Delivered May 9, 2007
A strong and effective education system in Pakistan will help to
ensure that the country steers toward a path of stability,
moderation, and prosperity in the years to come, and should
therefore be a top priority for Washington in its relations with
Islamabad. Lack of adequate education opportunities in Pakistan has
contributed to the development of extremist ideologies that have
fueled terrorism and sectarian tensions as well as stifled economic
growth. Fostering development and reform of the public education
system will not only contribute to Pakistani economic prosperity
and social tolerance, it will help improve the image of the United
States by demonstrating American interest in the human development
of average Pakistani citizens.
Today I will focus my remarks on the strengths and weaknesses of
current U.S. assistance programs to Pakistan's education sector, as
well as the role of the madrassa (Islamic religious school) in
contributing to militancy in Pakistan over the last decade.
Pakistan's Failing Education
Sector
Pakistan's public education system has suffered from neglect and
politicization over the last 30 years. The overall adult literacy
rate for the population above the age of 15 is about 43.5 percent,
while the rates for Sri Lanka and India are 92 percent and 61
percent, respectively. Female literacy rates in Pakistan are
abysmal, standing at about 32 percent. Barely 10 percent of
children complete 12 years of schooling. With a population growth
rate well over 2 percent, Pakistan is set to add another 100
million people to its current population of 160 million over the
next 25 years. About half of this population will be under the age
of 18. These demographic trends demand that Pakistan implement
significant reforms to its education system and raise literacy
rates and skill levels so that these young people can play a
productive role in the future economy.
The World Bank and a number of donor agencies spent billions of
dollars on a "Social Action Program" for Pakistan during the late
1980s through the 1990s. After a decade, the program failed to
achieve basic objectives such as increasing school enrollment rates
at the primary level and bringing education to remote parts of the
country. The program failed because it did not address problems
such as corruption and inefficiency within the Pakistani education
bureaucracy. The World Bank's experience should serve as a
cautionary tale to the U.S. and other international donors by
demonstrating that merely throwing resources at the education
sector is unlikely to bring positive results, and that convincing
the Pakistani government to reform its own institutions is a
necessary part of the process.
U.S. Education Assistance to Pakistan:
Targeting Critical Areas
U.S. assistance to primary education and literacy in Pakistan
has more than doubled--from $28 million in fiscal year 2004 to $66
million in fiscal year 2005. The impact of the findings of the 9/11
Commission report issued in July 2004 on the importance of
educational opportunity in the Middle East and South Asia to
uprooting terrorist ideology, and increased congressional oversight
of U.S. aid programs to Pakistan contributed to the increase in
education spending. The Fiscal Year 2008 State Department
Congressional Budget Request includes $52 million for general
education programs and an additional $50 million for earthquake
reconstruction of schools and health facilities. The 2007 Emergency
Supplemental Budget Request calls for another $110 million to
develop Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA),
including the education sector. Through a program started in 2003,
the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
already is constructing and furnishing 65 primary, middle, and high
schools in five agencies of the FATA. The Japanese government is
partnering with the U.S. government on this project and
constructing an additional 65 schools in the Tribal Areas.
USAID's education program in Pakistan provides training,
technical assistance, and infrastructure for government officials,
citizens, and the private sector to deliver high-quality education
throughout the country. The program is currently focusing on
selected impoverished districts in the Sindh and Baluchistan
provinces in addition to the FATA. The Basic Education Program
benefits over 367,000 Pakistani children and USAID has so far
trained over 16,000 Pakistani teachers and administrators. USAID
also provides funding for needs-based scholarships for higher
education and grants for Fulbright scholarships for post-graduate
degrees in the U.S.
USAID education programs also focus on empowering the local
community by fostering partnerships between parents and teachers
that improve accountability for the children's education. I had the
opportunity to visit a USAID-funded girls' school on the outskirts
of Islamabad in late 2005. Through a grant of only $1,500, USAID
inspired the people of this community to establish a Parent-Teacher
Association and to build a library for the school that serves over
500 students.
While this kind of outreach at the grassroots level is
necessary, Washington also needs to encourage the Pakistani
government to follow through on its own reforms. The government of
President Pervez Musharraf launched its Education Sector Reforms
(ESR) in January 2002, but has been unwilling to commit substantial
resources to reforming the education sector. For example, the
government has yet to follow through on its commitment to raise the
education budget to 4 percent of GDP in line with United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
recommendations.
