. Word spread and before long 50 or more former students of the university got together, formed themselves into an association, wrote its bylaws, elected its officers, and set it rolling.

It has been very refreshing for me to see that, unlike the legislators back home, UKAA members take their bylaws (their “constitution,” if you will) very seriously. Any time the spirit moves a person to do something irregular, someone will stand up to say it cannot be done, because the rules won’t allow it. Persons with a shared goal may become a group, but the group does not become an institution until its members learn to act according to established procedures. UKAA meets that test eminently well.

The organisation is rather small in terms of its dues-paying membership. One can become a “life member” upon paying a lump sum of $200. Ordinary membership costs $20 annually for individuals and $30 for families. This entitles members to attend meetings and vote in elections. It is my impression that regular dues-paying members number around 120. This number increases to an extent when activists in a “calling network” remind and persuade those whose membership has expired to pay up and renew their standing. It may also register an increase a few weeks before the annual election if any “hot” issues are likely to come up.

Many more persons may be counted as the association’s “friends.” They will attend its dinner meetings and other festivities (picnics, poetry recitals, and other literary activities), and pay for what they take. But note that some of them also make substantial donations to UKAA’s general fund or for designated projects.

One of the “festivities” in 2006 took the form of a “recognition ceremony” to honour alumni who have earned distinction as poets and writers, published their works, and thus kept Urdu language and literature a thriving pursuit in America.

The relative smallness of size is more than compensated by the regular members’ intense dedication to the organisation and its mission. The gentleman (my friend who builds airports), who served as its general secretary this past year and has been elected its president for 2007, devotes countless hours to its business. I don’t know how much time he has for America’s airports, but I know that he has virtually none for his old friends. The same goes for that great lady who was vice-president last year and also edited and produced the association’s annual journal, called Tehreer.

It is a beautiful little publication, containing association news, committee reports, interesting accounts of visits to Pakistan, and short essays on subjects of general interest. It also has an Urdu section that includes poetry and articles in the field of literary criticism.

The officers have done well to spread responsibility for various functions to committees, giving members a sense of participation. The association’s executive committee manages its day-to-day affairs. Consisting of four officers (president, vice-president, general secretary, treasurer) and five “at large” members, it meets once every month. Agenda for the forthcoming meeting and minutes of the preceding one are circulated to members. Its meetings are open to all who may wish to attend. Chairpersons present reports on the work of their respective committees, and decisions are made regarding the association’s various educational projects.

Those who run these meetings are firmly committed to democratic norms. Every issue that comes up is open to debate and members listen to one another with commendable patience even if a presentation has become much too extended and taxing. After all sides have been heard, the matter is put to vote and, hopefully, settled.

As one might expect, there was a bit of lust for office, “glory,” and “power” (of which there is actually little in organisations of this kind) on the part of some members, giving rise to personal rivalries in the association, during its early years. But all of this would seem to have subsided during the last several years that I have been observing its affairs. This is evident from the fact that the gentleman who was elected president for 2007 did not mount a campaign, the persons elected general secretary and treasurer had no opponents to contend with, and no more than six persons contested for the five at large positions in the executive committee.

One may be tempted to argue that this state of affairs indicates indifference more than selflessness. I don’t think so. The zeal with which the officers work counters that reasoning. Moreover, members feel that “politicking” is inappropriate in an organisation that is dedicated to the advancement of knowledge, and to helping the needy in that pursuit, and whose moving force must therefore be generosity, not meanness, of spirit. I remember also that a candidate for one of the offices in a previous election launched a campaign, which got to be virulent. It was not well received, and he was roundly defeated.

Elections of officers and the executive committee members for 2007 were held on September 17, 2006, and great care was taken to ensure propriety in their conduct. A veteran member was appointed to serve as the “election commissioner,” who co-opted two others, one of them a former advocate at the Supreme Court of Pakistan, to help him with the work. The commissioners closed membership two weeks before the election to preclude opportunistic enrolments, and also to have a final and authentic list of voting members in good time. They closed nominations on September 8 so that the names of the nominees could be placed on the ballot papers. They asked the general secretary to provide a certified list of the members by the same date.

Ballots, each bearing a number and the commissioner’s signature, were placed in sealed envelopes, each with the eligible voter’s name printed on it, and later handed over to him or her. Each nominee was allowed four minutes to introduce himself and his ideas. Ballots were counted immediately after they had been collected and the results announced within 45 minutes. All proceeded in a pleasant and orderly fashion. The commissioner reported also that 58 per cent of the registered voters had participated in the election.

The association has given funds for charities beyond the domain of education. For instance, it donated $10,000 to help the victims of tsunami and later those of the earthquake in northern Pakistan.

A word now about the association’s principal mission. Its contribution to the advancement of education falls in two categories. There is first the provision of tools that the university and its affiliated colleges need to improve their performance and output. These include the expansion of library offerings (books, periodicals, space, furniture, personnel training), equipment and chemicals in science laboratories, and greater access to computers and internet terminals.

During 2005 and 2006, the association gave $7,522 for internet projects at the University of Karachi, $6,385 to the Government College for Boys and the Government College for Girls. Within the same period it allocated more than $10,000 for scholarships to deserving students. Recipients of scholarships are selected on the basis of merit and need. Amounts given are intended to cover mainly the tuition cost and possibly books and supplies. Requests for assistance from Jinnah College and Abdullah College are currently under consideration.

At this point the association’s resources are rather modest. But they are improving as its work gets to be more widely known. The bulk of the income from membership fees and that from dinners and other festivities goes to meet its operating expenses. Then there are donations for specific projects. But it has also put together an “endowment fund,” amounting to a little over $135,000. Money in this fund is invested in low-risk securities. Income from this investment is used to provide scholarships, while donations collected at “fund raising” dinners and other occasions fund the association’s other educational projects in Karachi.

The writer is visiting professor at the Lahore School of Economics.

Email: anwarhs@lahoreschool.edu.pk

AS IF the daily worries of ordinary folk were not enough the spokesmen of the government and the opposition keep adding to these every moment of the day and every day of the week. The following are a few examples taken from newspapers to show what they had to say or suggest over the past few days.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif wishes to forge a national alliance to overthrow the military dictatorship and then organise elections under a caretaker government. Makhdum Amin Fahim of the PPP, on the other hand, sees no harm in taking part in elections even if Musharraf remains the president, providing these are transparent and fair. Javed Hashmi, who is serving a 23-year sentence in prison, believes Musharraf will soon depart from the scene and that, therefore, not he but someone else will hold elections. All three are partners in the same alliance — the ARD.

The chief of the MMA, Qazi Hussain Ahmad, has reservations about elections held under President Musharraf’s supervision. But his secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rahman stands for taking part in all situations to deny the ruling Q League and its cohorts a free run. The head of the third major party in the religious alliance, Shah Anas Noorani, strikes an unusually strident note (that sounds almost like a fatwa) that it is altogether sinful to sit in assemblies which pass such un-Islamic laws as the Protection of Women Act.

Amidst these dissonant voices emerging from the opposition alliances, the prime minister came out with the agreed stand of the ruling coalition that the present assemblies will elect Musharraf as president next October for another five years. That done, an interim government will be formed in November to hold elections in January 2008 without extending the term of the assemblies. The junior information minister stepped in a day later to elaborate on the schedule. His senior promptly intervened to say that nothing was final.

The point that no one has raised is whether Musharraf will be elected while holding his army command or after relinquishing it. Musharraf has let it be known more than once that he would himself make this decision at a time he thinks appropriate. His loyalist ministers, however, keep suggesting that the circumstances require that he should remain the president in military uniform.

The political parties — the PPP and Fazlur Rahman’s JUI among them — which are inclined to contest polls even if Musharraf is elected by the present assemblies, shall then have to decide whether they still would if he were to keep the army post as well. If the PPP and JUI decide against it, the elections could be a walkover for the Q League and its partners in government.

It is unlikely to turn out that way, however. The current alliances and parties are bound to split apart on the issue of poll participation or boycott. The parliamentary system has not been able to dig roots in Pakistan because the country has too many parties and every party is divided into factions. The ideal number of parties for the parliamentary system to function successfully is three — one in government, the second constituting the main opposition and the third waiting in the wings for either of the two to falter.

