Why can’t America spend a fraction of the spent fighting the people on building schools?
KARACHI: More people in Pakistan understand the value of education, than at any time in its existence with most, if not all, parents wanting to send their young children to school. In addition to this, many students who have finished college are eager to go on to obtain a university education. In short, there is considerable demand for education and it is growing. Why can’t America sense this and instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars fighting the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, spend a fraction of that money on building schools?
I hate to say it but the primary reason for the anti-Americanism that Pakistan is now infested with is US policies. It was during General Zia’s era that (mostly poor) parents started sending their children to madrassas. The result of the change is all before us with hundreds of thousands of students now enrolled in madrassas. Had that not been the case we could have more people out on streets today pushing forward the values of democracy, secular education, modernisation and civil liberties. Instead, today, many Pakistanis stand up against these values not because they don’t believe that following them will take us to the next level as a nation, but because they see them as being synonymous with the America whose policies they have grown up hating.
The annual of the US effort in Afghanistan is $60 billion. Imagine what could be done with even a tenth of that money for education in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Lt-col (retd) Muhammad Ali Ehsan
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2011.
