A report presented to
Congress points out that although President Pervez Musharraf
vowed to begin regulating Pakistan’s religious schools,
and his government launched a five-year, $113 million
plan to bring the teaching of “formal” or
secular subjects to 8,000 “willing” madrassas,
no concrete action was taken until June of that year,
when 115 madrassas were denied access to government assistance
due to their alleged links to militancy.
The report produced by the Congressional
Research Service (CRS) and written by its Asian affairs
analyst K Alan Kornstadt, notes that President Musharraf
set a December 31, 2002 deadline for such schools to register
with the government or face closure. In November 2003,
the government decided to allocate about $50 million annually
to provide assistance to registered seminaries, especially
by paying the salaries of teachers hired to teach non-religious
subjects. In July 2004, Pakistan’s then-education
minister announced government agreements with private
companies to provide computer education at all of the
country’s public schools. She later declared Islamabad’s
intention to provide financial grants to madrassas that
seek to “impart modern-day education”. According
to the CRS report, the US Agency for International Development
(USAID) is implementing a five-year, $100 million bilateral
agreement, signed in August 2002, to increase access to
quality education throughout Pakistan, with an emphasis
on Balochistan and Sindh.
“Yet the most notable project is
Education Sector Reform Assistance (ESRA), which accounts
for more than three-quarters of the USAID-reported $77.7
million budgeted to date. In this project, USAID contracted
with the North Carolina-based Research Triangle Institute
to strengthen education policies and planning, increase
the capacity of teachers and education administrators,
improve youth and adult literacy, expand public-private
partnerships to improve access to and delivery of education
services, and establish teaching methods that instil democratic
attitudes and behaviours among children and educators
and draw families into the life of the school community,”
the CRS document states.
In financial year 2005, USAID will increase
its funding for its Primary Education and Literacy programme
in Pakistan to nearly $67 million, almost tripling the
2004 outlay of $24 million. There are concerns, however,
that US funding to assist Pakistan’s education reform
efforts has thus far been too small to have significant
effect. Some analysts suggest that donors such as the
US may do best to direct their resources at reform of
Pakistan’s public education sector, as they see
in this the most effective and least controversial means
of reversing the influence of Islamic extremists and their
threat to Pakistani stability.
According to CRS, while wealthy citizens
are able to send their children to private, English medium
schools, the vast majority of Pakistanis must choose between
a deteriorated public system that can be physically difficult
to access and religious schools that will feed, clothe,
and oftentimes house their children for free. “Some
analysts are critical of Pakistan government for what
they view as excessive spending on the military in a country
where abject poverty is rife. Corruption and economic
demands also are factors. In many locales, schools and
textbooks are available, and teachers are paid, but never
report for work.”
Pakistani officials, the report points
out, insist that President Musharraf is serious in his
aims to bring madrassa curriculum closer in substance
to that provided in non-religious schools, with the long-term
goal being a curriculum that is nearly identical.”
Some Western NGOs, working with private
donations, have teamed with local Islamic groups to reform
madrassa curricula. “Despite President Musharraf’s
repeated pledges to crack down on the more extremist madrassas
in his country, there is little concrete evidence that
he has done so. According to two observers, ‘most
madrassas remain unregistered, their finances unregulated,
and the government has yet to remove the jihadist and
sectarian content of their curricula’. Many speculate
that Musharraf’s reluctance to enforce reform efforts
is rooted in his desire to remain on good terms with Pakistan’s
Islamist political parties, which are seen to be an important
part of his political base.”
The CRS document stresses that more than
three years after its creation, the Pakistan Madrassa
Education Board appears to have had “little success
in fulfilling its mandate”. Resistance to reform
efforts is not limited to Islamist groups, but can also
been seen in the statements of Pakistan’s top political
leaders. The September 2004 replacement of Education Minister
Zobaida Jalal with former intelligence chief Lt Gen Javed
Ashraf Qazi was seen by some analysts as a “setback”
to reform efforts.
Yet other observers see the move as potentially
shielding the government from criticism by conservatives
as it goes ahead with reform efforts. The CRS report says
that even setting aside the question of President Musharraf’s
sincerity and full commitment on this issue, resistance
to the reform of Pakistan’s madrassas is “fierce”,
and the schools identified as the most immediately threatening
to Pakistani society and US interests - though small in
number - may be immune to governmental pressure due to
their access to external funding sources and their close
connections to powerful Islamist politicians.
