Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, appointed as chairman of the Higher Education Commission by General Pervez Musharraf in 2002, lays claim to setting up a "revolutionary programme" of reforms that is already reversing the decades-old decline of Pakistan’s universities. Not a day passes without the announcement of some big achievement -- a new university, college, equipment, training programs, awards and seminars. The chairman seems particularly proud of what he has achieved when it comes to promoting teaching and research in physics.
Dr. Atta is entitled to his opinion about his own success. My judgement, after over 30 years of teaching and research in physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, is that these reforms are not working. Our science institutions and universities are fast becoming intellectual and moral wastelands. Incompetence is rife. There is deep indifference, even antipathy, to scholarship and knowledge. Basic academic values are missing, and there is casual acceptance of abysmal ethical behavior -- cheating, lying, and plagiarism by faculty and students. Resources are wasted on an epic scale. And, the HEC whirlwind is making all of these problems worse.
The reasons for the failure of the HEC reforms are many. Money is one of them. There has been too much of it, too quickly. Foreign donor agencies and governments, fearful that an uneducated and unskilled Pakistan may become an epicenter of terrorism, have panicked and tripped over each other to offer aid for education. The higher education budget has skyrocketed over three years by an incredible 12 times -- a world record perhaps -- and then increased again in the latest budget (June, 2005) from 9.1 billion rupees to 11.7 billion rupees.
These fabulous sums pouring into higher education have created the all too familiar behaviour of the newly wealthy. HEC has paid for a massive publicity blitz, with huge newspaper advertisements and colored multi-page supplements, devoted to breathless self-promotion of HEC, its leadership and its projects.
The HEC boasts of over 350 scientific and university related projects, amounting to 25% of the total number of projects being executed by the Government of Pakistan in all fields. But looking at the projects on the HEC website (www.hec.gov.pk) produces disturbing proof of gross administrative incompetence, carelessness, wastage on an unprecedented scale, and a culture of sycophancy. Projects that bear no relation to meaningful improvements of science or education in the country are being approved in desperate haste. Some examples follow.
PROJECTS GONE ASTRAY
On June 25, 2005 the HEC chairman announced that the Higher Education Commission has sanctioned 180 million rupees ($3 million) for the establishment of a 5 MeV tandem Van de Graaf accelerator to be housed at the National Center for Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University. He described it as a "national facility" that will "accelerate the generation of competent scientific and technical manpower within the country".
For those familiar with the field, this is nonsense. Such Van de Graaf machines were the mainstay of research in physics seventy years ago. They are useless for cutting edge science research today. They are, at best, museum pieces.
The reader, who wishes to see what the developed world is doing with such equipment, should visit the website:
www.its.caltech.edu/~arice/tandem.html. This contains an obituary, written many years ago, at Caltech: "After 38 years of service to the Nuclear Astrophysics and Material Science communities, [Caltech’s tandem Van de Graaf accelerator] facility has closed. Sorry to see the old machines fade away. This one had been very good to us. Not putting it too delicately; the machine was cut up and sold for scrap." That scrap -- or more likely scrap from elsewhere -- is now headed for Quaid-e-Azam University where it will add to other scrap imported over the decades.
Still more inexplicable wastage: the HEC chairman says that another 164 million rupees will be spent on an experimental physics laboratory at QAU.
Alas, no researcher there -- who are my colleagues -- acknowledges being informed, much less consulted on the purpose and nature of the laboratory.
The department’s chairman alone admitted knowledge of the project, but flatly refused to divulge details. A pessimistic conclusion is that, as in the past, these millions will also prove to be highly enriching but not to science in Pakistan.
MISMANAGEMENT UNLIMITED
An HEC "Best University Teacher" program has been extensively advertised and promoted. Everyone would agree with the need to recognize and reward good teaching, and that the key to success lies in selecting the best teachers.
So how does HEC select the "best" university teachers? The obvious way, of course, is to ask students. They are after all the best placed to judge whether a particular teacher knows his or her subject well, can actually teach in class room, and has that special ability to inspire enthusiasm in students for the subject. But this is not HEC’s way.
The HEC asked department chairmen and deans to nominate who they think are the best teachers. It is no surprise then to discover that some simply named themselves, and others nominated their favorites. Students at my university laughed incredulously when they learned the names of individuals who had thus been selected as "best teachers".
To take another example, consider HEC’s "Master Trainers in Physics", a project that Dr. Atta cites as one of his successes in promoting physics.
The idea here is to encourage junior physics faculty in Pakistani universities to enhance their subject and teaching skills by attending workshops where they can be taught by skilled and experienced physicists.
The project is supposed to be managed by the department of physics at Quaid-i-Azam University, with junior faculty and "master trainers" brought in from around the country.
The "Master Trainers in Physics" is, put simply, a disgrace. The project is rife with crass cronyism and unfair selection. Some of the so-called "master trainers" hand-picked by the HEC -- and paid huge sums of money for every lecture -- know little about physics and have an abysmally poor reputation as teachers in their parent institutions.
The pattern that emerges is one where HEC chooses as a solution some of the very people who are part of the problem.
IS THIS RESEARCH?
HEC is allocating enormous sums for research. But these are being thrown at half-baked proposals that will add nothing of value to science in Pakistan. Good judgment has been abandoned at the altar of expediency, propaganda, and a compulsive craving to show progress.
In certain HEC projects, even common sense seems to be a casualty.
Consider, for example, Grant Number 247 on the "Research Grant Award List 2003-2004" (it is the most recent list given on the HEC website, http://www.hec.gov.pk/htmls/rsp/rgp/research.asp). This is a research project worth an astonishing rupees 5,581,000 (Rs 5.6 million) and is titled as "Quranization of Science Courses At The M.Sc Level". It was awarded to Dr. Saadia Khawar Khan Chishti, whose address is listed as "Higher Education Commission, Islamabad". The purpose of this project -- to inject religion into science courses -- is reminiscent of the failed efforts of long-dead dictator and ideologue General Zia-ul-Haq to create an "Islamic Science". Academic merit aside, it is hard to see how can anyone can justify spending such colossal amounts of money on something that involves nothing more than access to a library.
There are many other puzzlers on the same web page. A grant for Rs 5,355,000 has been awarded to the Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) for research in a specialized area of chemistry. According to the project summary, this work aims to correct the mistakes made in this area by a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry.
Such grand notions of challenging Nobel Prize winners are highly suspect in the world of science, but not impossible. What is worrying is how anyone believes this can be done at AIOU, which is a distance-learning university with no tradition of cutting edge chemistry research. The principal investigator listed for this project is not from AIOU and already holds several other full time jobs at other institutions. The HEC website lists him to be Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, chairman of the HEC.
There are other such projects and the costs runs into many millions of rupees. The explanation offered by the HEC for funding such projects is that they have all been vetted by independent scientific referees. But how true is this?
In the early days of HEC, some colleagues, as well as myself, were sent project proposals for refereeing. Some of the proposals we received made us wonder what HEC was doing by even sending them out for review. They deserved to be rejected out of hand. To offer just one example, I was sent a proposal for review that implicitly assumed it could violate a fundamental law of physics. (More specifically, it disrespected the second law of thermodynamics and demanded that heat should flow from a cold body into a hot body!).
Other proposals were more about making money than creating knowledge -- the cost of equipment and components was often given as 100 to 1000 times higher than what one normally expects. One project included a demand for a special $90,000 cyrogenic refrigerator which no obvious scientific purpose. Another requested a salary for a "computer operator" to run a laptop computer. When my colleagues and I rejected such proposals as unsound, we found ourselves quietly black-listed and received no more proposals to referee. The authorities apparently had no difficulty finding more pliable individuals, who approved payment for the scientific-sounding junk that now litters the HEC website.
PH.D FACTORIES
HEC has announced that the total number of PhD faculty in Pakistan is to be increased from the current 2000 to over 20,000 over ten years. Many of them will come from a HEC financed increase in local PhD production from the current 100-200 a year to 1000 annually, an increase by a factor of 5-10.
This is another disaster in the making. The painful fact is that the near-collapse of secondary schools and colleges means few students are now capable of benefiting from a genuine PhD level education. And, there are few Pakistani institutions capable of supporting genuine PhD level research work.
The HEC claims that it will check prospective PhD candidates through a "GRE type test" (the American graduate school admission test). A glance at the question papers shows that the HEC test is in fact a rather shoddy literacy and numeracy high school level test. It resembles the GREs only in that it is a multiple choice test.
