The Panel of Vendettas at UC Berkley

By the way, I never said Aisha is not Indian because her mom is an Indian and her father is not. I said `she is not Indian because she has had a Pakistani Passport all her life and she is a Karachite to the bone.` As I have said before I have nothing against Matrilineal systems as my own last name is from my mother`s side.

Chowk, hope you won`t censor my posts any more. Thankyou.

YLH 169

`I would rather marry a Pakistani Hindu than marry an Indian Muslim`.

I think it not only an unfair statement without reason but prejudice & rascist

If Bhartiya musalman or Dr.Poonawalla were hindu gujju on purpose character assasinated muslims of india in there deception arn`t the muslims of india being victimized twice ?:-)

re: scout

{that explains why you look into the mirror all the time. and you have to replace them quite frequently too.}

dear, stealing my lines once again?..look, it is OK to do that, but don`t steal them...pay the license fees and use them legally...i`ll take the check whenever it is ready...

what gibberish!!! perhaps u should have thought twice before putting this up. how on the earth can u dispute the fact that india is a democracy and pak. isn`t???

raveena #173,

me stealing your lines? oh please give it up already. it`s usually the other way around. but it`s ok, i forgive you beti.

Oy Hinduo

#171 reminds me to ask uou, where is this Dr. Choonawala dude and that Beyuda Latrine guy.

ylh,

The population of present day Pakistan at the time of Independence was about 35 million? So 3.5 million Hindus (who were booted out) is about 10%? And Hindus today in Pakistan number about 1.4 million out of 140-150 million overall i.e., 1%?

The latest pogrom of Hindus in Bangladesh is fairly well documented by independent groups. Journalists reporting on the massacre have been jailed.

Ethnic cleansing of ``Muslims`` in East Pakistan``? Haww Haw. That`s a good laugh! East Pakistan remember is what the place was called when Pakistan ruled (or rode roughshod over) present day Bangladesh. So Indians entered EP and killed Muslims while Pakistan ruled the place? Bangladeshis have accused India of many things in the highest standards of Kuwaiti ungratefulness - but never ethnic cleansing. It is hard to do that and get away as for the 30 days that the Indian Army spent in Bangladesh are exhaustively documented. ylh of course could come up with facts that we don`t know of?

As for the rest of ylh`s statements ``Indian government - choking Pakistan`` etc. it is mere phillipic.

As for Shah Re:Aisha Sarwari - Western Ghats and all that I maintain what I said. Make what you will out of it.

Coming back to Hindus and Muslims in India, why did Muslims decide to stay back in India? And why do they still do? And why is it that Muslims in India do better wherever they go than Muslims from any other country? The recent study commissioned by the UK government is interesting. Indo-Britons of course are vastly better off (education, employment, professional achievements) than Pakistani or Bangladeshi Britons. We need a little more than facile explanations.

YLH,

I know why you took your mothers last name .. so that you could brag about being related to the prophet ...but I have got it from reliable sources that you had to pay through your nose to get that reference to your mother added in the Kabir Ali Baba Hamdani book.

Chunkey Pandey,

Oh so now you are going to tell us what is right and what is wrong. If preferring a Pakistani Hindu over an Indian Muslim is Racist... then I am proud to be a RACIST!

India`s problems are because it is a democracy. Pakistan`s problems are because it isn`t.

Pennathaur,

Unlike you I presented sources. I can present them again.

ylh #180:

``India`s problems are because it is a democracy. Pakistan`s problems are because it isn`t.``

Dude, that may seem like a smart thing to say, but it is not true. I think India`s problems are LESS because it is a democracy. There is a SHARING of power. If it had been a dictatorship or some other form of concentration of power, India would have broken up. In fact, some of our insurgency problems are because there is not ENOUGH democracy.

Pakistan, OTOH, seems to have managed fairly well despite not being a democracy. I think its problems are due to poor policies by whoever is heading the govt.

And Yet another Call to turn Muslim Shrime to Hindus - from ``The Hindustan Times`` editorial:

``Why is he splitting hairs?

This paper would not have commented on the completely irresponsible claim made about the hair of a ‘Nimnath Baba’ — as opposed to that of Prophet Mohammed, as commonly believed — being preserved at the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar. But then, the claim has been made by none other than VHP leader and BJP MLA Vinay Katiyar. One doesn’t expect Mr Katiyar to talk sense.

