Such a hatred of illiteracy and such a decisive recognition of its consequent ills, one would assume, would produce an equally fervent desire for literacy, for learning, for schools and all that accompanies a country’s intellectual advancement. But for all the professed love, all the avowed promises, all the passionate proclamations, there is nothing to show. In the past year, however, what was simply lazy inaction has now grown up and morphed into an actual, angry hatred of education itself…

One year ago, Pakistanis lamented only the school burnings and the school bombings done by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. But last year, the attack on schools graduated to something more. In October, Malala Yousafzai, marked her momentous escape from the school girl killing brigade of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Weeks later, on November 1, 2013 a girls’ school in Lahore was attacked and then burned to the ground by a furious mob. The cause for the destruction; an accusation against a teacher for having blasphemed against the Prophet, The reported context; a harried woman copying down a passage on a blackboard, an accidentally turned page and two unconnected passaged merged together into a mistaken concoction deemed worthy of death. Death was demanded for the principal who soon became a prisoner. The teacher ran and hid and tried to save her life.

Between then and now, over 15 schools were blown up or bombed. On January 2, 2013 a bomb blast at the University of Peshawar, outside a classroom injured several people and terrified several hundred more. Going to University, it announced to everyone still believing in the value of an education; is an extremely lethal business. On February 12, 2013, a college was bombed in Mardan where a bomb had been placed outside the Physics Department. If others were left doubting, the mob that gathered at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Multan on March 15, 2013 could have sealed the argument against teaching and learning. Led by the members of the Tehreek-e-Tahaffuz-e- Namoos-e-Risalat, the Multan mob had a single demand: the arrest and immediate execution of a lecturer in the University’s English Department. The man’s crime, an alleged blasphemy committed on a social networking site. The imperiled Professor fled and hid to save his life, the rabid mob and their leaders vowed that they would find him and kill him.

Then came the killing of last week when a poet and a professor, Sibte Jaffar was gunned down. The event was tragic, but everyone shrugged their head and nodded. “He was a known target” some said, being a Shia and a poet and a professor, everyone agrees today is a lethal combination; an obvious invitation for some secret gunman’s unforgiving bullet. Thus proceeds, the war against learning, where being a female student, or a male professor or anyone asking others to think, to pause, to consider, is a target. An illiterate Pakistan was one where the lack of education made the polity slow and dull and easily duped, a Pakistan that has declared war on teachers is one that is suicidal.

Rafia Zakaria is a columnist for DAWN. She is a writer and PhD candidate in Political Philosophy whose work and views have been featured in the New York Times,  Dissent the Progressive, Guernica, and on Al Jazeera English, the BBC, and National Public Radio. She is the author of Silence in Karachi, forthcoming from Beacon Press.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

Usually parents discourage their children from drawing and consider it a waste of time. Art at a such young age prepares children to filter the world through their eyes and make sense of their surroundings. It gives impetus to their imagination and creativity. There are numerous examples of scientist, inventors and creators who were also creative artists. Neil Bohr’s atomic model was an imaginative model of the unseen atom; the drawings of stars, nebulas and black holes are other examples. The modern method of printing is one artist’s (George Seurat) achievement that separated colour into dots of complementary colours. He used the blue and yellow colours instead of green and red, and yellow dots for orange. The modern printing method uses the same method of separation of colors into four dots of black, red, yellow and orange that can be seen by a magnifying glass. Paul Cezanne painted curved spaces around objects like apples and jars in his still-life paintings that preceded Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which explains the curved space around the objects like the earth and the sun – science and art cannot be separated.

The imagination produces mental imagery, which enables us to think outside the confines of our present perceptual reality, to consider memories of the past and possibilities for the future, and to consider alternatives against one another. The word imagination is itself a combination of image-ination and not idea-ination. An idea is abstract unless it is translated into an image or written in visual form of writing. The French Revolution needed an image to externalise the idea of liberty, fraternity and equality. The painting, ‘Oath of Horatii’ was considered as embodying the values of enlightenment and the fight against monarchy and religious authority. Liberty leading the people by Delacroix was another example how image became a symbol of the French Republic. In a similar pattern, it was first the holy book Quran, which preceded the revolution in the Arab society and changed it forever.

A child’s disconnect from imagination starts from school. When a child goes to school, he has many images of the world but few words. He is taught alphabets (images) that denote sounds but they are accompanied by visuals of objects. The alphabet ‘A’ is taught with the image of an apple. In primary classes, images take up almost 90 per cent of the page of a textbook, while alphabets and letters are only 10 per cent, with a font size that is always higher than 18 points.

Eventually, the images are reduced and text takes more space and the font size too is reduced. The child is accessed by his ability to memorise the voice/letters/words and not the images. Gradually, the images diminish from his textbook, and his performance is then evaluated on memorising the words. Although the human mind works with images, like if we read the word apple, an image of an apple forms in our mind by default. This separation of image/word in students gives rise to the separation of two worlds, one of the image and another of the voice/words. The idea of sacred text of religious books also adds to the sanctity of the word rather than the image. The new schooling methods that use images, text and videos for education have realised the importance of images in education.

It is usually said that child art is a syncretic and takes a holistic view of the world. Children’s analytical faculties take shape as they grow. Picasso learnt to draw at the age of 12 and his initial drawing at the Spain Art School, show his remarkable skill and dexterity as a draftsman. He once said that it took him 30 years to draw like a child again.

We observe that children draw their first human figures as stick figures, with a circle denoting the head, and the body, arms and feet as straight lines. If we deconstruct a figure drawn by a child its individual parts, reduced to circles, triangles and lines will provide no clue to its original figure. If we similarly separate an adult’s drawing of a portrait, like an ear or a nose, the drawing would still resemble a part of the human anatomy. Children will always draw a car with four wheels, while realist drawings by adults will always show three wheels, the fourth hidden behind the car. This holistic view is also seen in Egyptian paintings where we never see overlapped bodies. The face is in full profile but with both eyes, and the figure is turned towards the viewer so that both hands and feet are visible also. Animals would always be shown with four legs and we don’t find any foreshortening as that would hide one leg or some portion of body. Children don’t see reality in compartments.

