LAST week my subject was the uneducated of our government who indiscriminately squander the money of the poor and deprived of their country and who qualify their so doing by claiming it is within their discretionary powers, that it is their 'entitlement.'

It is their entitlement, they say, to build motorways whilst the people have no drinking water. It is their entitlement to travel the world on sightseeing trips in special flights whilst there is no money to educate the millions of illiterates at home.

The feedback from the majority was the simple question: Who and what is an educated man?

Education, it is said, is the means by which the wheat is separated from the chaff, by which the finest mental and moral qualities of an individual are brought to the fore, by which the latent is converted into the active, and by which empathy towards the feelings of others is created. According to the Upanishads, educated is he who can distinguish the real from the unreal, light from darkness; education in the final analysis elevates a man from death to immortality.

What our prime minister finds difficult to understand is that respect cannot be demanded, that it has to be commanded, and that whatever he may do he cannot buy goodwill. Yet again, he has childishly attempted to bribe the press. His Media Maestro Mushahid invited a team of pressmen, sixteen in all, to Lahore to play cricket against the Lahore Gymkhana XI on September 11. The national carrier, PIA, which every prime minister considers to be his or her own personal airline, was ordered to transport the sixteen from Karachi to Lahore and back at the people's expense.

The Press XI scored 185 runs whilst the Mian's Lahore Gymkhana team were restricted to 88 all out, of which the Mian himself scored 52. The journalists were accommodated at Faletti's at our cost, transported around Lahore at our cost, and reportedly gifts in cash and kind were distributed. Each run scored by the Mian probably cost us in the region of Rs.20,000. One comment made by an educated man after the match was over: The poor people of this nation pay for Nawaz Sharif's victory - the elections; for his retreat - Kargil; for his defeat - on the cricket field.

Educated Governor Kamal Azfar's donation to the Karachi Golf Club was also made at his 'discretion' out of his discretionary funds. Professor Ahsan Rashid, chairman of the Poor Patients 'Aid Society of Karachi's Civil Hospital had often appealed to Kamal for funds which he was never given. Would an enlightened educated man not rather have given to the poor sick and dying than to the rich healthy golfers?

Educated Globetrotter, Rhodes Scholar Wasim Sajjad, chairman of the most honourable Upper House is on the trot once again, leading a delegation of elected representatives to a conference in the Carribean and last week was living it up in Port of Spain. He may well be on his 100th jaunt since he became the chairman of the Senate.

Now to the serious trot, that of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif. We heard he was off to the US to meet with software experts and genetically engineered seed merchants in the interests of investment. But he went straight from the airport to dine with Strobe Talbott and to complain about the corrupt, toothless and spineless opposition and the army, both of which he said were trying to oust, by unconstitutional means, his family's good government. The usual noises were made by anonymous Americans announcing that the US is all for democracy and is averse to the toppling of democratically elected governments through force (the army). But the American support of democracy can be highly pragmatic.

For years they supported the King of Kings, the Shah of Shahs in SAVAK-dominated Iran, and when he was deposed and dying they would not allow him into the US. Memories are short and people may have forgotten how difficult it was for the Shah's family to find a six-foot by two-foot piece of ground in which to bury him. For years the Americans supported General Manual Ities Morena Noriega's form of democracy in Panama, they supported General Ugarte Augusto Pinochet in Chile, they tolerated for 32 years General Suharto in Indonesia, and for eleven long years in Pakistan they gladly supported General Zia-ul-Haq and his 'democratic' rule.

Our weak and corrupt governments will always fear the army, famously termed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto as being the only disciplined party of the country, its largest and most rich. Nawaz Sharif has more to fear as he has amended the Constitution and blocked all constitutional means available to the people of ousting him. By demoralizing the army and not abiding by the conventional line of seniority, he has weakened his safety net. He did not trust General Jehangir Karamat, so he had to go, and with him the two most senior generals. Soon after he appointed General Pervez Musharraf as COAS, he was overtaken by feelings of discomfort and made it clear that he would like to move him up a notch into the powerless redundant higher seat of the Joint Chief. News from the ranks has it that Nawaz Sharif would be most comfortable with a man down the line, General Ziauddin, an engineer and once Private Secretary to COAS Aslam Beg, who he has appointed as his eyes and ears to head the ISI. Last week, Ziauddin was on a 'routine' visit to Washington whilst Shahbaz Sharif was there.

A news report of September 23 in this newspaper told us that General Aslam Beg "was especially concerned over the visit of the director-general of the ISI and asked: 'what is he trying to gain for himself?'."

What the Americans do not realize is that our army can act without staging a coup. In 1993, did not COAS General Abdul Waheed Kakar go to dine with President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and before pudding was served did not both president and prime minister 'constitutionally' resign? Under the present circumstances the Americans will back any form of democracy sufficiently powerful to be able to curb nuclear proliferation, theocrats, fundamentalists, the Taliban, freedom fighters and Jehadis more commonly known to them as terrorists.

The double-headed West, America and Europe, with which Japan and Russia are aligned, fear militant (or resurgent) Islam, as does our good friend China. Some 50 independent Islamic states allow themselves to remain disunited. Many buy arms from the West, which they sometimes use against each other. They control much of the oil reserves and the Organisation of Islamic Conference could have a voice in world affairs but because of its own inability does not.

Writing in The Times (London) on September 20, on forecasts of the worldwide conflict on the Islamic fault line, Lord William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of that newspaper, is chillingly accurate:

The world is full of violence. There are the massacres in East Timor; the murder of 300 Russians by terrorist bombs probably related to Chechnya; the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians and then of the Serbs in Kosovo . . . . the grumbling confrontation in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers . . . . .

Kashmir is a conflict between the resurgent Islam of Pakistan and the resurgent Hinduism of India. Chechnya is a conflict between Islam and Russia. Kosovo is an even more extraordinary situation, a conflict between Islam and Slav Orthodoxy . . . .

The West is seen as double-headed between the United States and Europe; Islam has no core country, which makes it more difficult to relate to from the outside. Islam and the West, in different ways, present the world with the greatest difficulties.

Muslims are expected to make up about 30 per cent of the world's population by 2025 . . . . the danger lies in the reaction between the revival of the Islamic confidence, backed by a growing population, and the fears of the neighbouring civilisations. All the neighbouring civilisations feel potentially under threat. The West is concerned about oil, nuclear proliferation, immigration, the survival of Israel, and human rights. . . .

"India fears Pakistan and potentially the alienation of the 100 million Muslims in India itself. China is concerned about Central Asia and about the Chinese in Indonesia. The non-Muslim population of Sub-Saharan Africa has anxieties as well. . . . ."

We in Pakistan are dependent upon the West. Prudence demands that we trim our sails.