But for him to assert that the shrine should be “returned to Hindus”, especially at a juncture when a real estate dispute at Ayodhya between Hindus and Muslims is being thrashed out, reveals more than Mr Katiyar’s strong sense of ‘historical propriety’. It simply shows how far those bent on playing with religious sentiments are willing to go to undermine the secular and pluralistic principles of this country.

What takes one’s breath away is the way in which Mr Katiyar has argued his case. What is the basis, he says without batting an eyelid, of Muslims believing that the relic at Hazratbal is actually that of Prophet Mohammed? For a moment, one is left dumbfounded — not by his argument but by where he leads it to. It is in the same tradition as the claim made by self-styled ‘historian’ P.N. Oak who once insisted that the Taj Mahal was actually built by a Hindu ruler, historical evidence be damned.

While the ‘Hindu Taj’ canard thankfully failed to gain momentum, Mr Katiyar’s ‘Hindu Hazratbal’ comes at a time when the sectarian ball is already rolling. Even for argument’s sake if one is to historically follow up his claim, what could be the intent in suddenly picking a shrine and trying to turn it into an ‘issue’? Surely, not something noble. Considering that Mr Katiyar goes to Parliament as a representative of the BJP, perhaps someone high up in the ruling party should tell him that he should utilise his innumerable talents for matters other than manufacturing communal rifts.``

ylh,

No problems about sources. I just used yours wrt population, partition exodus etc. (which you attribute to The Times) And thanks for providing me the information!

Re Bangladesh you will find enough if you search thru the web.

Re ethnic minorities in UK it is a 140 page report in pdf - very elaborate - reported by the Guardian. the link is available in the Bharat Rakshak archives. Will try to get it for you.

And the name is Pennathur - not the way you have spelt it.

Pennathaur,

Unlike you I presented sources. I can present them again.

``In Pakistan`s Squalor, Cradles of Terrorism

Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause



By Paul Blustein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01

SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.

Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.

The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.

``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``

If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.

The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.

Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.

Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.

That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.

Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.

In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.

At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.

For Love of Islam

For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.

Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.

Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``

For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.

The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.

In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.

Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.

But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.

Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``

Abuse of Power

Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.

The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.

Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.

Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.

A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.

A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.

Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.

The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.

Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.

The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.

The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.

Foreign Assistance

``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.

Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.

The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.

But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.

A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.

The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``

A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.

``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``

Another Opportunity

This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.

Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.

Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.

``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``

Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.

Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``

Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``

``In Pakistan`s Squalor, Cradles of Terrorism

Village Illustrates Challenge as U.N. Prepares to Address Poverty as Root Cause



By Paul Blustein

Washington Post Staff Writer

Thursday, March 14, 2002; Page A01

SACHADINO SHEIKH, Pakistan -- In a country where economic misery provides a fertile environment for terrorist groups, the crumbling one-room school in this village is a testament to the conditions that keep millions of Pakistanis impoverished.

Sitting on battered benches, their feet scuffing the dirty concrete floor, two dozen boys and girls listen as their teacher reels off the school`s main problems, which are common to many in this country: no working latrine, no drinking water, no electricity. The students have no textbooks for math or Urdu, Pakistan`s main language, because the government doesn`t provide them and parents say they can`t afford them. A few months ago, the situation was worse, because the teacher wasn`t bothering to show up.

The abysmal state of Pakistan`s education system is the sort of problem that must be addressed if the international community is to wage a successful war on terrorism by attacking the root causes, according to many experts and world leaders, including United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn. Since Sept. 11 they have called for mobilizing great amounts of money aimed at reducing poverty, ignorance and disease in developing countries, and they are stepping up their rhetoric in advance of a U.N. meeting on the subject next week in Mexico that President Bush plans to attend.

``Poverty is the war we must fight,`` Wolfensohn said in a speech last week exhorting rich countries to double the $50 billion that is currently spent on aid each year. ``Rarely has there been an issue so vital to long-term peace and security.``

If only reducing poverty in places like this were as simple as, say, toppling the Taliban. Pakistan is a depressing case study of how hard it is to eradicate the economic circumstances that foster terror.

The links between deprivation and terrorism are particularly glaring in Pakistan. The shortcomings of the nation`s public schools, combined with low living standards, have helped drive more than half a million students to enroll in religious seminaries, called madrassas. Supported by Muslim charities around the world, madrassas provide pupils with food, shelter, training in the Koran and, in some cases, a heavy dose of anti-Western ideology that helps produce Islamic holy warriors.