To make sure the PhD scheme works, regardless of the quality of students, and faculty HEC pays supervisors a handsome monthly Rs 5000 for every PhD student they have enrolled (up to a maximum of 8 with HEC funding, but other sources are also available). This makes sure supervisors and departments take on as many students as possible and pass as many as they can.
The evidence is not hard to find. In my department, advertised as the best physics department in the country, the average PhD student has trouble with high-school level physics and even with reading English. Nevertheless there are as many as 15 PhD students registered with one supervisor! In the QAU biology department, that number rises to an incredible 40 students for one supervisor.
What will become of these hundreds and, in time, thousands of PhDs after they have been cranked out with no regard for quality of scholarship? What kind of teachers and researchers will they become? Eventually these PhDs will become heads of departments and institutions. When appointed gatekeepers, they will regard abler individuals as threats to be kept locked out. The degenerative spiral, long evident in any number of Pakistani institutions, will worsen further and become yet more difficult to break.
WHERE LIES THE PROBLEM?
We would be deluding ourselves to think that that difference between Pakistan’s universities, and those of our neighboring countries, is because of any real or imagined difference in the level of funding or resources. Consider mathematics and theoretical physics, which are academically the most intellectually challenging and difficult disciplines. They need only some modest salaries, an easily available computer, paper and pen, blackboard and chalk -- and plenty of brains. Yet these disciplines -- which flourish in India and Iran and cost next to nothing -- are almost extinct in Pakistan’s universities and scientific institutions. Clearly, the problem is a much deeper one than most people are willing to admit. The real problem lies in the realm of ideas and ideology, as well as management of institutions and organizations.
There is no doubt that some benefits have accrued from the HEC reforms -- with the huge amounts being spent it would be nearly impossible to avoid doing at least some good. Internet, digital libraries, and other such frills are nice to have. But even if this deluge of money from the skies is doing some good somewhere, the flooding it has caused elsewhere is doing enormous damage. It is time to stop and take a long, hard look at what HEC is doing with the public’s money.
HEC should stop all useless, sometimes fraudulent, research projects and stop encouraging the award of worthless PhD degrees. There needs to be a full financial audit of its accounts, and these should be submitted to the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee and the National Accountability Bureau. In addition, an international panel of independently appointed experts should perform an academic audit and do a comprehensive review.
This is essential to check the current squandering of resources, and wholesale corruption and cronyism. The review should be asked to lay out criteria for how to make future funding of higher education fair, transparent and accountable.
WHAT TRUE REFORM MEANS
True reforms -- if and when they are implemented -- will have to be divided into two mutually distinct sets. One set must deal with creating a freer university environment, controlling campus vigilantes, and stopping campus violence. These are purely administrative issues. Another set must be aimed at raising the level of general competence of teachers and students by ensuring that they actually have an understanding of the subject they teach or study, and with increasing the amount of research in specific disciplines.
More specifically, entrance tests for students must be made mandatory and efficiently administered. Examinations at the national level are essential to separate individuals who can benefit from higher education from those who cannot. No such system exists in Pakistan. Only local board examinations -- where rote memorization and massive cheating are rampant
-- are used to select students. Let us note that both Iran and India have centralized university admissions systems which work very well. Although corruption in India is perhaps as pervasive as in Pakistan, admissions to the IITs have nevertheless retained their integrity and intensely competitive nature over several decades.
At the PhD level, if the HEC is at all serious about standards, it should make it mandatory for every Pakistani university to require that a PhD candidate achieve a certain minimum in an international examination such as the GRE. These exams are used by US universities for admission into graduate programs. Thesis evaluation needs to be made transparent and subject to public challenge -- the present safeguard of having "foreign experts" evaluate theses is insufficient for a variety of reasons, including the manipulations commonly made in the (highly opaque!) process of referee selection.
Entrance tests for new university faculty must also be made mandatory. The system has remained broken for so long that written entrance tests for junior faculty, standardized at a central facility, are essential. Without them, universities will continue to hire teachers who freely convey their confusion and ignorance to students. Most teachers today never consult a textbook, choosing to dictate from notes they saved from the time when they were students in the same department. No teacher has ever been fired for demonstrating incompetence in his/her subject.
There is much else that will be necessary: better and more transparent ways to recruit vice-chancellors and senior administrators; foreign faculty (including those from India) to be brought in an organized and systematic manner; training courses to be fairly and efficiently executed; etc.
Reforming science and education in Pakistan has a chance only if it is clearly thought out and -- even more importantly -- if it is executed with honesty and integrity. The monumental task of reform has yet to begin.
Pakistan lost its giants, Abdus Salam and Salimuzzaman Siddiqui, a long time ago. Its academic institutions may have to wait a long time for someone to lead them out of the growing darkness.
A shorter version of this article, with certain crucial omissions, was published in The News on 07 July 2005.
Showing posts with label Pervez Musharraf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pervez Musharraf. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
What Pakistan’s Bomb Could Not Buy
On the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, there is little point in debating whether we should have followed India down the nuclear gutter. But there is need for a sober stock-taking that moves us away from the still rampant, chest-thumping, nuclear triumphalism. So far the region’s nuclear “experts” and “strategists”, actively assisted on both sides of the border by their respective states, have effectively monopolized discussion on nuclear policy. But many promises remain unfulfilled and various political and social costs for Pakistan are barely acknowledged. What are these?
The most obvious fact is that testing the Bomb speeded up the subcontinent’s arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way around. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the Bomb would assure national security into eternity – the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months later, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed – by many of the same people – to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India’s breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of “minimal deterrence” died after India’s firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be “dynamically determined” and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that “arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking”. We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that every aspect of Cold War racing has been punctiliously followed on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear “expert” will point to the other side’s latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost – political and social – has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan’s Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave to the country’s leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan can now never hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than the other way around. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries – which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq – Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran’s nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan’s leaders will do no more than cluck their tongues and shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of nuclear Pakistan unable to assert even its trade preferences.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan’s rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints put upon its behavior have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan’s chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the Bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A.Q.Khan episode – in spite of Pakistan’s repeated assertions that the matter has now closed – is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US’s flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be short lived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate that there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan’s political situation changes radically after General Musharraf’s departure, planned or otherwise. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan’s critical needs – national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the Bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has essentially disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of “youm-e-takbir” in all four provinces and dozens of cities were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit. Bomb and missile replicas were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But love for the centralized Islamabad-based Pakistani state, run by military generals with a passion for real-estate and wealth, is conspicuously absent. The ongoing widespread insurgency in Baluchistan and rising bitterness in Sind are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate for the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan’s disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the Bomb while Baluchistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site – now radioactive and put out of bounds – is located upon Baluch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baluch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006 Baluchi insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India’s newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world’s industrialized countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile program. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programs have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The article was published in The News (Karachi, Lahore,Islamabad) on 28th May 2006, the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.
The most obvious fact is that testing the Bomb speeded up the subcontinent’s arms race, rather than slowing it down. If you had believed what the nuclear pundits used to say, it should have been the other way around. Their argument was so seductive and simple that even well-meaning people were taken for a ride. They said acquiring the Bomb would assure national security into eternity – the threat of a nuclear response would deter territorial violations by the other, and hence the need for conventional arms would evaporate. Just a few bombs would do. Before the May 1998 tests, and even for several months later, some Pakistanis cheerfully wrote that after going nuclear, little more than salaries for soldiers would be needed. Defence budgets could be slashed, and (at last) funds would go into development and education.
Instead, what have we seen? Today the acquisition of battle tanks, artillery, fighter aircraft, surface ships, submarines, anti-ballistic missile systems, early warning aircraft, and space-based surveillance systems is now claimed – by many of the same people – to be more urgent than ever before. The US-India nuclear deal, if ratified by Congress, will add fuel to the fire. After India’s breeder reactors come on line, it will be able to produce as many nuclear warheads in just one year as it had in the previous 30. Pakistan is sure to react in various ways.
The once-popular concept of “minimal deterrence” died after India’s firm statement that the requirements for a deterrent force will be “dynamically determined” and cannot be explicitly stated. In other words, it will never say how many bombs are enough. That is not how it used to be. I well remember my intervention during a conference in Chicago (1992) which provoked the Indian strategist K. Subramanyam to angrily protest that “arms racing is a Cold War concept invented by the western powers and totally alien to sub-continental thinking”. We Pakistanis and Indians were supposed to be infinitely wiser than the compulsive Americans and Soviets. But one sees that every aspect of Cold War racing has been punctiliously followed on the subcontinent. Tactical nuclear war-fighting, once considered escalatory, is reported to be incorporated into current Indian and Pakistani military doctrines.
The fact is that nuclear racing and doctrines is everywhere and always driven by the same implacable, mad, runaway logic. Should there be the slightest danger of the race slackening, a nuclear “expert” will point to the other side’s latest acquisition and shout wolf. With every passing decade, advances in technology make it easier and cheaper to create ever more deadly nuclear weapons, buy or make longer range and more effective missiles, and go for various hi-tech weapon systems that could not have been imagined just a while ago.
For Pakistan, the nuclear cost – political and social – has been even higher than for India.
First, nuclear weapons led to Pakistan’s Kargil debacle. The 1998 tests gave to the country’s leaders a false sense of security. This was the direct cause of a misadventure that ended in a stunning political and diplomatic defeat for Pakistan. If anything, it made clear that Pakistan can now never hope for a military victory in Kashmir.
The Kargil episode offers the very first example in history where nuclear weapons, by dint of creating a presumed shield for launching conventional covert operations, were responsible for having brought about a war. The unrestrained propagation of false beliefs in nuclear security brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a full-blown confrontation that could well have been the very last one. Arguably it was the BJP that, by ordering Pokhran-II, fathered Kargil.
Second, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons has made it effectively a less independent state, rather than the other way around. While Pakistan became popular in Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries after testing, its inability to stand up for real Muslim interests remains as chronically weak as ever. Unlike many European and non-aligned countries – which were vociferous in their opposition to the US war upon Iraq – Pakistan chose the side of pragmatism. One can also be sure that if Iran’s nuclear facilities are bombed by the US, Pakistan’s leaders will do no more than cluck their tongues and shake their heads in mild disapproval. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline provides yet another example of nuclear Pakistan unable to assert even its trade preferences.
Although nukes have pushed up Pakistan’s rental value for fighting the wars of other nations, the constraints put upon its behavior have also greatly increased. The danger that our nukes may turn loose is a source of deep discomfort to Pakistan’s chief patron and paymaster, the United States of America. The fiery rhetoric of religious parties, who claim the Bomb for the entire Muslim Ummah rather than just for Pakistan, understandably terrifies many in the West. Moreover, the A.Q.Khan episode – in spite of Pakistan’s repeated assertions that the matter has now closed – is still very much on the minds of the US establishment and media. These reasons account for the US’s flat rejection of any kind of nuclear deal with Pakistan along the lines that it had proposed to India.
For the time being, with General Musharraf in power, the US is willing to tolerate Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – and may even satisfy some of its needs for advanced conventional weaponry. But this could be short lived. Many gaming scenarios played in the US strategic war planning institutions indicate that there are well-rehearsed contingency plans if Pakistan’s political situation changes radically after General Musharraf’s departure, planned or otherwise. Clearly, Pakistan is a country that is closely watched and monitored.
Third, and finally, while a connection is sometimes alleged, in fact nuclear weapons have been irrelevant to two of Pakistan’s critical needs – national integration and high technology. If anything, the effect has gone the other way.
National integration remains a distant goal, and the hope that the Bomb would be a rallying call for all Pakistanis has essentially disappeared. The tumultuous, officially inspired, 1999 celebrations of “youm-e-takbir” in all four provinces and dozens of cities were supposed to infuse a new sense of national spirit. Bomb and missile replicas were installed at every other street corner; many still survive. But love for the centralized Islamabad-based Pakistani state, run by military generals with a passion for real-estate and wealth, is conspicuously absent. The ongoing widespread insurgency in Baluchistan and rising bitterness in Sind are sending clear messages of a dangerous disaffection. Nuclear weapons cannot compensate for the absence of a democratic process, which alone can weld Pakistan’s disparate people into a nation.
The failure is evident. Punjab celebrates the Bomb while Baluchistan protests it. It resents the fact that the nuclear test site – now radioactive and put out of bounds – is located upon Baluch soil. Accused of dumping nuclear wastes, the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission is now being increasingly targeted by Baluch nationalists as an instrument of foreign domination. On May 15, 2006 Baluchi insurgents reportedly launched a mortar attack on a Pakistani nuclear establishment controlled by the PAEC in the vicinity of the Dera Ghazi Khan-Quetta highway.
And, what of the Bomb being a technical miracle? Over thirty years ago, fearful of India’s newly acquired nuclear weapons, Pakistan set out on its own quest to become a nuclear weapons state. It lacked a strong technological base. But its secret search of the world’s industrialized countries for nuclear weapons technologies was successful. It now advertises itself as a high-tech state.
But in a world where science moves at super-high speeds, nuclear weapons and missile development is today second-rate science. The undeniable fact is that the technology of nuclear bombs is six decades old. Famine-stricken North Korea, with few other achievements, is probably also a nuclear power and clearly has a very advanced missile program. In fact it had transferred this technology to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and other countries. While Pakistani and Indian weapons programs have diverted substantial financial and material resources away from social and scientific needs, they have merely used scientific principles discovered and developed elsewhere. Not surprisingly, there are no worthwhile spin-offs. Surely it is time to drop the pretence that making nuclear weapons and guided missiles is a wonderful thing.
The article was published in The News (Karachi, Lahore,Islamabad) on 28th May 2006, the eight anniversary of Pakistan’s nuclear tests.
Waiting for Enlightenment
The centrepiece of Pakistan’s relationship with the West since September 11, 2001, has been dubbed “enlightened moderation” by its president and philosopher-general, Pervez Musharraf. Under his rule, Musharraf claims, Pakistan has rejected the orthodox, militant, violent Islam imposed by the previous chief of army staff to seize power in Pakistan, General Zia ul-Haq (who ruled from 1977-1988), in favour of a more ‘modern’ and ‘moderate’ Islam. But Musharraf’s actions, and those of his government and its allies, are often at odds with this. In fact, after almost five years of ‘enlightened moderation,’ it seems there is more continuity than change. And, with each passing day, it becomes harder to see how such a policy can hope to stem the tide of religious radicalism that is overwhelming Pakistani society.
No one doubts that there have been some changes for the good. There is a perceptible shift in institutional practices and inclinations. Heads of government organizations are no longer required to lead noon prayers as in the 1980’s; female announcers with undraped heads freely appear on Pakistan Television; to the relief of many passengers thickly bearded stewards are disappearing from PIA flights; the first women fighter pilots have been inducted into the Pakistan Air Force. More importantly, in early July 2006, Musharraf directed the Council of Islamic Ideology to draft an amendment to the controversial Hudood Ordinance, put in place by General Zia-ul-Haq and not repealed by any of the civilian governments that ruled from 1988 to 1999. This law gives women a lower legal status and punishes the victims of rape. Repeal of these anti-women laws has been a long standing demand of Pakistani women’s groups. A vastly overdue – but nevertheless welcome – action was taken by the government when it released in July hundreds of women prisoners arrested under the Hudood Ordinance, many of whom had spent years awaiting their trial.
But the force of these pluses cannot outweigh the many more weighty minuses. General Musharraf has formally banned some of many Jihadi groups that the Pakistan army has helped train and arm for over two decades, but they still operate quite freely. After the October earthquake, some of these extremist groups in Kashmir seized the opportunity of relief work to fully reestablish and expand their presence. Exploiting Musharraf’s ambivalence, they openly flaunted their banners and weapons in all major towns of Azad Kashmir and fully advertised their strength. Some obtained relief materials from government stocks to pass off as their own, and used heavy vehicles that could only have been provided by the authorities. Many national and international relief organizations were left insecure by their overwhelming presence. Only recently have the jihadists moved out of full public view into more sheltered places.
Other Pakistani leaders send similar messages. Shaukat Aziz, a former Citibanker and now prime minister of Pakistan, made a call for nation-wide prayers for rain in a year of drought. This effort to improve his Islamic credentials became less laughable when, at an education conference in Islamabad, he proposed that Islamic religious education must start as soon as children enter school. This came in response to a suggestion by the moderate Islamic scholar, Javed Ghamdi, that only school children in their fifth year and above should be given formal Islamic education. Otherwise, said Ghamdi, they would stand in danger of becoming rigid and doctrinaire. The government’s 2006 education policy now requires Islamic studies to begin in the third year of school, a year earlier than in the previous policy.