That’s why child drawings are considered as a holistic approach towards reality. Very young children often call all adult females and males around them as mama, or papa. It’s only later when they differentiate between their own mother and other adult females in the family. A teacher once asked a student: What is the relation between the wind and moving tree leaves? A child replied that when the leaves move, they produce wind. The teacher corrected the child, “It’s the wind that moves the leaves of a tree.” An expert opined that this correction by the teacher stopped the child’s effort of linking the two phenomena on his own.

The breaking up of reality into different boxes, separated from one another is learnt later. A child who tells the truth to a guest about his father being at home grows to be analytical when he is able to lie and tell the guest that his father is not at home. He is then ready for analytical, realistic drawing.

The author left architecture for painting but ended up as a cartoonist and now writes Hijjo. He is the jack of all trades.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

Cushioned in the mountains of Tarbela and Gadoon-Amazai, near the town of Topi, the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute is one of the top engineering universities of Pakistan. Students from NUST, UET, FAST, University of Gujrat, University of Peshawar, Superior, and many more were part of the challenge.

Photo by Mujtaba H. Shah

The event takes place each year, but the 13th Softcom event had added categories in the line-up of competitions and exhibitions. Along with speed programming, poster design competitions and interactive quizzes, this Softcom included a web app development competition, a hackathon, and a concentrated focus on technology start-ups.

At the Tech Talk, founders of top technological companies in Pakistan spoke to students about what it takes to start a company. The founder and CTO of Pring, a mobile-based social network, Muhammad Nasrullah, and Adnan Butt, CEO of Mvergence and Walnut Media, both GIKI alumni, guided students on what abilities employers looked for when recruiting. Other guest speakers were Amer Sarfraz, co-founder of Bramerz, a digital media agency, Ather Nawaz, MD at Numetrics, and Anwar Khan, founding partner of IT & Telecom Services firms. They talked frankly to the students about the inevitable hurdles in entrepreneurship and the need for more innovation in Pakistan.

Photo by Mujtaba H. Shah

The hackathon was a first for GIKI, sponsored by Pring, and it ran for 36 hours straight. Students pulled all-nighters, coding mobile applications for Pring’s Raven API. A hackathon is a programming marathon in which developers code useable software in a non-stop intense period of time, which can run for days.

“This is the first time a platform has been provided that gives young programmers the freedom to imagine a solution to a problem and then actually create it and put it to use,” said Muhammad Nasrullah.

Ali Yousuf, a second year student at GIKI and one of the winners of the hackathon, worked on making an application that enabled a mobile user to get information from the web, when they are not connected to the internet. Naming the application simply “Ask”, Ali’s idea is that his mobile phone would connect to Pring’s server, which would transfer the data required from the internet and send it to him via SMS.

“Electricity is a big problem in Pakistan that affects every one of us. But work cannot stop. I’m creating this application so that people can access information at any time.”

Photo by Mujtaba H. Shah

The start-up competition saw students presenting before a panel of judges’, innovative ideas in technology that would solve a problem. One of the winning teams had two final year students from NUST School of Electrical Engineering, Hassaam Ali and Umair Aftab. Calling their project ‘Low Cost Extensible Computing’, they developed an electric board, the size of a wallet, which could connect to any kind of screen, be it a small television, a bulky monitor or any LCD screen and have a fully functioning computer that also allows internet access. Using this board, a person was able to use a computer for as low as Rs. 6,000.

‘The idea struck when I went to my village, just outside of Jhang, to visit my cousins. When we went to check out laptops at the market, I saw that each one had a huge mark-up, of about 50 to 60 per cent. And the hardware was not impressive either. In fact, I would call it obsolete,” said Aftab.

“There are so many people in Pakistan’s rural areas and small cities who need to own a computer and get the internet, but cheaply. We’re aiming to take this project forward and solve this problem,” added Ali.

It wasn’t all work at the Softcom. A movie night and a four-hour hiking trip in the morning at Tarbela were also part of the plan to make sure students had a great time. To keep them informed of the different activities taking place around the campus, GIKI used Pring for coordination. Alerts about the schedule and updates on interesting happenings around the campus were sent out through SMS to all students almost every half hour, keeping the whole affair organised.

The campus was brimming with students, while ideas and imagination flowed throughout the event. The Softcom had pulled together the sharpest young minds from around the country, proving that there is no dearth of brilliance and originality in Pakistan.

-Photo courtesy of TCF

A group of six friends, all in business – young, well educated and affluent – used to meet every weekend and talk of everything under the sun but the one subject that cropped up from time to time was that Pakistan was woefully short of educated people. One day, someone said “Enough is enough. Either we do something significant or stop complaining.” They all agreed and had a brainstorming session, at the end of which they decided to pool in money to open five schools for the poorest of the poor in areas of Karachi where there were no schools, private or government run. That was in 1995, when Rs 12.5 million was a big sum but the target was to be achieved in one year. They may have lacked in experience in the field of education but were amply equipped with professionalism and determination. This was how the NGO, The Citizens Foundation (normally referred to as TCF) came into being.

Today, 17 years later TCF runs 830 purpose-built schools in different parts of the country, providing employment to more than 5,000 female teachers, who are paid reasonably well and a good number of support staff such as drivers and peons. As many as 115,000 students, half of them female, study in co-education schools which have proper buildings and playgrounds. The fees are nominal and the cost of running the schools, thanks to inflation, is quite high. Donations come in from home and abroad.

A group of socially conscious people, who call themselves the Supporters of TCF, are involved in a number of fund-raising activities too. The one forthcoming event that will excite all art lovers is the four-day Exhibition of Contemporary Pakistani Art, will open on November 6 at Mica Gallery in London.

Painting by Ather Jamal.

Two ladies Shahla Shareef and Maliha Bhimjee, who have put their hearts and souls in the project, were able to collect the works of 40 artists. Some of them like Riffat Alvi, who also extended a helping hand in the project, and Samina Raza, gave as many as three of their prize art works. There was at least one artist who made a special painting for the exhibition. He answers to the name of Moeen Faruqi. Of the 40 artists, the one whose is the biggest name in the group is none other than the late Ismail Gulgee. His two calligraphic paintings – both displaying the word ‘Allah’, should be able to attract the most attention at the exhibition. They have been donated by a collector who prefers to remain anonymous.

Painting by Gulgee.

The treasure trove to be put up on display has a wide variety from impressionist work to pure abstract. Some employing exciting bright colours, while some are in brooding monochromes.

Painting by Wahab Jaffer.

Log on to http://www.MicaHub.com for the address and other details.

Asif Noorani is a Karachi-based journalist and author of Mehdi Hasan: the Man and His Music.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

A Pakistani passport. An increasing number of Pakistani men have married foreign-residents despite being in relationship with women and having wives back home – File photo courtesy Creative Commons

Young, old, fat, short, tall, fair, dark, smart, intelligent, caring – it doesn’t matter for young Pakistani men seeking prospective brides as a shortcut exit overseas. The only criterion is that you must hold a foreign passport and be able to financially support yourself as a young woman because this type of man isn’t in it for the long run.

Simple, innocent and conservative overseas-born or raised Pakistani girls are an easy target for these men. Most Pakistani families living abroad raise their children in a sheltered and protective environment, where they try to maintain their traditional ties with their native country and expect the same respect in return.

Marriage is a sacred union. Majority of overseas Pakistanis and respectable families in Pakistan cherish this system, adhering to the values and upholding the sacred union. However, seeing the latest matrimonial advertisements in the leading Pakistani national newspapers and online websites, marriage has become a business agreement. A culturally arranged marriage has become rather a business deal, where the groom needs to chalk out a business plan, conduct a SWOT analysis and check their return on investment.

It’s not only Pakistani men but also Pakistani women that are being married to foreign-passport-holding Pakistani men regardless of checking their compatibility, education, personality, age and long-term commitment, just to secure a better life for their family back home.

Frustrated by the economic and political instability and limited opportunities within their own country, Pakistani men and women are seeking refuge in other countries through any means. According to a British Higher Education Statistics Agency report, Pakistan accounts for 54 per cent of UK’s (non-EU) international students. In 2009-2012 there were over 9, 815 Pakistani students enrolled in higher education institutes. Furthermore, popular countries such as Canada, North America, several North European countries, including Sweden and Finland are attracting thousands of Pakistani students to their universities. More than 8, 458 Pakistani students studied in Australia in 2009-2010, increase of 11.4 per cent over 2008-2009.

Unless there is financial backing, life is tough for these Pakistani students overseas. Expensive college/university tuition fees, low-wages, odd jobs and unstable living conditions lead them to resentment and bitterness towards their country of stay. Moreover, they become opportunistic individuals that are willing to compromise and deceive others in order for them to gain permanent residency. An easy shortcut solution is to marry a local citizen.

The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) recently stated that there are a record number of fraudulent weddings and spouse claims being made by visa cheats in order to gain entry in the county and obtain Australian-citizenship.

According to the Herald Sun special DIAC report (August, 2012) more than 1,300 overseas-born partners have been sent packing in the past four years after their relationships with Australian residents and citizens were exposed as lies – 406, or eight a week, in the past year alone. Four in 10 partner visa applications came from foreigners already in the country on student, work or holiday visas in the past year, and they were most often rejected.

In New Zealand, nearly 500 people were turned away by immigration officers in the previous financial year after claiming to be in a long-term and stable relationship with New Zealanders.

Increasing number of statistics of Pakistani men involved in polygamous marriages and unregistered marriages in Pakistan is alarming; this is where Pakistani men have married foreign-residents despite being in relationship with women and having wives back home. They are not only spoiling the lives of innocent women in Pakistan for their self-vested interest abroad but leaving a social stigma for both these women residing abroad and in Pakistan.

According to a BBC report,  Pakistani woman, Dr Zabina Shahain married a well-known man Mr Pervez Choudhry, former Conservative party leader residing in United Kingdom, who did not disclose but was still married. He did not realise that marriage in Pakistan was legally valid in the UK and was given a community order after admitting bigamy.

Similar cases are now emerging among young Pakistani men overseas that are taking part in dual marriages without disclosing information to their prospective spouses. Once these men secure their permanent visas, and achieve their goals they take the exit route. Left behind, are distraught and mentally disturbed women that have no option but to either stay due to family commitments or face social challenges if they leave them behind.

Common signs that Pakistani families need to be cautious of when assessing prospective spouses for their dear ones is to have a thorough background check, assess their emotional involvement towards their spouse to-be, disclosing of personal information and whereabouts and be wary of excessive blandishment.

A time where Pakistan already faces political, economic and social challenges domestically and in the international arena, the country cannot afford individuals to further damage its image.

Sarwat Hassan is an Australia-based journalist, educationist, writer and community representative.

A an types on a computer. A Pakistani student from Balochistan won gold medal in an International Computer Project Olympiad. – File photo

ISLAMABAD, Sept 21: A Pakistani student from Balochistan has bagged gold medal in an international contest held in Turkmenistan leaving all the countries like Germany, Canada, Russia, England, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka behind.

M. Ubaidullah son of Haji Talib Din, a rice trader, is a class ninth student of Pak-Turk International Schools and Colleges, has brought home a gold medal from the International Computer Project Olympiad (ICPO) held in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The competition was held on September 14 and 15 among students from 45 countries who presented 150 projects in the Olympiad.

Ubaidullah’s project that caught attention of participants, organisers and judges was regarding plant automation system; subsequently he was awarded 1st position in the hardware category.

His project P-Bot aims at saving plants in cold-flame or greenhouse setting, especially when someone wants to protect the plants at home in all the seasons. P-Bot automates the round-the-year tasks of plant care by means of its full-automatic cold flame and greenhouse routines.

The bot helps people save time in caring about plants and is power-thrift by powering itself by its solar cells. The microprocessors board optimizes the maximum energy possible to power the bot to fulfill its duties.

Upon arrival, Ubaidullah and project supervisor Halil Baris (Turkish teacher) both were received warmly because for their outstanding achievement that has brought pride and distinction to Pakistan.

Ubaidullah said: “International competitions are very important for the grooming of students. Tour of other countries not only gives confidence to the students but it also gives them opportunity to have interaction with students of other nations and learn from them.

“Although there is an impression that people of Balochistan are deprived of their rights but my success shows that if people would work hard, they can achieve anything in difficult condition,” he said.

Project Supervisor Halil Baris termed the success result of hard work and said that he was proud of his students.

It may be mentioned that ICPO is an international competition which brings the world’s best IT students together. It also serves to promote intercultural dialogue and cooperation, through the involvement of students and teachers from many different countries.

In retrospect, I now personally believe that attending a convent contributes to some of the best experiences of my life. Students from various religious orientations studied at my school and we coexisted wonderfully; the thought of numerous religious philosophies and how one worshiped never crossed our mind. I clearly remember that one of my favourite teachers focused more on religious harmony than his course outline. His curriculum was customised to ingrain the essence of tolerance within students who belonged to diverse backgrounds. “Regardless of whose teachings you follow, stay close to God and respect humans for who they are as every individual is unique and God’s best creation,” was one of his most frequently used phrases, and will always be a source of solace for me in today’s world.

Unfortunately, the things we were taught in school came to an abrupt end when I left for college – a different story altogether. The first time I heard the term “Jihad against Kafir” during one of the mandatory course session, I immediately looked around to see how those words affected my non-Muslim friends. Their expressions were a mixture of sheer disgust and hopelessness, and an uncomfortable silence shrouded them.

How can we expect our society to become tolerant when our textbooks are filled with venomous content? How can we expect our children to become progressive when we expose them to violent literature, and at such an early age? By using words such as “Hindus can never become true friends for Muslims” and using adjectives such as goondah for Hindus and fanatic clergymen for Christians, how are we possibly trying to teach our youth to be more compassionate or embrace different religious philosophies?

People professing different faiths are not the only targets of the hateful content that is featured in our textbooks. A handful of countries and their citizens are also treated with overzealous hatred, with India topping the list. Why don’t we realise that spreading hatred and intolerance has never brought any positive change in our own society? We corrupt young minds by turning their intrigue into fear and eventually Indophobia.

It is important to understand that by playing with the minds of our children this way we are giving rise to a hopeless society where rights and values of anyone who is not a Pakistani and a Sunni Muslim are irrelevant. Children are impressionable and by designing curricula which fan hatred and deny the idea of coexistence, we are encouraging them to become religious fanatics.

How about designing a curriculum which emphasises religious harmony, where the role of Jihad is given minimum significance and India is termed as a brotherly nation? What about building the foundation of a society in which Indo-Pak wars do not take precedence over human and civil rights movements? Why can’t our curriculum include all the positive aspects of different religions and educate children about the teachings of different prophets, thinkers and philosophers?

I must reiterate that by pumping negativity into our future generations we are neither inflicting any harm to our friends across the border or non-Muslims living elsewhere. The brunt of this so-called “academic fanaticism” is only faced by Muslim and non-Muslim minorities living in Pakistan. Hence, the hatred taught to our children affects only Pakistanis, and harms only our nation.

The statistics show that over 21.5 million Pakistanis, more than half of the population, are illiterate. Whereas, the other half of the country that have the resources and the will to acquire knowledge undergo this hate filled conditioning through the curriculum, and become resentful to people who are different from them, almost by default. Most of us were never taught to appreciate diversity and the difference of beliefs. We were always instructed to consider Hindus, Jews and Christians our enemy but is that truly so? Are we actually so significant and enviable that the whole world is conspiring against us? Why do we need to create fundamentalist soldiers who would defend us from the alleged connivance of other people? Why this paranoia?

Further research and interaction with these so-called enemies of Islam and Pakistan will perhaps help us understand that our basic ideologies remain the same. Most of us are affected and concerned by the same issues of the global state of affairs. We all feel threatened by the presence of radical elements and wish for a peaceful society. The cost of blood and tears of a Hindu are no less than those of a Muslim or Christian. The loss of a Jewish life is as tormenting and saddening as that of a Muslim. Indian children whose parents die in violent attacks are as bereaved as the children of Pakistani families whose lives are cut short in the event of a suicide attack or drone strike. Given the current state of affairs, shouldn’t our primary concern be focused more towards promoting a multicultural society?

The government, amid many other commitments, has announced that the curricula will be cleansed of all hate generating material; however, concrete measures to address the issue are yet to be taken. I hope that the literature is changed and redesigned to accommodate the less than two per cent of the minorities and a fairly large percentage of Muslim minorities living in Pakistan. I hope that our curriculum features facts rather than fabricated stories of heroism that gives us a notion of false honour about ourselves.

William Shakespeare once said, “Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”

The academia should realise that by disfiguring the actual history and creating a sense of animosity between Pakistani Muslims and the rest of the world we are truly raising an ignorant generation which will continue to spread hatred if the status quo is not challenged.

Our hope lies in tolerance, unity and religious harmony. In the absence of the aforementioned elements, our society will sooner or later collapse. It is time to replace ignorance and intolerance with eagerness to learn from what other religions teach. It is time to concentrate on the similarities that we all share. And it is indeed time to impart true knowledge to our students — the knowledge of respect, harmony and tolerance.

The writer is a Reporter at Dawn.com

When I look at Kindergarten books, I always feel they are very old-fashioned and need to be revised. This book in particular has been in circulation as far back as I can remember. The symbols with the alphabets are usually the tanga, lutoo etc, but have been replaced with motorcars and YoYos or their meanings have changed entirely. It’s usually said that this new generation of children are much smarter than the older generation. Here is my small contribution to update this al-phabet book, so that the children of this country might know what kind of a world they are about to step in to.

The first image was always an Apple and still is an Apple but on an iPhone. Pakistani batsmen have been unable to use the Bat for some time now so that should be replaced with Batman. And now the Cat has acquired new meaning after Imran Khan left his past behind him and found religion and politics.

Click on images to enlarge

D was always for Dog but now it’s Dengue. Politicians always demand Elections, and then for the Army’s intervention when they lose these elections. The symbol of the Fish is now replaced with a big fish eating small fish.

Ghairat is the word that can open doors for you anywhere and everywhere in this country, whether its politics, law or the media. The world according to Habibis is a must to survive in Pakistan and the famous Ink pot is obsolete but survives only as a prevailing reminder.

The current flying coffins … sorry airlines are far older than these Jets on our roads nowadays, and for the last many years the Kite has been in chains. Our children should know about Load shedding seeing how it will remain with us for the unforeseeable future.

The Media is the new messiah and all the problems of Pakistan will vanish if we follow our anchormen. The Nose is now our favourite past time i.e. poking it in every private matter, or for that matter our foreign policy in Afghanistan.

Parrots are found on footpaths, morning shows, or as experts on talk shows prophesying our future. Quaid is now a word for under the table transactions and the Railways are without tracks as once the British left, they never returned to construct them.

Who can forget the Swiss letter that is about to chop off another Prime Minister. Twitter and the social media are the first words out of a child’s mouth these days. While the opposition is now under the suo motu Umbrella.

The symbol of the Van should change after the sky rocketing fuel prices. The Agha Waqar car was actually meant to be a water car. And the X-rays of our warrior priests should also be included in our children’s curriculum.

Here’s hoping our children will learn the ropes to survive in this land of the pure, and what better time to prepare them for this than the very first days of their lives.

The author left architecture for painting but ended up as a cartoonist and now writes Hijjo. He is the jack of all trades.

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.

The London Metropolitan University’s campus. Students affected by the UK Border Agency’s visa ruling have 60 days to find an alternative or face expulsion. – Photo by AFP

“I don’t know English well, which is why I paid so much money to come here and study it,” said Saira, a Pakistani student at the London Metropolitan University. Saira is one of the several thousand students affected by a UK Border Agency (UKBA) ruling against the university’s visa regulations. She has recently discovered that she may have to learn the language she came to study in order to survive in the country as her university has failed the BA standard for English competency of international students. She termed the decision, “really, really shocking.”

In hindsight, it was probably in the works for a long time. The UK Border Agency (BA) has previously suspended the visa licence of private institutions when systemic failings have been identified, and subsequently revoked the visa licence if they failed to remedy these failings. However, when – in a landmark decision – UK BA withdrew the licence of a public institution it left thousands of students in uproar and the university community in shock on the impact it will have on a £12.5-billion-a -year industry.

When Dawn.com spoke to the students affected by the ruling, some broke down into tears while others were left fuming at what they call “inhumane treatment” at the hands of the UKBA.

Yakoub is an ‘A-Grade’ Mathematics student at London Metropolitan University who is currently searching for alternatives in order to complete his degree but the only offer he has been able to receive is from Brunel University, where he will have to repeat his second year. This leaves him with two extremely challenging tasks: Firstly, he does not have the finances to repeat his second year. He has been heavily reliant on his elderly parents for fund-raising in his village back home in Pakistan. Secondly, the UKBA does not grant a visa to international students who have to repeat a year but Yakoub must repeat a year to finish his studies at Brunel. This means he must prove this rule should not apply to him by either paying for legal advice or learn the law to prove that he has made “academic progress.”

Yakoub says indignantly “these universities are trying to squeeze more money out of us, and if they tell everyone to repeat one year how can we say no after all the hard work we have done? You come to this country for a better education, and we have done nothing wrong but the way we are being treated is so inhumane.”

Adnan, from Bangladesh, and Javeed, from India, were studying Computer Sciences. When asked whether the taskforce set up by the government had been any help, they replied: “The taskforce is useless. They can not say one way or the other. There is no help at all.”

These students have a little over a month to come to terms with the news, find an alternative university place, try to find the finances to pay for this having lost money at London Metropolitan and deal with the family concerns. Even if they are lucky to find a placement, they feel they are held hostage by whatever financial and non-financial demands that these institutions make as they have no feasible alternatives.

“Sixty days is not an adequate remedy for these students,” legal advisor Mohammad Jamali told Dawn.com. The London Metropolitan University should immediately establish a compensation board to help students with the immediate costs suffered and the BA should grant an extension of 80-100 days to alleviate the harrowing struggle these students are battling.

Students enrolled at the London Metropolitan undertook a silent protest outside No.10 Downing Street on Thursday, taping their mouths and carrying placards stating, “International students not welcome here.”

Bello, a Union Welfare Officer, says that an astounding nine out of ten Student Union Officers are international students. These officers will need to vacate their posts and leave the remaining university students without a union on which to rely, during an extremely trying period, unless the BA grants a reprieve to retain the union officers, which is highly unlikely. This is just one of the many non-financial contributions that international students make within the UK community, which will be severely affected.

The National Union of Students (NUS) has criticised BA’s decision for withdrawing London Met’s visa licence of London Metropolitan in order to meet UK government’s target to reduce immigration.

Fellow varsities, such as Bristol University, have criticised decision as failing to be proportionate given the irreparable damage that this message will send out to international students and the fact that this has left London Metropolitan exposed to an indeterminate amount of compensation claims.

The BA, meanwhile, has responded saying that London Metropolitan had been undergoing a BA audit for several months and the visa licence was suspended July 2012 after three significant systemic failings were uncovered and the subsequent revocation has been a “sensible measure to ensure we have immigration control.”

