SINCE years we have been in a state of war. …[There are] bomb blasts, suicide attacks, passengers travelling by bus being made to disembark and then shot dead on sectarian grounds. …This has become the order of the day. In rural areas there are tribal feuds and ethnic conflict. It seems as if this state has become a nursery for riots where … clashes and conflicts are growing. This continues regardless of whether there is a democratic era or dictatorship in the country. In a dictatorship, the bureaucracy calls the shots, while in a democracy chieftains, feudals … enjoy power. Neither dictatorship nor democracy has changed the situation for the common man.

This does not mean that we are opposed to democracy, but we want to point out that elected representatives … do not follow democratic values. These feudals cannot be friends of the people. We are unable to promote education. No outsider is hampering the progress of education, but it is our feudals, chaudhries and waderas who have converted school buildings into cattle pens…. They have neither allowed the middle class to rise nor have they worked in the spirit of democracy. This can also be seen in the recruitment for jobs where no merit is observed. ...[J]obs are handed over to MNAs and MPAs. Hence jobs are not given on merit but according to political compulsions…. We have a majority of such people in the education department.

…President Asif Ali Zardari, while inaugurating the Waseela-i-Taleem scheme … warned that if we failed to impart education to our children history will not forgive us. President Zardari has rightly said that history will not only hold us accountable but the nation will be wiped out [from the world map] if we failed to educate them. Today we are stuck in the quagmire of extremism; the reason behind it is also the lack of education. …It is painful that we … spend the budget on purchasing arms. This has destroyed our health and education sectors. …—(Nov 11)

Selected and translated by Sohail Sangi.