One of the major problems with Pakistan's public education
sector has been the endemic corruption within the system, which has
led to the phenomenon of "ghost schools," i.e. teachers not showing
up to teach classes but only to collect their paychecks. The U.S.
can help by supporting teacher training programs and encouraging
greater accountability through community involvement, but the
Pakistani government will have to do its part to limit corruption
and inefficiency within the system.
Role of the Madrassa in Islamic
Militancy in Pakistan
The role of the madrassa in Pakistan and its contribution to
Islamic militancy has been the subject of intense debate in U.S.
academic and policy circles. Observers have been unable to agree on
the actual numbers of madrassas and madrassa students in Pakistan,
and some studies reveal that the international media has
exaggerated these figures during the last few years. A World Bank
study from 2005, for example, says Pakistani madrassas account for
less than 1 percent of total academic enrollment in the country. In
April 2002, Dr. Mahmood Ahmed Ghazi, the former Pakistani Minister
of Religious Affairs, put the number of madrassas at about 10,000,
with 1.7 million students.
While most madrassas in Pakistan are not churning out terrorist
foot soldiers, there are a handful of religious seminaries that
promote anti-West, pan-Islamic, and violent ideologies. Many of the
older madrassas have well-established reputations for producing
serious Islamic thinkers, while others provide welfare services to
the poor through free religious education, lodging, and food. A
madrassa student learns how to read, memorize, and recite the
Quran, and those with advanced theological training become Ulema
(religious scholars). Each of the different schools of Islamic
thought in Pakistan, including the Sunni Deobandis, Barelvis,
Ahle-Hadith (Salafi), and Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) as well as the
Shiia, runs its own seminaries.
From a counterterrorism perspective, U.S. policymakers should
focus their attention on the handful of madrassas in Pakistan that
have well-established links to terrorism. These madrassas are
likely well known to the Pakistani authorities and increasingly to
U.S. intelligence and policy officials, and deserve special focus
in our counterterrorism policies. The Darul Uloom Haqqania located
near Peshawar in the Northwest Frontier Province, for example,
served as training ground for Taliban leaders and a recruiting
center for Pakistani militants fighting in Kashmir.
Other madrassas connected to violent militancy are located in
the southern port city of Karachi as well as in the province of
Punjab and have also contributed to sectarian tensions in the
country. The banned Kashmiri militant organization Jaish-e-Muhammad
(JEM, or "Army of the Prophet") and Sunni sectarian organization
Sepah-e-Sahaba (SSP, or "Army of Companions of the Prophet") are
headquartered in southern Punjab. These organizations have close
institutional links with the Taliban and have been involved in
terrorism against Indian and Western targets, including the murder
of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002; the hijacking
of an Indian Airlines flight that landed in Kandahar, Afghanistan,
in December 1999; and the kidnapping and murder of five Western
hostages, including American citizen Donald Hutchings, in 1995.
These madrassas and associated militant groups have an
interdependent relationship in which the militant groups provide
armed backing for the madrassas, and the madrassas in turn provide
motivated recruits for the militant organizations. The recently
jailed leader of a fertilizer bomb plot in England--British citizen
of Pakistani-origin Omar Khyam--was reportedly inspired and trained
by Pakistanis involved in militancy in Kashmir. In addition, one of
the suicide bombers who carried out the July 7, 2005, bombings of
the London transport system reportedly spent time at a Pakistani
madrassa. Convincing the Pakistan government to completely close
down these dangerous militant groups and to sever their links with
the madrassas should be the centerpiece of our counterterrorism
policies in Pakistan.
Madrassas in Pakistan are financed either by voluntary charity,
foreign entities, or governments. The Saudi Arabian organization,
Harmain Islamic Foundation, reportedly has provided substantial
financial assistance to the Ahle-Hadith madrassas, which have
provided fighters to the banned Kashmiri militant group
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LET). The Ahle-Hadith madrassas emphasize the
Quran and Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammed) and oppose folk
Islam and practices such as celebrating the anniversaries of saints
or the distribution of food on religious occasions. The large
madrassa complex supporting LET is located in the town of Muridke
outside of Lahore and is well known for preaching hard-line views
on Islam. Since the Pakistan government officially banned LET in
2002, the group has changed its name to Jamaat-ul-Dawa and played a
significant role in assisting victims following the October 8,
2005, South Asia earthquake, demonstrating its ability to operate
freely within Pakistani society.
President Musharraf's government has had little success with its
attempts to assert greater government authority over the madrassas.