The London Metropolitan University is currently undertaking legal advice to respond decisively at the BA decision which they considered to be a wildly insensible measure.

While the finality of BA’s decision, and the future of international students remains unclear, growing concerns on immigration have sent one clear message: the UK is taking no prisoners as it grows more strict with immigration.

Shabana Saleem is a freelance writer based in London.

The APMSO logo.

Last Thursday we ran through the history behind the rise and fall of one of Pakistan’s largest student organisations, the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT).

This week we shall analyse the evolution of another controversial student outfit, the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organisation (APMSO) – the student party that became the leading reason behind the decline and at times ouster of the IJT from Karachi’s major universities and colleges.

APMSO was formed at the University Of Karachi (KU) in 1978 by Altaf Hussain and Azeem Ahmed Tariq.

Husain and Tariq were both students at KU. Whereas Hussain till 1977 was a sympathiser of the Islami Jamiat Taleba (IJT) and played an active role in the movement against the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime that was orchestrated by the Jamat-i-Islami-led Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) in 1977, Tariq had flirted with an assortment of progressive student groups, including the Liberal Students Federation (LSF) that was headed by the current PPP Senator, Raza Rabbani at the KU in 1974.

Background

The most common account of the formation of the Muttahida (originally Mohajir) Qaumi Movement (MQM) and APMSO (that gave birth to the MQM) involves claims that it was a party conceived by the military dictatorship of General Ziaul Haq as a way to counterbalance the influence of certain political forces in Sindh. However, there is precious little clarity on the part of those political historians who toe this claim.

The Jamat-i-Islami (JI) was the first party to assert that the Zia regime had ‘created MQM’ to sideline JI’s influence in Karachi, even though between 1977 and 1984, the JI was openly supporting Zia.

In the late 1980s, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) insisted that the MQM had been formed by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies to curb the PPP in Sindh, whereas Sindhi nationalist parties were of the view that MQM came into being at the behest of the Zia regime because of the way Sindhi nationalists had protested during the violent anti-Zia MRD movement in Sindh in 1983.

Nevertheless, if one were to summarise the collective thesis on the subject by academics who have written extensively on the MQM – such as Muhammad Wasim, Laurent Gayer and Oskar Vaarkaik – one can suggest that, though, there was some involvement of Zia’s agencies in the formation of the MQM (from APMSO), this experiment soon backfired when the MQM quickly spun out of the agencies’ orbit and became an aggressively independent entity.

The MQM’s arrival was not simply about a Mohajir-centric student organisation (APMSO) evolving into a mainstream political party born out of the political and economic frustrations of Mohajirs.

One can treat this as an immediate historical snippet, but it is certainly not the complete story. Academics specialising in the politics of Sindh, such as Amir Ali Chandio and Dr Tanvir Tahir, trace back the formation of the political Mohajir ethnicity way back to the 1960s.

Along with Punjabis, Mohajirs dominated Pakistan’s initial ruling and economic elite and thus both these communities continued to invest their political support in either federalist or religious parties or in military dictatorships.

Even those Mohajirs and Punjabis who joined outfits led by Sindhi, Pashtun, Bengali and Baloch nationalists (such as the National Awami Party (NAP), were largely part of the NAP’s Marxist wing that wanted to eschew politics of ethnicity and work towards a bourgeoisie-led socialist proletarian revolution.

But by the late 1960s, much of the country’s leftist tendencies were absorbed by the emergent PPP, and thus progressive non-Punjabi and non-Mohajir nationalists became more exclusivist.

Consequently, the first ever demand to separate Karachi from Sindh and recognise the Mohajirs as a distinct ethnicity actually came from an influential faction of the left-wing National Students Federation (NSF) that was associated with the NAP.

In 1969 Amir H. Kazmi, the head of his own faction of the Marxist NSF, was one of the first political leaders to raise the banner of Mohajir nationalism.

Logo of the left-wing National Students Federation (NSF).

But few Mohajirs took the notion seriously, as they were still firmly imbedded in the concept of federalism and (like Punjabis) repulsed by ethnic nationalism.

However, as most of the left-leaning Punjabi and Sindhi intelligentsia and working classes and peasants invested their support in the federalist PPP, Mohajirs stuck to continue backing the federalist Islamic parties.

By the late 1960s Mohajirs had already begun to be dislodged from the Punjab-dominated ruling and economic elite with the gradual entry of the dictator Ayub-Khan-initiated entrance of the hardworking Pashtuns in the cherished fold.

The rise of the PPP-led by Z A. Bhutto further added to the sense of dread rising amongst Mohajirs. This erupted in the shape of 1972 ‘language riots’ in Karachi when the Bhutto regime reintroduced Sindhi in educational institutions and Mohajirs saw this as ‘an attack on Urdu.’

The aftermath of the riots saw the formation of a city government movement (CGM). Studded with Mohajir intellectuals and former Karachi-based leftist student leaders and some businessmen, it again called for Karachi to be separated from Sindh.

This movement too failed to take off until the 1978 formation of Altaf Hussain’s APMSO.

The much overlooked reason behind the APMSO’s evolution into giving birth to MQM (in 1984) is an economic one.

According to famous Sindhi scholar, Ibrahim Joyo, ‘Punjabi economic hegemony’ increased immensely in Sindh during the dictatorship of Ziaul Haq.

This situation had a negative impact on Karachi’s leading business communities (Memons, Gujaratis and other non-Punjabi business outfits).

In such a situation these communities formed the Maha Sindh (MS) — an organisation set up to protect the interests of Karachi’s Memon, Gujarati and Mohajir businessmen and traders.

According to celebrated Sindhi intellectual Khaliq Junejo, the MS then encouraged and financed the formation of a ‘street-strong’ Karachi-based party. This party became the MQM.

It can be argued that it is this aspect of the MQM’s formation that sometimes gets mistaken into meaning that the party came about with the help of the Zia regime.

This is so because the business communities in Karachi (stung by Bhutto’s nationalisation policies) were anti-Bhutto and had hailed his overthrow by Zia in 1977.