Other ministers are no less determined to show Islamic zeal. The federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul Haq, speaking at the launch of a book authored by a leading Islamic extremist leader on “Christian Terrorism and The Muslim World,” argued that anyone who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a Pakistani. He then declared that given the situation facing Muslims today, he was prepared to be a suicide bomber.
According to a newspaper report, Pakistani health minister, Mohammad Nasir Khan, assured the upper house of parliament that the government could consider banning female nurses looking after male patients at hospitals. This move arose from a motion moved by female parliamentary members of the MMA, the Islamist party that commands majorities in the provincial assemblies of the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces and offered crucial support for Musharraf staying on as president. Women’s bodies are of particular concern to these holy men: “We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women’s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound,” proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial secretary of the MMA. In his opinion women would be able to lure men under the pretext of these medical procedures. Therefore, he said, “to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), the MMA has decided to impose the ban.” Destroyed or damaged billboards with women’s faces can be seen in several cities of the Frontier because the MMA deems the exhibition of unveiled women as un-Islamic.
Total separation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death, and scores injured, in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi where a large number of women had gathered for a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving injured women to hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this as just one incident. Soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. The action of these elders was similar to that of Saudi Arabia’s ubiquitous religious “mutaween” police who, in March 2002, had stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas. In rare criticism, Saudi newspapers had blamed the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.
The Saudiization of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytizers bringing this message, such as Mrs. Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades ago the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. Now she outnumbers her sisters who still dare show their faces. This has had the effect of further enhancing passivity and unquestioning obedience to the teacher, and of decreasing the self-confidence of female students.
The intensification of religious feelings has had a myriad other more significant consequences. Depoliticization and destruction of all non-religious organizations has lead to the absence of any noticeable public mobilization – even on specifically Muslim causes like US actions against Iraq, Palestine, or Iran. Events in these areas rarely bring more than a few dozen protesters on to the streets – if that. Nevertheless large numbers of Pakistanis are driven to fury and violence when they perceive their faith has been maligned. Mobs set on fire the Punjab Assembly, as well as shops and cars in Lahore, for an act of blasphemy committed in Denmark. Even as religious fanaticism grips the population there is a curious, almost fatalistic, disconnection with the real world which suggests that fellow Muslims don’t matter any more – only the Faith does.
Religious identity has also become increasingly sectarian. A suicide bomber, as yet unidentified, killed 57 people and eliminated the entire leadership of the “Sunni Movement” when he leapt on to the stage at a religious gathering in Karachi in April, 2006. Months earlier, barely a mile down from my university, at the shrine of Bari Imam, 25 Shias were killed in similar attack. In the tribal areas, sectarian tensions have frequently exploded into open warfare: in the villages of Hangu district, Sunnis and Shias exchanged light artillery and rocket fire leaving scores dead. Earlier this year, when I traveled for lecturing in the town of Gilgit, I saw soldiers crouched in bunkers behind mounted machine guns. It looked more like a town under siege than a tourist resort.
The clearest political expression of this shift towards a more violent and intolerant religious identity is the rise of the MMA as a national force, which on key issues both supports and is supported by General Musharraf’s government. A measure of its power, and the threat it poses to society and the state, is the Pakistani Taliban movement that it has helped create, especially in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Their success draws in large measure on the lessons they learned when working hand in the hand with the Pakistan army to create and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unable to combat the toxic mix of religion with tribalism, the Pakistani government is rapidly losing what little authority it ever had in the tribal parts. Under US pressure, the army has been mounting military offensives against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan. The convenient fiction that the army is merely combating “foreign militants” from the Arab and Central Asian countries is accepted by no one. Its assaults have taken a heavy civilian toll and local resistance has grown.
The local Taliban, as well as Al-Qaida, are popular and the army is not. In the tribal areas, the local Taliban now run a parallel administration that dispenses primitive justice according to tribal and Islamic principles. A widely available Taliban-made video that I saw shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the town of Miranshah while thousands of appreciative spectators look on. In Wana, a regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border, Taliban supporters have decreed that men are forbidden to shave. A Pathan barber, who migrated to Islamabad, told me last month that many others like him are making their way to the big cities or abandoning their traditional occupation.
The Pakistani Taliban (like their brothers in Afghanistan) see education as insidious. Pakistani newspapers frequently carry news of schools in the tribal regions being attacked destroyed by the Taliban. But rarely are these incidents followed by angry editorials or letters-to-the editor. Implicit sympathy for the Taliban remains strong among urban middle-class Pakistanis because they are perceived as standing up to the Americans, while the government has caved in. In Waziristan, one of the locales of a growing insurgency, the state has essentially capitulated and accepted Talibanic rule over tribal society as long as the army is allowed to maintain a spectator presence.
Stepping back, the Islamist shift underway in Pakistan becomes yet more evident. According to the Pew Global Survey (2006), the percentage of Pakistanis who expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world leader grew from 45% in 2003 to 51% in 2005. This 6 point increase must be compared against responses to an identical questionnaire in Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, where bin Laden’s popularity has sharply dropped by as much as 20 points.
It is worth asking what has changed Pakistan so and what makes it so different from other Muslim countries? What set one section of its people upon the other, created notions of morality centred on separating the sexes, and sapped the country’s vitality? Some well meaning Pakistanis – particularly those who live overseas – think that it is best to avoid such difficult questions. These days they are venturing to “repackage Pakistan” for the media. They want to change negative perceptions of Pakistan in the West while, at the same time, hesitating to call for a change in the structure of the state and its outlook.
But at the heart of Pakistan’s problems lies a truth – one etched in stone – that when a state proclaims a religious identity and mission, it is bound to privilege those who organize religious life and interpret religious text. Since there are many models and interpretations within every religion, there is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model shall prevail. There is also the larger confrontation between religious principles and practices and what we now consider to be ‘modern’ ideas of society, which have emerged over the past several hundred years. This truth, for all its simplicity, escaped the attention of several generations of soldiers, politicians, and citizens of Pakistan. It is true that there has been some learning – Musharraf’s call for “enlightened moderation” is a tacit (and welcome) admission that a theocratic Pakistan cannot work. But his call conflicts with his other, more important, responsibility as chief of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan is what it is because its army finds greater benefit in the status quo. Today the Pakistan Army is vast, and as an institution, has acquired enormous corporate interests that sprawl across real estate, manufacturing, and service sectors. It also receives large amounts of military aid, all of which would be threatened if it comes into direct conflict with the US. In the 1960s and 1980s, and again since 9/11, the army discovered its high rental value when serving the US. Each time the long-term costs to the society and state have been terrible.
The relationship between the army and religious radicals is today no longer as simple as in the 1980’s. To maintain a positive image in the West, the Pakistani establishment must continue to decry Islamic radicalism, and display elements of liberalism that are deeply disliked by the orthodox. But hard actions will be taken only if the Islamists threaten the army’s corporate and political interests, or if senior army commanders are targeted for assassination. The Islamists for their part hope for, and seek to incite, action by zealous officers to bring back the glory days of the military-mullah alliance led by General Zia ul Haq.
Musharraf and his corps commanders well know that they cannot afford to sleep too well. It is in the lower ranks that the Islamists are busily establishing bases. A mass of junior officers and low-ranking soldiers – whose world view is similar to that of the Taliban in most respects – feels resentful of being used as cannon fodder for fighting America’s war. It is they who die, not their senior officers. So far, army discipline has successfully squelched dissent and forced it underground. But this sleeping giant can – if and when it wakes up – tear asunder the Pakistan Army, and shake the Pakistani state from its very foundations.
This article was published in the Economic and Political Weekly (India) and The Friday Times(Pakistan) on 21/22 July 2006.
No one doubts that there have been some changes for the good. There is a perceptible shift in institutional practices and inclinations. Heads of government organizations are no longer required to lead noon prayers as in the 1980’s; female announcers with undraped heads freely appear on Pakistan Television; to the relief of many passengers thickly bearded stewards are disappearing from PIA flights; the first women fighter pilots have been inducted into the Pakistan Air Force. More importantly, in early July 2006, Musharraf directed the Council of Islamic Ideology to draft an amendment to the controversial Hudood Ordinance, put in place by General Zia-ul-Haq and not repealed by any of the civilian governments that ruled from 1988 to 1999. This law gives women a lower legal status and punishes the victims of rape. Repeal of these anti-women laws has been a long standing demand of Pakistani women’s groups. A vastly overdue – but nevertheless welcome – action was taken by the government when it released in July hundreds of women prisoners arrested under the Hudood Ordinance, many of whom had spent years awaiting their trial.
But the force of these pluses cannot outweigh the many more weighty minuses. General Musharraf has formally banned some of many Jihadi groups that the Pakistan army has helped train and arm for over two decades, but they still operate quite freely. After the October earthquake, some of these extremist groups in Kashmir seized the opportunity of relief work to fully reestablish and expand their presence. Exploiting Musharraf’s ambivalence, they openly flaunted their banners and weapons in all major towns of Azad Kashmir and fully advertised their strength. Some obtained relief materials from government stocks to pass off as their own, and used heavy vehicles that could only have been provided by the authorities. Many national and international relief organizations were left insecure by their overwhelming presence. Only recently have the jihadists moved out of full public view into more sheltered places.
Other Pakistani leaders send similar messages. Shaukat Aziz, a former Citibanker and now prime minister of Pakistan, made a call for nation-wide prayers for rain in a year of drought. This effort to improve his Islamic credentials became less laughable when, at an education conference in Islamabad, he proposed that Islamic religious education must start as soon as children enter school. This came in response to a suggestion by the moderate Islamic scholar, Javed Ghamdi, that only school children in their fifth year and above should be given formal Islamic education. Otherwise, said Ghamdi, they would stand in danger of becoming rigid and doctrinaire. The government’s 2006 education policy now requires Islamic studies to begin in the third year of school, a year earlier than in the previous policy.
Other ministers are no less determined to show Islamic zeal. The federal minister for religious affairs, Ijaz ul Haq, speaking at the launch of a book authored by a leading Islamic extremist leader on “Christian Terrorism and The Muslim World,” argued that anyone who did not believe in jihad was neither a Muslim nor a Pakistani. He then declared that given the situation facing Muslims today, he was prepared to be a suicide bomber.
According to a newspaper report, Pakistani health minister, Mohammad Nasir Khan, assured the upper house of parliament that the government could consider banning female nurses looking after male patients at hospitals. This move arose from a motion moved by female parliamentary members of the MMA, the Islamist party that commands majorities in the provincial assemblies of the Frontier and Baluchistan provinces and offered crucial support for Musharraf staying on as president. Women’s bodies are of particular concern to these holy men: “We think that men could derive sexual pleasure from women’s bodies while conducting ECG or ultrasound,” proclaimed Maulana Gul Naseeb Khan, provincial secretary of the MMA. In his opinion women would be able to lure men under the pretext of these medical procedures. Therefore, he said, “to save the supreme values of Islam and the message of the Holy Prophet (PBUH), the MMA has decided to impose the ban.” Destroyed or damaged billboards with women’s faces can be seen in several cities of the Frontier because the MMA deems the exhibition of unveiled women as un-Islamic.
Total separation of the sexes is a central goal of the Islamists, the consequences of which have been catastrophic. For example, on April 9, 2006, 21 women and 8 children were crushed to death, and scores injured, in a stampede inside a three-storey madrassa in Karachi where a large number of women had gathered for a weekly congregation. Male rescuers, who arrived in ambulances, were prevented from moving injured women to hospitals.
One cannot dismiss this as just one incident. Soon after the October 2005 earthquake, as I walked through the destroyed city of Balakot, a student of the Frontier Medical College described to me how he and his male colleagues were stopped by religious elders from digging out injured girl students from under the rubble of their school building. The action of these elders was similar to that of Saudi Arabia’s ubiquitous religious “mutaween” police who, in March 2002, had stopped schoolgirls from leaving a blazing building because they were not wearing their abayas. In rare criticism, Saudi newspapers had blamed the mutaween for letting 15 girls burn to death.
The Saudiization of a once-vibrant Pakistani culture continues at a relentless pace. The drive to segregate is now also being found among educated women. Vigorous proselytizers bringing this message, such as Mrs. Farhat Hashmi, have been catapulted to heights of fame and fortune. Their success is evident. Two decades ago the fully veiled student was a rarity on Pakistani university and college campuses. Now she outnumbers her sisters who still dare show their faces. This has had the effect of further enhancing passivity and unquestioning obedience to the teacher, and of decreasing the self-confidence of female students.
The intensification of religious feelings has had a myriad other more significant consequences. Depoliticization and destruction of all non-religious organizations has lead to the absence of any noticeable public mobilization – even on specifically Muslim causes like US actions against Iraq, Palestine, or Iran. Events in these areas rarely bring more than a few dozen protesters on to the streets – if that. Nevertheless large numbers of Pakistanis are driven to fury and violence when they perceive their faith has been maligned. Mobs set on fire the Punjab Assembly, as well as shops and cars in Lahore, for an act of blasphemy committed in Denmark. Even as religious fanaticism grips the population there is a curious, almost fatalistic, disconnection with the real world which suggests that fellow Muslims don’t matter any more – only the Faith does.
Religious identity has also become increasingly sectarian. A suicide bomber, as yet unidentified, killed 57 people and eliminated the entire leadership of the “Sunni Movement” when he leapt on to the stage at a religious gathering in Karachi in April, 2006. Months earlier, barely a mile down from my university, at the shrine of Bari Imam, 25 Shias were killed in similar attack. In the tribal areas, sectarian tensions have frequently exploded into open warfare: in the villages of Hangu district, Sunnis and Shias exchanged light artillery and rocket fire leaving scores dead. Earlier this year, when I traveled for lecturing in the town of Gilgit, I saw soldiers crouched in bunkers behind mounted machine guns. It looked more like a town under siege than a tourist resort.
The clearest political expression of this shift towards a more violent and intolerant religious identity is the rise of the MMA as a national force, which on key issues both supports and is supported by General Musharraf’s government. A measure of its power, and the threat it poses to society and the state, is the Pakistani Taliban movement that it has helped create, especially in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Their success draws in large measure on the lessons they learned when working hand in the hand with the Pakistan army to create and sustain the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Unable to combat the toxic mix of religion with tribalism, the Pakistani government is rapidly losing what little authority it ever had in the tribal parts. Under US pressure, the army has been mounting military offensives against Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters who fled Afghanistan. The convenient fiction that the army is merely combating “foreign militants” from the Arab and Central Asian countries is accepted by no one. Its assaults have taken a heavy civilian toll and local resistance has grown.
The local Taliban, as well as Al-Qaida, are popular and the army is not. In the tribal areas, the local Taliban now run a parallel administration that dispenses primitive justice according to tribal and Islamic principles. A widely available Taliban-made video that I saw shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the town of Miranshah while thousands of appreciative spectators look on. In Wana, a regional capital, about 20 miles from the Afghan border, Taliban supporters have decreed that men are forbidden to shave. A Pathan barber, who migrated to Islamabad, told me last month that many others like him are making their way to the big cities or abandoning their traditional occupation.
The Pakistani Taliban (like their brothers in Afghanistan) see education as insidious. Pakistani newspapers frequently carry news of schools in the tribal regions being attacked destroyed by the Taliban. But rarely are these incidents followed by angry editorials or letters-to-the editor. Implicit sympathy for the Taliban remains strong among urban middle-class Pakistanis because they are perceived as standing up to the Americans, while the government has caved in. In Waziristan, one of the locales of a growing insurgency, the state has essentially capitulated and accepted Talibanic rule over tribal society as long as the army is allowed to maintain a spectator presence.
Stepping back, the Islamist shift underway in Pakistan becomes yet more evident. According to the Pew Global Survey (2006), the percentage of Pakistanis who expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden as a world leader grew from 45% in 2003 to 51% in 2005. This 6 point increase must be compared against responses to an identical questionnaire in Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon, where bin Laden’s popularity has sharply dropped by as much as 20 points.
It is worth asking what has changed Pakistan so and what makes it so different from other Muslim countries? What set one section of its people upon the other, created notions of morality centred on separating the sexes, and sapped the country’s vitality? Some well meaning Pakistanis – particularly those who live overseas – think that it is best to avoid such difficult questions. These days they are venturing to “repackage Pakistan” for the media. They want to change negative perceptions of Pakistan in the West while, at the same time, hesitating to call for a change in the structure of the state and its outlook.
