DAWN 8-12-2011


THE Bonn conference ended predictably with commitments from the international community to continue support for Afghanistan for at least a decade after 2014. However, there was little movement on the core issues of reconciliation inside the war-torn country or on working out relations with Afghanistan`s neighbours that could promote internal stability. Lack of movement on these core issues was almost a foregone conclusion after the Taliban were kept away from the conference and Pakistan opted to boycott the conference in protest against last month`s killings of its soldiers in a Nato air strike in Mohmand. With two major conferences on Afghanistan this year, Istanbul and Bonn, yielding little by way of developments, the fear is that next May`s conference in Chicago will similarly fail to produce significant outcomes.

For Pakistan, Bonn was a missed opportunity. The consensus outside official circles is that the boycott was not in Pakistan`s best interests. That decisions detrimental to Pakistan`s interests were not taken at the conference means Islamabad has not lost ground. But neither has it pressed its case any further in the international community. In truth, between the international community`s determination to not `abandon` Afghanistan, as it did after the Soviet withdrawal, and Pakistan`s insistence that its security interests be important considerations in a post-war settlement, the Afghanistan of the future is likely to produce a configuration in which the various power centres in the country continue to hold sway and influence in their respective areas. So the key really is to find a way to incentivise the various parties in Afghanistan — simply put, warlords in many areas — to not seek to project their power outside their `normal` spheres of influence. It seems apparent that many of those incentives will come from ensuring development and infrastructure building that remain the priorities of the international community in Afghanistan post-2014. If the warring factions can be nudged towards peaceful coexistence over a period of time, the Afghanistan of the future will be the relatively peaceful and stable state that the international community, including Pakistan, seeks.

Vital as Pakistan`s role in Afghanistan is, the state here must also be careful to not overreach. While much of the anger and unhappiness in the wake of the Mohmand killings is justified and Pakistan took several principled decisions, there is a sense that the security establishment is willing to make a bet-the-house gamble that the US cannot engineer a face-saving exit from Afghanistan without Pakistan`s cooperation. Whether true or not, it`s probably best not to engage in brinkmanship with a superpower that often makes rash decisions.


THE decision by Australia`s ruling party to lift the country`s ban on exporting uranium to India raises questions, once again, about the international treatment of Pakistan when it comes to peaceful nuclear technology. It`s true that Pakistan is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Neither is India, however, and its landmark 2008 civil nuclear cooperation deal with the US set a precedent in which a signatory to the agreement was willing to do business with a country that is not. Australia`s prime minister also used this as justification when she argued for the economic and geopolitical benefits to her country, the world`s largest uranium producer, of making an exception for India. With other agreements with France, Russia and Canada, along with a number of other countries, India has firmly been brought into the fold when it comes to the global transfer of nuclear fuel and equipment for peaceful purposes.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is struggling with an energy crisis that has dragged down GDP growth and become a source of ongoing frustration for citizens. And as the world signs agreements with India, Pakistan does have concerns that providing new nuclear resources will allow that country to divert existing resources towards weapons development. Whether or not these fears are well-founded, they are serious enough to raise tensions and even lead to the resurgence of a nuclear arms race in the region. Pakistan`s history of nuclear proliferation cannot be denied, and to secure any deal the country must, of course, agree to stringent conditions. Facilities using imported material must be fully accessible by the International Atomic Energy Agency. There is already precedent for this in the Pakistani facilities that are currently under IAEA safeguards and are heavily monitored. There must also be an assurance that the imported material will not be passed on to any other nation. But bringing India into the nuclear fold while continuing to treat Pakistan as a pariah because of past mistakes denies the reality that an even-handed approach would be a better recipe for stability in both Pakistan and the wider region of South Asia.


IT is unfortunate that the number of PhD candidates in the country is insufficient, and that, consequently, there has been a drop in the number of doctorate courses offered by universities. As a report in this paper says, the Higher Education Commission requires at least three permanent faculty members to supervise doctoral courses, yet many institutions are hiring visiting faculty to cut costs. Many universities also discourage students from pursuing a doctorate degree because “they find PhD courses not profitable to run”. Although it is lamentable that the institutes should have to drop doctoral courses for financial reasons, it is just as sad that Pakistani universities face a manpower crunch where PhD instructors are concerned.

There has been much debate about the impact of Gen Musharraf`s revamp of the higher education sector, specifically the role of the HEC. It has been pointed out that while there has been a considerable rise in the number of public and private universities, only a handful have qualified faculty capable of supervising PhD courses. Many students sent by the HEC have returned after completing their doctorates abroad, and more are due to follow. True, the return of qualified scholars should fill the gap to an extent, but the full impact of their return on the country`s higher education sector may leave much to be desired. Many returning scholars prefer jobs at `good` universities where there is a senior faculty and an established infrastructure. They are not willing to take up teaching positions at institutes which are less developed or less known. It is here where the HEC needs to focus. It must place returning scholars in relatively neglected varsities and equip them with the tools and incentives needed for a positive transformation. However, the focus should remain on the quality and not quantity of scholars.