The present coalition is held together not by a common programme but by common allegiance to Musharraf. The creation of more parties would make parliament ever more vulnerable to military influence. The civil bureaucracy, too, would look up to the president rather than to the cabinet or the prime minister. Notwithstanding the provisions of the Constitution and the commitment made to the Supreme Court not to alter its parliamentary character, the government would tend to become authoritarian — more than it has been in the past seven years.

The likely result of the present attitudes of both the government and the opposition besides causing further damage to the parliamentary and civil institutions would be general chaos, or worse, farcical one-sided elections. In either case the hold of the army on national affairs and institutions would strengthen and last longer. To forestall this eventuality, the PPP and Muslim League (both the N and Q factions) must reappraise their standpoints. So should the president.

Gen Musharraf should know that his career in national politics will be no longer determined by the army but by elections. Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif also need to realise that they can come to power through elections, not by forcibly driving Musharraf out. On his part, the least that Musharraf can do to secure the participation of the two mainstream parties in the electoral process is to quit the army command once he wins another term from the present assemblies.

The presence of parties like the PPP, the ANP, the MQM and the Muslim League in parliament is bound to restore the latter’s supremacy in the course of time. Musharraf should use the upcoming electoral alliances to shed Pakistan’s violent, reactionary image. Though committed to exterminating terrorists, he is seen as leaning for support on religio-political elements who view those very terrorists as fighters in the cause of Islam.

If one justification is to be found for Musharraf to retain a leading role in public life for five more years it is the expectation that he might succeed in normalising relations with India and in negotiating a settlement on Kashmir which, under the current circumstances, no politician or political party can do.

The expectations from him in turn would be two-fold. First, the leaders of all those parties who participate in the elections should be consulted in the appointment of the caretaker government and the election commission and, secondly, he should remain neutral in the contest and not become a campaign manager for the Q League as he is tending to be. Any government emerging from fair elections open to all could not be worse than the series of governments that were witnessed in the last seven years.

UNDETERRED by the horrors and disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, the Bush administration has opened another battlefront in the Muslim world. With US backing, Ethiopian troops have invaded Somalia in an illegal war of aggression.

But this brazen US-sponsored bid to topple the popular Islamists who had brought Somalia its first peace and security in 16 years has already begun to backfire. Looting has forced the transitional government to declare a state of emergency. Clan warlords, who had terrorised Somalia until they were driven out by the Islamists this year, have begun carving up the city once again. And the African Union, which helped create the transitional government, has called for the immediate withdrawal of Ethiopian forces from the country, as did Kenya, a close US and Ethiopian ally.

They had little choice: the invasion was a clear violation of international law and a UN security council resolution, which the US itself pushed through earlier this month, that explicitly forbade troops from any neighbouring country from joining even the new peace-keeping force it authorised for Somalia. That still did not prevent the Bush administration from issuing a strong statement of support for the Ethiopian offensive.

As with Iraq in 2003, the US has cast this as a war to curtail terrorism. The real goal of course is to gain a direct foothold in another highly strategic and oil rich region by installing a client regime in Somalia. The US had already been violating the UN arms embargo on Somalia by supporting the warlords who drove out the UN peace-keepers in 1993 by killing 18 US soldiers, in order to push out the Islamists. That effort failed and an Ethiopian invasion remained the only way to oust a group with popular support. All independent experts warned against such a war, saying it would destabilise the region.

Ethiopia itself is highly unstable. Thought of as a Christian nation, it has a sizable Muslim population which has begun to assert itself after marginalisation in the power structure. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi heads a dictatorial regime which has held on to power with US support after losing last year’s elections. But this war, unlike its conflict with Eritrea, will not unify the country behind Meles.

To achieve its goals, the US once again ensnared the UN security council, which cravenly adopted a resolution which will further cement its reputation as an anti-Muslim body. It authorised a regional peace-keeping force to enter Somalia to protect the weak and isolated transitional government and “restore peace and stability”.

But all major international news organisations had reported that the country experienced this year its first respite from the utter lawlessness and terror that prevailed since 1991. A multilateral force was suddenly deemed necessary only because it was the Islamists that had brought about this stability — and they had done so not through violence but primarily through rallying people to their side by creating law and order through the application of sharia law, which Somalis universally practise. —Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer was UN spokesman in Iraq in 2003.