But at the heart of Pakistan’s problems lies a truth – one etched in stone – that when a state proclaims a religious identity and mission, it is bound to privilege those who organize religious life and interpret religious text. Since there are many models and interpretations within every religion, there is bound to be conflict between religious forces over whose model shall prevail. There is also the larger confrontation between religious principles and practices and what we now consider to be ‘modern’ ideas of society, which have emerged over the past several hundred years. This truth, for all its simplicity, escaped the attention of several generations of soldiers, politicians, and citizens of Pakistan. It is true that there has been some learning – Musharraf’s call for “enlightened moderation” is a tacit (and welcome) admission that a theocratic Pakistan cannot work. But his call conflicts with his other, more important, responsibility as chief of the Pakistan Army.
Pakistan is what it is because its army finds greater benefit in the status quo. Today the Pakistan Army is vast, and as an institution, has acquired enormous corporate interests that sprawl across real estate, manufacturing, and service sectors. It also receives large amounts of military aid, all of which would be threatened if it comes into direct conflict with the US. In the 1960s and 1980s, and again since 9/11, the army discovered its high rental value when serving the US. Each time the long-term costs to the society and state have been terrible.
The relationship between the army and religious radicals is today no longer as simple as in the 1980’s. To maintain a positive image in the West, the Pakistani establishment must continue to decry Islamic radicalism, and display elements of liberalism that are deeply disliked by the orthodox. But hard actions will be taken only if the Islamists threaten the army’s corporate and political interests, or if senior army commanders are targeted for assassination. The Islamists for their part hope for, and seek to incite, action by zealous officers to bring back the glory days of the military-mullah alliance led by General Zia ul Haq.
Musharraf and his corps commanders well know that they cannot afford to sleep too well. It is in the lower ranks that the Islamists are busily establishing bases. A mass of junior officers and low-ranking soldiers – whose world view is similar to that of the Taliban in most respects – feels resentful of being used as cannon fodder for fighting America’s war. It is they who die, not their senior officers. So far, army discipline has successfully squelched dissent and forced it underground. But this sleeping giant can – if and when it wakes up – tear asunder the Pakistan Army, and shake the Pakistani state from its very foundations.
This article was published in the Economic and Political Weekly (India) and The Friday Times(Pakistan) on 21/22 July 2006.
Musharraf’s Coup - Seven Years Later
Some had feared – while others had hoped – that General Pervez Musharraf’s coup of October 12, 1999, would bring the revolution of Kemal Ataturk to a Pakistan firmly in the iron grip of mullahs. But years later a definitive truth has emerged. Like the other insecure governments before it, both military and civilian, the present regime also has a single point agenda – to stay in power at all costs. It therefore does whatever it must and Pakistan falls further from any prospect of acquiring modern values, and of building and strengthening democratic institutions.
The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear: on the one hand the Army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against radical Islamists. But, on the other hand, in actual fact, to preserve and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.
The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are therefore a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan Army and its sagacious leader – of “enlightened moderation” fame – would stick to their predictable pattern of dealing with Islamists. In a nutshell: provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in Islamabad make their notes and CNN and BBC get their clips – and then beat a retreat. At the end of it all the mullahs would get what they want, but so would the General.
Examples abound. On 21st April 2000, General Musharraf announced a new administrative procedure for registration of cases under the Blasphemy Law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such occurrences, Musharraf’s modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate’s approval for registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later – on the 16th of May 2000 – under the watchful glare of the mullahs, Musharraf hastily climbed down: “As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the Blasphemy Law”.
Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine readable passports was being installed, Musharraf’s government declared that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify their religion. Expectedly this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a grand conspiracy aimed at secularizing Pakistan and destroying its Islamic character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the government lost nerve and the volte-face was announced on 24 March, 2005. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the religion column was made else, “Qadianis and apostates would be able to pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia”.
But even these climb downs – significant as they are – are less dramatic than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a grotesque imposition of General Zia-ul-Haq’s government unparalleled both for its cruelty and irrationality.
Enacted into the law in 1979, it was conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Sharia laws. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: “Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped”.
Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood Law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce “at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the Court is satisfied” who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.
President and Chief of Army Staff General Musharraf, and his Citibank Prime Minister, Shuakat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition. MMA members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.
Musharraf’s government proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or more resolute and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen civilian administrations, including two terms of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister and several ‘technocrat’ regimes. None made a serious effort to confront or reform these laws.
But the pattern is broader then deference to the mullahs. General Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances. Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers instruction.
In 2002, presumably on Washington’s instructions, the Pakistan Army established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005 heavy fighting had spread to North Waziristan and the army was bogged down.
The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their personal financial empires, ascribed the resistance to “a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists”. But the Army was taking losses (how serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed), soldiers rarely ventured out from their forts, morale collapsed as junior officers wondered why they were being asked to attack their ideological comrades – the Taliban – at American instruction. Reportedly, local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.
In 2004, the army made peace with the militants in South Waziristan. It conceded the territory to them, which had made the militants immensely stronger. A similar “peace treaty” was signed on 1 September 2006 in the town of Miramshah, in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Miramshah treaty met all demands made by the militants: the release of all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other Islamic countries. As for “foreign militants” – who Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some officials have remarked that it is “astronomical”. In turn they promised to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and give the army a safe passage out.
While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the price. The militants have closed girls’ schools and are enforcing harsh Sharia laws in all of Waziristan, both North and South. Barbers have been told ‘shave and die’. Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the “shalwars” are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles, and attendance of individuals in the mosques.
And then there is Balochistan. Eight years ago when the army seized power, there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes nearly 44% of Pakistan’s land mass and is the repository of its gas and oil. Now there is a full blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances, most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources extracted from their land.
The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: “They won’t know what hit them”, boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the insurgency. The Army has used everything it can, including its American supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic 80-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch by calling it “a great victory”. Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems, at best, a distant dream.
Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power – the army. They will accommodate those they must – the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason Pakistan fails.
The requirements for survival of the present regime are clear: on the one hand the Army leadership knows that its critical dependence upon the West requires that it be perceived abroad as a liberal regime pitted against radical Islamists. But, on the other hand, in actual fact, to preserve and extend its grip on power, it must preserve the status quo.
The staged conflicts between General Musharraf and the mullahs are therefore a regular part of Pakistani politics. This September, nearly seven years later, the religious parties needed no demonstration of muscle power for winning two major victories in less than a fortnight; just a few noisy threats sufficed. From experience they knew that the Pakistan Army and its sagacious leader – of “enlightened moderation” fame – would stick to their predictable pattern of dealing with Islamists. In a nutshell: provoke a fight, get the excitement going, let diplomatic missions in Islamabad make their notes and CNN and BBC get their clips – and then beat a retreat. At the end of it all the mullahs would get what they want, but so would the General.
Examples abound. On 21st April 2000, General Musharraf announced a new administrative procedure for registration of cases under the Blasphemy Law. This law, under which the minimum penalty is death, has frequently been used to harass personal and political opponents. To reduce such occurrences, Musharraf’s modified procedure would have required the local district magistrate’s approval for registration of a blasphemy case. It would have been an improvement, albeit a modest one. But 25 days later – on the 16th of May 2000 – under the watchful glare of the mullahs, Musharraf hastily climbed down: “As it was the unanimous demand of the ulema, mashaikh and the people, therefore, I have decided to do away with the procedural change in the registration of FIR under the Blasphemy Law”.
Another example. In October 2004, as a new system for issuing machine readable passports was being installed, Musharraf’s government declared that henceforth it would not be necessary for passport holders to specify their religion. Expectedly this was denounced by the Islamic parties as a grand conspiracy aimed at secularizing Pakistan and destroying its Islamic character. But even before the mullahs actually took to the streets, the government lost nerve and the volte-face was announced on 24 March, 2005. Information Minister Sheikh Rashid said the decision to revive the religion column was made else, “Qadianis and apostates would be able to pose as Muslims and perform pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia”.
But even these climb downs – significant as they are – are less dramatic than the astonishing recent retreat over reforming the Hudood Ordinance, a grotesque imposition of General Zia-ul-Haq’s government unparalleled both for its cruelty and irrationality.