In August of 2001, the Musharraf government promulgated the
"Pakistan Madrassa Education Board Ordinance 2001" to establish
three model madrassa institutions in Karachi, Sukkur, and Islamabad
that would include English, math, computer science, economics,
political science, law, and Pakistan studies in their curricula.
Through the "Voluntary Registration and Regulation Ordinance 2002,"
the government promised funding to madrassas that formally
registered with the government. In a more controversial step, the
Pakistani government demanded that madrassas expel all foreign
students by December 31, 2005. Islamist groups vehemently resisted
the government's efforts, however, and authorities backed down and
made public statements indicating that they would not use force or
shut down noncompliant madrassas to enforce the directives.
The Minister for Religious Affairs, Ejaz ul-Haq, son of the late
former President Zia ul-Haq, is responsible for implementing
madrassa reform. It was Zia ul-Haq's Islamization policies in the
1980s that resulted in an expansion of the madrassa network to
support the Afghanistan jihad against the Soviets and that
incorporated militant interpretations of Islam into the public
school curriculum. Minister Ejaz ul-Haq has so far been reluctant
to confront the prominent religious parties that have ties to
foreign-funded madrassas and are resisting government reform.
Recommendations for U.S. Policy
The U.S. should begin to program more funds for specific
education and development projects rather than continue to provide
the bulk of our economic assistance in the form of a direct cash
transfer to the Pakistani government. Since 2004, the U.S. has
provided $200 million annually to Pakistan in the form of direct
budgetary support. We have established a consulting mechanism with
the Pakistan government to try to ensure a portion of this money is
spent on the health and education sectors. However, we cannot fully
ensure that this U.S. taxpayer money is contributing to economic
and human development in Pakistan. The U.S. also reaps very little
public diplomacy benefits with the broader Pakistani population
from this large amount of aid, which most Pakistanis view as mainly
benefiting the Musharraf regime. Congress should require that at
least two-thirds of our total economic support fund assistance be
in the form of USAID project assistance related to education,
health, and economic and democratic development.
While continuing to help train teachers and increase the quality
of education in Pakistani schools, Washington also will need to
encourage Islamabad to implement systemic reform of public
education in order to make a significant impact on education
outcomes, such as increased literacy and enrollment rates and
decreased dropout rates. U.S. policymakers and aid officials need
to take to heart the results of the failed World Bank efforts from
the 1980s through the 1990s to avoid repeating similar mistakes.
Pushing for systemic reform may require the U.S. to increasingly
use benchmarks with the Pakistani government in order to encourage
greater efficiency and transparency within the education
bureaucracy.
Washington will need to encourage Pakistan to crack down on
those madrassas that continue to promote extremist violence and
sectarian policies that lead to terrorism and the destabilization
of Pakistani society. The Pakistani authorities should clean house
in any madrassas found to have links to international terrorist
incidents and make clear that those individuals who provide
protection or safe haven to al-Qaeda and like-minded terrorist
groups will be held to account. The Pakistan government's refusal
to detain or punish key terrorist leaders because of their links to
the Kashmir militancy signals a degree of tolerance of terrorist
activity and provides a permissible environment for groups that
collaborate with al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Pakistan
authorities likely know which madrassas are supplying militants for
terrorist training. We should use skillful diplomacy to persuade
the Pakistani government to reform or close down these schools.
The U.S. should refrain from getting involved in Pakistan's
broader madrassa reform efforts and accept that many of the
traditional madrassas serve a useful purpose in educating Islamic
intellectuals and providing shelter and food for impoverished
youth. While a few Pakistani madrassas represent an international
terrorist threat and deserve American scrutiny and condemnation,
most madrassas should be left alone.
To conclude, U.S. efforts to encourage education reform and
development in Pakistan should be consistent, sustained, and
multi-pronged. Ensuring transparency and efficiency in the
education bureaucracy is equally important to encouraging local
community involvement and accountability in the day-to-day
functioning of individual schools, especially in poor, rural areas.
The development of a strong and effective education system in
Pakistan is central to promoting moderation, tolerance, and
economic development. Convincing the Pakistani government to take
firm action against the handful of madrassas supporting violent
extremism also is necessary, not only for the future stability of
Pakistan, but also to prevent future international terrorism.
Lisa A. Curtis is Senior
Research Fellow for South Asia in the Asian Studies Center at The
Heritage Foundation. These remarks were delivered in testimony
before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs.