CODEL Journal - 12 Jan 2005
Posted by
Michelle Stein
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January 13, 2005
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12 January 2005
After arriving in Pakistan, we were met by the United States Ambassador to Pakistan. Mr. Ryan Crocker gave us a briefing enroute to our hotel. It was his opinion that the Pakistani-Afghanistan relationship was currently better than it had ever been in years past. He credited it to a large measure of the Pakistani efforts on the border with Afghanistan, particularly in the Northeast provinces. He stated that there had never before been a Pakistani military presence in this area, and the courage of President Musharraf to send in these troops had meant a great deal to the stability and to Afghanistan. This in turn allowed the recent Afghanistan elections to proceed with only minimal incident.
Additionally, the decision was made to allow refugees from the country of Afghanistan who had been displaced into Pakistan to register and vote in the Afghanistan election.
The Ambassador said that the English language was the ubiquitous unifying language in the country of Pakistan. Pakistan is composed of four provinces each of which has their own language. He said that English is the common language for all four provinces. He quoted a literacy rate of 54% which was one of the main challenges playing into considerations on the war on terror. Currently there is $66 million from USAID be applied to education in Pakistan.
As we drove to the city the Ambassador pointed out that Islamabad was a manufactured capital. It was built in 1969, and most of the buildings were very recent vintage.
Another great concern is Pakistan's relationship with India. Although the past year there has been some improvement regarding this relationship, there is still a good deal of concern regarding the disputed province of Kashmir.
We had a meeting with the new Prime Minister, Mr. Shaukat Aziz. He was elected approximately six months ago. He had previous experience as an investment banker in the United States. He is concerned with reducing the deficit in his country and points to several recent quarters where there has been in excess of 6% growth in the national economy in Pakistan.
He himself was a target of an assassination attempt in July, an attack which unfortunately did result in the death of his driver.
Mr. Aziz outlined the priorities for his administration. He is of course focused on the economy. The politics from within his country will continue to play a significant role for the foreseeable future, and he is also focused on security within his country, particularly in regards to border security.
He feels that the country of Afghanistan represents a success story. The uneventful election in Afghanistan was truly a modern-day democratic victory. He remains concerned about the expansion of the growth of poppies in Afghanistan, and the subsequent effect on narco-terrorism. The profits gained from the poppy fields and Afghanistan fund a worldwide network of terrorism.
I asked them specifically about education in his country. When we were here one year ago President Musharraf talked about the need to regulate and reorganize education in the schools called Madresses. At that time, the president was concerned that the schools were teaching only religious fundamentalism and failed in teaching children marketable, usable skills.
Prime Minister Aziz had a somewhat different take on this. He felt that the new education minister, after only four months on-the-job, had really begun to show some success in increasing the teaching in the Madresses. He stated that overall they have toughened their approach to radicalism; not just in the schools, but in the mosques as well (the clergy are under some pressure to keep their rhetoric a reasonable).
On perhaps the most positive note sounded by Prime Minister Aziz, remembering that he himself was a victim of a near successful assassination attempt some six months ago, was that he felt that the ordinary “Pakistani on-the-street” felt significantly more secure and that this sense of security had genuinely increased over the past year's time.
He reaffirmed that Pakistan was firmly in the camp of nonproliferation as it related to nuclear weapons. He saw no reason to allow expansion of nuclear capability to Iran.
Recapitulating what he saw as the successes of his administration, he noted the re-emphasis of nonproliferation regarding nuclear weapons in the country of Iran; improved relationships with India; and increased border security along the northeast border with Afghanistan (more troops have been placed along this border).