But by the early 1980s, they had been deluded by Zia’s supposedly ‘pro-Punjabi’ economic manoeuvres in Sindh and felt the need to have their own political outfit. MQM was the result.
Beginnings

APMSO was formed in 1978 by Azeem Ahmed Tariq (a former member of the Liberal Students Federation) and Altaf Hussain (a former simpithaiser of the JI and IJT).

Both Altaf and Tariq came from lower middle-class Mohajir (Urdu speaking) families in Karachi.

Hussain was disappointed with the role the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) played after the PNA movement cornered Bhutto and paved the way for the General Ziaul Haq military coup in July 1977.

Hussain in his autobiography, ‘My Life’ claims that he criticised JI for joining the Zia regime and then accused the party of exploiting the Mohajirs of Sindh (especially Karachi) who had been supporting JI ever since the 1950s.

A number of ethnic-nationalist student groups had emerged in educational institutions in the 1970s, especially in Karachi, and Hussain thought that the Mohajir youth were being alienated in an environment where Sindhi, Baloch and Pushtun students were asserting themselves through their respective organisations.

Fearing that the Mohajirs will be wiped out if they did not organise themselves as a separate ethnic group, Hussain launched the All Pakistan Mohajir Students Organization (APMSO).

Azeem Ahmed Tariq (L) and Altaf Hussain (R ) share a quick meal at the Karachi University in 1976.

The launching of the APMSO outside the Arts Lobby at the Karachi University, June 1978.

APMSO’s early membership involved a sprinkling of former IJT members and politically neutral students (all Mohajir).

In 1981, APMSO decided to join the United Students Movement (USM) – an anti-IJT/anti-Zia alliance of left-wing and progressive ethnic-nationalist student groups at the KU such as the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO), Punjabi Students Association (PSA), Pakhtun Students Federation (PkSF) and Jeeay Sindh Students Federation (JSSF).

During the same period another left-wing anti-Zia/IJT student alliance had also sprung up at KU. It was called the Taleba Ittihad (Student Alliance) and was formed by the National Students Federation (NSF) and the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), the student-wing of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

APMSO did not perform well at the 1980 student union elections at KU, but managed to double the number of its votes as a loose component party of USM during the 1981 union elections.

By now APMSO had also started receiving Mohajir student activists from the left-wing (and rapidly disintegrating) NSF.

The arrival of former NSF members helped shift Altaf and Azeem’s rhetoric further to the left.

In a 1981 speech, Hussain described APMSO as a progressive and secular student party working against ‘Punjab’s hegemony in Pakistan’s politics and economics’ and against the ‘mullah-feudal nexus.’

Hussain had already been arrested (in 1979) by the police for allegedly burning the Pakistani flag to protest against the supposed ill-treatment matted out to the Mohajirs by the Punjabi ruling elite.

Altaf Hussain with members of the APMSO outside a Military Court where he was charged for allegedly burning a Pakistani flag in 1979. He denied the allegations.

Perturbed by the rapid growth in the membership of the APMSO, the fundamentalist IJT went on the offensive against it, especially at the KU.

It barred the entry of APMSO leaders from KU in 1982 and also attacked APMSO members.

IJT had been enjoying the majority of the Mohajir students’ votes in student union elections in Karachi across the 1970s, but now saw the growth of APMSO as a threat to IJT’s chances of retaining Karachi’s major student unions. What’s more, the APMSO had already joined an anti-IJT alliance, the USM.

APMSO members were ‘expelled’ from the KU by IJT at a time when IJT was involved in a tense electoral and armed tussle with progressive student groups across Karachi’s colleges and universities.

Altaf Hussain with APMSO activists on a Karachi University bus, 1978.

APMSO moved its operations to the Mohajir majority areas in Karachi (mohallahs), and in 1984 the senior members of the outfit launched the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) – an ethnic Mohajir party that was to serve as the senior partner of the APMSO.

Altaf Hussain shaking hands with APMSO member, Farooq Sattar, at the Karachi University in 1981. Sattar today is a leading member of the MQM and a Minister in the current PPP-led collation government in Sindh and at the centre.

APMSO was radicalised when in 1985-86 the first (of the many) major clashes took place between Karachi’s Mohajir and Pushtun communities.

The Pushtuns were supported by the Pushtun speaking Afghan refugees who had poured into Pakistan during the US-Saudi funded Islamic Muhajideen insurgency against Soviet and Afghan militaries in the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan.

Many of these refugees arrived in Karachi with sophisticated weapons and drugs.

The sudden growth in the population of Karachi began putting great pressure on the city’s infrastructural resources and also triggered a two-fold growth in the crime rate.

The simmering tension between the Mohajir community and the Pushtuns erupted in widespread violence when a Mohajir college student, Bushra Zaidi, was crushed by a speeding mini-bus that was being driven by a Pushtun.

College and school students poured out onto the streets to protest. The protests soon culminated into clashes between the students and the police and ultimately between the Mohajirs and the Pushtuns.

DAWN photo of female college students protesting against Bushra Zaidi’s death, April 1985.

Video of Altaf Hussain speaking during MQM’s first major convention at Nishtar Park in Karachi, 1986.

Faced by the superior firepower brought in by Afghan refugees, MQM dispatched a delegation of APMSO members to Hyderabad to meet a militant group from the Sindhi separatist student organisation, the JSSF.

Though Sindhi nationalists had been campaigning against Mohajirs ever since 1950s (accusing them of treating the Sindhis like ‘Red Indians’), Altaf began warming up to JSSF’s mentor and figurehead, Sindhi scholar, GM Syed.

APMSO were given some firearms by PSF in the early 1980s, it was JSSF that sold the APMSO its first large cache of AK-47s that were then used to tame the heavily armed IJT in 1987 and 1988, eventually breaking IJT’s hold at KU and in various other state-owned campuses in Karachi.