Enacted into the law in 1979, it was conceived as part of a more comprehensive process for converting Pakistan into a theocracy governed by Sharia laws. These laws prescribe death by stoning for married Muslims who are found guilty of extra-marital sex (for unmarried couples or non-Muslims, the penalty is 100 lashes). The law is exact in stating how the death penalty is to be administered: “Such of the witnesses who deposed against the convict as may be available shall start stoning him and, while stoning is being carried on, he may be shot dead, whereupon stoning and shooting shall be stopped”.
Rape is still more problematic. A woman who fails to prove that she has been raped is automatically charged with fornication and adultery. Under the Hudood Law, she is considered guilty unless she can prove her innocence. Proof of innocence requires that the rape victim must produce “at least four Muslim adult male witnesses, about whom the Court is satisfied” who saw the actual act of penetration. Inability to do so may result in her being jailed, or perhaps even sentenced to death for adultery.
President and Chief of Army Staff General Musharraf, and his Citibank Prime Minister, Shuakat Aziz, proposed amending the Hudood Ordinance. They sent a draft for parliamentary discussion in early September, 2006. As expected, it outraged the fundamentalists of the MMA, the main Islamic parliamentary opposition. MMA members tore up copies of the proposed amendments on the floor of the National Assembly and threatened to resign en masse. The government cowered abjectly and withdrew.
Musharraf’s government proved no more enlightened, or more moderate or more resolute and behaved no differently from the more than half a dozen civilian administrations, including two terms of Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister and several ‘technocrat’ regimes. None made a serious effort to confront or reform these laws.
But the pattern is broader then deference to the mullahs. General Musharraf has been willing to use the iron fist in other circumstances. Two examples stand out: Waziristan and Balochistan. Each offers instruction.
In 2002, presumably on Washington’s instructions, the Pakistan Army established military bases in South Waziristan which had become a refuge for Taliban and Al Qaeda fleeing Afghanistan. It unleashed artillery and US-supplied Cobra gunships. By 2005 heavy fighting had spread to North Waziristan and the army was bogged down.
The generals, safely removed from combat areas, and busy in building their personal financial empires, ascribed the resistance to “a few hundred foreign militants and terrorists”. But the Army was taking losses (how serious is suggested by the fact that casualty figures were not revealed), soldiers rarely ventured out from their forts, morale collapsed as junior officers wondered why they were being asked to attack their ideological comrades – the Taliban – at American instruction. Reportedly, local clerics refused to conduct funeral prayers for soldiers killed in action.
In 2004, the army made peace with the militants in South Waziristan. It conceded the territory to them, which had made the militants immensely stronger. A similar “peace treaty” was signed on 1 September 2006 in the town of Miramshah, in North Waziristan, now firmly in the grip of the Pakistani Taliban.
The Miramshah treaty met all demands made by the militants: the release of all jailed militants; dismantling of army checkpoints; return of seized weapons and vehicles; the right of the Taliban to display weapons (except heavy weapons); and residence rights for fellow fighters from other Islamic countries. As for “foreign militants” – who Musharraf had blamed exclusively for the resistance, the militants were nonchalant: we will let you know if we find any! The financial compensation demanded by the Taliban for loss of property and life has not been revealed, but some officials have remarked that it is “astronomical”. In turn they promised to cease their attacks on civil and military installations, and give the army a safe passage out.
While the army has extricated itself, the locals have been left to pay the price. The militants have closed girls’ schools and are enforcing harsh Sharia laws in all of Waziristan, both North and South. Barbers have been told ‘shave and die’. Taliban vigilante groups patrol the streets of Miramshah. They check such things as the length of beards, whether the “shalwars” are worn at an appropriate height above the ankles, and attendance of individuals in the mosques.
And then there is Balochistan. Eight years ago when the army seized power, there was no visible separatist movement in Balochistan, which makes nearly 44% of Pakistan’s land mass and is the repository of its gas and oil. Now there is a full blown insurgency built upon Baloch grievances, most of which arise from a perception of being ruled from Islamabad and of being denied a fair share of the benefits of the natural resources extracted from their land.
The army has spurned negotiations. Force is the only answer: “They won’t know what hit them”, boasted Musharraf, after threatening to crush the insurgency. The Army has used everything it can, including its American supplied F-16 jet fighters. The crisis worsened when the charismatic 80-year old Baloch chieftain and former governor of Balochistan, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, was killed by army bombs. Musharraf outraged the Baloch by calling it “a great victory”. Reconciliation in Balochistan now seems, at best, a distant dream.
Musharraf and his generals are determined to stay in power. They will protect the source of their power – the army. They will accommodate those they must – the Americans. They will pander to the mullahs. They will crush those who threaten their power and privilege, and ignore the rest. No price is too high for them. They are the reason Pakistan fails.
Where Billions Vanish
Pull quote: The soft-spoken and diffident Dr. Riazuddin, at 77 years of age, is not only Pakistan’s best nuclear and particle physicist, but also a man of great integrity. How could he have wasted Rs 400 million rupees by agreeing to the HEC’s folly?
General (R) Pervez Musharraf, aided by his trusted lieutenant and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, lays claim to a “revolutionary program? that has reversed the decades-old decline of Pakistan's universities. The higher education budget shot up from Rs 3.9 billion in 2001-2 to an astounding Rs 33.7 billion in 2006-7. But, in fact, much of this has been consumed by futile projects and mega-wastage. Fantastically expensive scientific equipment, bought for research, often ends up locked away in campuses.
An example: A “Pelletron? accelerator worth Rs.400 million was ordered in 2005 with HEC funds. It eventually landed up at Quaid-e-Azam University, and was installed last month by a team of Americans from the National Electrostatics Corporation that flew in from Wisconsin. But now that it is there and fully operational, nobody – including the current director – has the slightest idea of what research to do with it. Its original proponents are curiously lacking in enthusiasm and are quietly seeking to distance themselves from the project.
Now for the full story: in his article published in Dawn on 25 June 2005, Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman announced the HEC would fund a “5MW Tandem Accelerator? for nuclear physics research with an associated laboratory at Quaid-e-Azam University. It was shocking news. First, nowhere in the world of science is a major project approved without a detailed technical feasibility study, and without full participation of those scientists who would be expected to use it for their research. Second, this machine – whose original form dates back to the 1940’s – had long become practically useless for decent nuclear physics research. Whereas it can still be used in certain narrow sub-areas of materials science and biology, to my knowledge there are almost no active researchers in those specialties anywhere in Pakistan.
Immediately upon reading Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s article, I telephoned him. His answer: Dr. Riazuddin, director of the National Centre for Physics, had approved the machine. That was stunning! The soft-spoken and diffident Dr. Riazuddin, at 77 years of age, is not only Pakistan’s best nuclear and particle physicist, but also a man of great integrity. How could he have wasted Rs 400 million rupees by agreeing to the HEC’s folly? Why did he sign a flaky “PC-1 proposal? put together in less than an afternoon?
The answer was to come soon. On 8 September 2005 a nation-wide meeting was held in the physics department of Quaid-e-Azam University to look into the possible uses of the Pelletron. But the project’s proponents clearly had something else in mind. And it was not a plan of work. They bussed in supporters from near and far who filled the auditorium. Few had even heard of the Pelletron, but they had been instructed to shout in its favour and hoot down all who questioned the need to buy one. I had urged at that meeting that the machine could be purchased but only if some clear scientific purposes was identified. This plea was roundly rejected on grounds that uses would automatically develop once the machine arrives.
When Dr. Riazuddin spoke, he too expressed his reservations and sorrowfully admitted to having signed the PC-1 under pressure. The assembled crowd burst into taunts and jeers. Some demanded that he resign as director. It was depressing to see Pakistan’s best scientist and a decent man thus humiliated. It later became known that the push for the Pelletron had come from powerful members of the governing board of the National Centre for Physics, Dr. Samar Mubarakmand and Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, who are considered to be the nuclear heroes of Pakistan.
The sad part of this story is not that the machine has arrived, but that in the intervening two and a half years the original proponents gave no thought towards making use of it, or to assemble a group of scientists who could be persuaded to do research using the Pelletron. Still sadder, a second Pelletron was purchased, again with HEC money, for Government College University Lahore. No one can fathom what to do with it either.