After the violent end of the Ziaul Haq dictatorship in 1988, MQM swept the 1988 elections in Karachi and got into a ruling alliance with the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) at the centre and in Sindh. But soon, both the parties’ student units were headed for a clash.

The tussle began as a turf war in universities and colleges of Karachi where IJT’s hold had weakened and where both APMSO and the PPP’s student wing, the Peoples Students Federation (PSF), moved in to claim the space left behind a retreating IJT.

Student unions that had been banned by Zia in 1984, were revived by the first Benazir regime. But student union elections were only held in the Punjab, even though elections did take place in some colleges of Karachi and were mostly swept by APMSO candidates followed by PSF.

But lacking the chance to settle political differences through the ballot, clashes broke out between APMSO and PSF in the city’s major universities.

The clashes between the two student groups became so intense that the APMSO formed special militant units, Nadeem Commandos and Black Tigers.

The Black Tigers were initially created to check dissenters within the MQM.

PSF retaliated with its Karachi President, Najeeb Ahmed (a KU student), organising militant units inside the PSF.

PSF’s Karachi President, Najeeb Ahmed speaking at a PSF meeting at a college in Karachi, 1988.

Dozens of students from both sides lost their lives and in 1990, the clashes ultimately began straining the PPP-MQM alliance.

MQM resigned from the government (of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto) and joined the opposition.

The clashes came to a sudden halt when an armed group youth allegedly belonging to the Black Tigers assassinated PSF’s Karachi chief, Najeeb Ahmed (in late 1989), and by early 1990s, Benazir Bhutto’s first government fell (dismissed by the President).

Turmoil

APMSO and MQM ruled supreme in Karachi during the early part of the first Nawaz Sharif government (1991-93), but certain acts of violence against some army personnel stationed in Karachi by APMSO boys led the military to begin a ‘clean-up operation’ in Sindh (1992).

Though the military and Prime Minister Sharif claimed that the operation was aimed against the dacoits (highway robbers) of Sindh, the operation’s main thrust was always directed towards MQM/APMSO’s militancy and alleged ‘criminality.’

A 1992 newspaper photo of a group of APMSO activists gunned down by the police, allegedly during a ‘fake encounter’ in which APMSO youth were arrested by the police and then asked to run before being shot in the back.

By the time Benazir was reelected in 1993, the military had handed over the proceedings of the ongoing operation to the police and paramilitary forces in Karachi (the Rangers).

The operation was aggressively led by Benazir’s interior minister, Naseerullah Babar.

Gruesome acts of violence were committed by both the sides and the regime also used extra-judicial ways to eliminate the militant backbone of the MQM.

Dozens of policemen were slaughtered by MQM/APMSO militants, but hundreds of MQM/APMSO activists were also put to death in the most brutal manner.

In 1992-93, when an anti-Altaf faction of MQM (MQM-Haqiqi) emerged (backed by the military intelligence), Altaf Husain escaped to London and Azeem Ahmed Tariq was assassinated.

By 1996, leaders of the Nadeem Commandos and Black Tigers were also eliminated.

The operation only came to an end when through a military coup General Parvez Musharraf toppled Nawaz Sharif’s second government in October 1999.

The leveling

In 1998 MQM and APMSO changed the word Mohajir in their names to ‘muttahida’ (united) to suggest that they were no more a Mohajir ethnic party. It now began explaining itself as a secular, centralist national party.

In 2002, MQM became any ally of the Musharraf dictatorship and a new crop of leaders, both in MQM and APMSO, began the process of rebuilding the two organisations.

Altaf still presided over both the outfits as chief (from London).

APMSO also began regenerating its militant wing. This wing came into play during the 2007 anti-Musharraf Lawyers Movement (which, MQM being a Musharraf ally was against).

MQM and APMSO were accused by anti-Musharraf parties and the media for instigating violence on the streets of Karachi when Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Chaudhry (who had been dismissed by Musharraf) arrived to hold a lawyers’ rally in Karachi.

In May 2007, fierce gun battles erupted on the streets of Karachi between APMSO militants and armed men belonging to the youth wings of Awami National Party, Jamat-i-Islami and Pakistan Peoples Party.

The violence began when MQM/APMSO gunmen allegedly fired upon anti-Musharraf/pro-CJP rallies that were moving towards the airport to receive the ousted CJP.

Dozens of people were killed in the ensuing gun battles and riots.

A montage of three different but related events that were taking place on May 12, 2007. On top an APMSO activist in Karachi throws a stone at a pro-CJP rally as a bus burns in the background; on bottom left, former military ruler General Musharraf waves to a ‘hired’ crowd at a rally in Islamabad; and on bottom right, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry (who was fired by Musharraf on corruption charges), arrives at the Karachi airport. The violence in the city forced him to return to Islamabad.

After the 2008 elections MQM joined the PPP-led coalition government along with the Pushtun nationalist party the ANP.

But this time around truce between the three parties’ student-wings has held on campuses of Karachi. However the more militant members of the wings that got involved in street crimes and were initially used as muscle by the three parties, many of them went ‘rouge’ and have gotten involved in vicious battles of turf in the city targeting each another to control the lucrative land scams and bhatta (extortion) business.

All three parties, the PPP, MQM and ANP are now struggling to reign in these ‘rouge elements.’

Nevertheless, the APMSO today continues to be the dominant political student organisation in Karachi’s state-owned colleges and universities.

And though armed, it does not contain any special militant units like the ones it bred in the 1980s and 1990s (Black Tigers and Nadeem Commandos).

A number of former APMSO leaders have now gone on to become leading members of the MQM.

Bibliography: Hussain, Altaf: My Life’s Journey (Oxford, 2011); Talbot, Ian: Pakistan: A Modern History (Palgrave Press, 1998); Verkaaik, Oskar: Migrants & Militants (Princeton University Press, 2004); Gayer, Laurent: Guns, Slums & Yellow Devils (Cambridge, 2007); Waseem, Muhammad: Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan: A Case of MQM (Pakistan Development Review, 1996).  

Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.