The equipment fetish can be followed all the way to the much-advertised HEJ Institute for Chemistry. HEJ consumes the lion’s share of research funding in Pakistan today and boasts of the finest and most expensive equipment. For example, even good chemistry departments in the US rarely have more than one or two NMR spectrometers but the HEJ Institute has twelve. Well, why not, if that is the price of excellence? Isn’t the 3000+ research papers proof of public money well spent?
The answer is, no. There is little evidence to support HEJ’s claim that it has strongly impacted the Pakistani pharmaceutical industry. Readers may have more luck than I did in searching the otherwise elaborate HEJ website for its role in discovering new drugs or processes. But without this, all else is hot air. Only one international patent, registered in UK and Germany, is listed. Two processes are mentioned as submitted for a US patent. This is not a high record for an institution that has been in existence for over 40 years and claims to be world-class. A good US or European applied science university department typically files several patents every year.
As for the thousands of HEJ research papers: the question is how many of these really matter? A paper is considered important by other scientists only when it contains new ideas or facts. Significant papers are cited frequently in professional journals. But an overwhelming number of HEJ publications, which are largely based upon routine aspects of natural products chemistry, have zero or few citations. The reader may find citation counts by accessing the free database scholar.google.com, or other more comprehensive databases.
My point is not to denigrate the HEJ, or other academic research in Pakistan, but to make the case that such research is consuming a disproportionate amount of resources at the cost of our desperately impoverished educational system. The real problem is that Pakistani students in government schools, colleges, and universities – as well as their teachers – are far below internationally acceptable levels in terms of basic subject understanding.
Current salaries militate against improvement. As a result of Dr. Atta’s determined intervention, a professor at a government university can earn up to Rs 325,000 per month but a government school teacher has a maximum salary of less than Rs 10,000. This is highly unwise. Similarly, funds-starved government colleges and schools lack basic infrastructure such as laboratories and libraries but most government universities are awash in so much money that they do not know what to do with it. At QAU, for example, so many airconditioners have been purchased with HEC research funds that the electricity bill has shot up by 50 times over the last six years.
A balance is desperately needed. Instead of over-funding universities and research, we need to focus resources on creating good quality schools and colleges. We need to encourage creative and skilled people to become school and college teachers, and for this we need to pay them well. We need teachers who can educate young people into becoming good citizens and with skills valued in the economy, and who can train the few going on to higher education.
The winds of change are blowing across the country. The Musharraf years are over. It is now time for parliament to carry out a full and complete public inquiry into the irresponsible and crazy policies that have hitherto been the hall-mark of decision-making. Finally there is a chance to reset priorities and use resources for a comprehensive reform of our education system.
General (R) Pervez Musharraf, aided by his trusted lieutenant and chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, lays claim to a “revolutionary program? that has reversed the decades-old decline of Pakistan's universities. The higher education budget shot up from Rs 3.9 billion in 2001-2 to an astounding Rs 33.7 billion in 2006-7. But, in fact, much of this has been consumed by futile projects and mega-wastage. Fantastically expensive scientific equipment, bought for research, often ends up locked away in campuses.
An example: A “Pelletron? accelerator worth Rs.400 million was ordered in 2005 with HEC funds. It eventually landed up at Quaid-e-Azam University, and was installed last month by a team of Americans from the National Electrostatics Corporation that flew in from Wisconsin. But now that it is there and fully operational, nobody – including the current director – has the slightest idea of what research to do with it. Its original proponents are curiously lacking in enthusiasm and are quietly seeking to distance themselves from the project.
Now for the full story: in his article published in Dawn on 25 June 2005, Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman announced the HEC would fund a “5MW Tandem Accelerator? for nuclear physics research with an associated laboratory at Quaid-e-Azam University. It was shocking news. First, nowhere in the world of science is a major project approved without a detailed technical feasibility study, and without full participation of those scientists who would be expected to use it for their research. Second, this machine – whose original form dates back to the 1940’s – had long become practically useless for decent nuclear physics research. Whereas it can still be used in certain narrow sub-areas of materials science and biology, to my knowledge there are almost no active researchers in those specialties anywhere in Pakistan.
Immediately upon reading Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman’s article, I telephoned him. His answer: Dr. Riazuddin, director of the National Centre for Physics, had approved the machine. That was stunning! The soft-spoken and diffident Dr. Riazuddin, at 77 years of age, is not only Pakistan’s best nuclear and particle physicist, but also a man of great integrity. How could he have wasted Rs 400 million rupees by agreeing to the HEC’s folly? Why did he sign a flaky “PC-1 proposal? put together in less than an afternoon?
The answer was to come soon. On 8 September 2005 a nation-wide meeting was held in the physics department of Quaid-e-Azam University to look into the possible uses of the Pelletron. But the project’s proponents clearly had something else in mind. And it was not a plan of work. They bussed in supporters from near and far who filled the auditorium. Few had even heard of the Pelletron, but they had been instructed to shout in its favour and hoot down all who questioned the need to buy one. I had urged at that meeting that the machine could be purchased but only if some clear scientific purposes was identified. This plea was roundly rejected on grounds that uses would automatically develop once the machine arrives.
When Dr. Riazuddin spoke, he too expressed his reservations and sorrowfully admitted to having signed the PC-1 under pressure. The assembled crowd burst into taunts and jeers. Some demanded that he resign as director. It was depressing to see Pakistan’s best scientist and a decent man thus humiliated. It later became known that the push for the Pelletron had come from powerful members of the governing board of the National Centre for Physics, Dr. Samar Mubarakmand and Dr. Ishfaq Ahmad, who are considered to be the nuclear heroes of Pakistan.
The sad part of this story is not that the machine has arrived, but that in the intervening two and a half years the original proponents gave no thought towards making use of it, or to assemble a group of scientists who could be persuaded to do research using the Pelletron. Still sadder, a second Pelletron was purchased, again with HEC money, for Government College University Lahore. No one can fathom what to do with it either.
The equipment fetish can be followed all the way to the much-advertised HEJ Institute for Chemistry. HEJ consumes the lion’s share of research funding in Pakistan today and boasts of the finest and most expensive equipment. For example, even good chemistry departments in the US rarely have more than one or two NMR spectrometers but the HEJ Institute has twelve. Well, why not, if that is the price of excellence? Isn’t the 3000+ research papers proof of public money well spent?
The answer is, no. There is little evidence to support HEJ’s claim that it has strongly impacted the Pakistani pharmaceutical industry. Readers may have more luck than I did in searching the otherwise elaborate HEJ website for its role in discovering new drugs or processes. But without this, all else is hot air. Only one international patent, registered in UK and Germany, is listed. Two processes are mentioned as submitted for a US patent. This is not a high record for an institution that has been in existence for over 40 years and claims to be world-class. A good US or European applied science university department typically files several patents every year.
As for the thousands of HEJ research papers: the question is how many of these really matter? A paper is considered important by other scientists only when it contains new ideas or facts. Significant papers are cited frequently in professional journals. But an overwhelming number of HEJ publications, which are largely based upon routine aspects of natural products chemistry, have zero or few citations. The reader may find citation counts by accessing the free database scholar.google.com, or other more comprehensive databases.
My point is not to denigrate the HEJ, or other academic research in Pakistan, but to make the case that such research is consuming a disproportionate amount of resources at the cost of our desperately impoverished educational system. The real problem is that Pakistani students in government schools, colleges, and universities – as well as their teachers – are far below internationally acceptable levels in terms of basic subject understanding.
Current salaries militate against improvement. As a result of Dr. Atta’s determined intervention, a professor at a government university can earn up to Rs 325,000 per month but a government school teacher has a maximum salary of less than Rs 10,000. This is highly unwise. Similarly, funds-starved government colleges and schools lack basic infrastructure such as laboratories and libraries but most government universities are awash in so much money that they do not know what to do with it. At QAU, for example, so many airconditioners have been purchased with HEC research funds that the electricity bill has shot up by 50 times over the last six years.
A balance is desperately needed. Instead of over-funding universities and research, we need to focus resources on creating good quality schools and colleges. We need to encourage creative and skilled people to become school and college teachers, and for this we need to pay them well. We need teachers who can educate young people into becoming good citizens and with skills valued in the economy, and who can train the few going on to higher education.
The winds of change are blowing across the country. The Musharraf years are over. It is now time for parliament to carry out a full and complete public inquiry into the irresponsible and crazy policies that have hitherto been the hall-mark of decision-making. Finally there is a chance to reset priorities and use resources for a comprehensive reform of our education system.
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