Given such problems, pouring aid into Pakistan might seem to be an obvious solution. But the history of foreign assistance is discouraging in Pakistan, where efforts at economic development have been thwarted by a quasi-feudal system that entrenches a corrupt elite and oppresses the poor. Pakistan`s record offers plenty of ammunition for the Bush administration, which is resisting calls by Wolfensohn and others to double aid.

Over the past four decades, Pakistan has gotten more aid than any country except India and Egypt. ``Yet after all this, social indicators like infant mortality and female primary and secondary enrollment are among the worst in the world in Pakistan,`` William Easterly, a former World Bank economist who is now at the Center for Global Development, writes in a soon-to-be-published study.

That is true, Easterly adds, even in comparison with other countries that have similar incomes per capita (adjusted for purchasing power), such as India, Bangladesh, Ivory Coast, Bolivia and Lesotho. Pakistan`s 55 percent illiteracy rate, for example, is 24 percentage points greater than the average figure for other countries with roughly the same per capita income.

Pakistan`s social indicators have remained poor despite a concerted effort to improve them over the past eight years: the multibillion-dollar Social Action Program, backed by the World Bank and other international donors.

In a report issued in late January, the World Bank admitted that the program`s ``gains have been marginal, and especially so in education which has been the main area of focus.`` School enrollments among lower-income groups fell in the 1990s; today only about half of Pakistani children ages 5 to 9 attend classes, and of those who graduate from primary school, ``perhaps as many as half`` are functionally illiterate, the World Bank said.

At the World Bank and other development agencies, Pakistan is viewed as an illustration of a principle that officials have learned the hard way: Aid works well only in nations with good policies -- that is, prudent control over budgets and money supplies, respect for the rule of law, and reasonably clean government. Conversely, in countries with bad policies and bad governance, foreign assistance produces few lasting benefits and is often largely wasted.

For Love of Islam

For Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, a 35-year-old tenant farmer with six children and one grandchild, home is a dank mud-walled hut with a straw roof. Some family members sleep in less luxurious surroundings consisting of lean-to structures with straw walls fortified with ragged sheets of burlap.

Similar living quarters are inhabited by most of the residents of Sachadino Sheikh, a rural village along a bumpy dirt road a couple of hours` drive from the port city of Karachi. Cattle, goats and chickens roam around the houses, and in the event of medical emergencies, villagers are piled into donkey-drawn carts for long, grueling rides, during which some have died.

Mending a fishnet in the afternoon sun, Sheikh grimaced when asked whether anyone in his family is educated. One of his five sons attends primary school, but that is all. ``If I were educated,`` he said without looking up from his net, ``I wouldn`t be sitting here doing this.``

For anyone wishing better circumstances for their male children, the Darul Uloom Islamiamadrassa in Karachi offers a number of benefits. The 10,000 boys there receive proper meals and medical care at a clinic staffed by doctors. The youngest boys -- ages 5 to 7 -- mostly sleep at home, but older students stay in rooms that usually sleep three or four. Tuition and room and board are free.

The teachers and scholars at the madrassa were held in high esteem by Afghanistan`s Taliban leadership and by Osama bin Laden -- so much so that bin Laden invited half a dozen members of its faculty to attend his son`s wedding in February 2001. The madrassa is believed by Pakistani experts to be a breeding ground for terrorist organizations. Violentanti-American demonstrations erupted near it after the United States began bombing Afghanistan last October.

In a carpeted, brightly lighted room, Maulana Mufti Mohammed Niaz, the madrassa`s administrator general for internal affairs, said ``we don`t generally discuss with the students`` issues such as the events of Sept. 11. ``But the general impression here is that what happened in America was a result of its tyranny against Muslims`` around the world.

Not all madrassas encourage their students to join a jihad against the United States; many of them simply teach the Koran. And their appeal is not entirely economic. ``It is the love of Islam for which students come here,`` Niaz said.

But many Pakistanis say it simply stands to reason that madrassas will thrive in a society where schools fail so miserably at providing a way out of poverty. ``If the government had been able to provide decent education, we would have been able to avoid the diversion of these kids,`` said Ishrat Husain, a former World Bank economist who heads the nation`s central bank.

Abdul Qayum runs a small madrassa in a village outside of Islamabad. Asked what sort of students he gets, he replied: ``The really poor. And orphans.``

Abuse of Power

Why is Pakistan such a developmental disaster? This is a country whose expatriates flourish in business and the professions around the world. And it is a country whose economy has grown at a respectable rate -- an annual average of 2.2 percent per capita from 1950 to 1999.

The problem most widely cited by experts here is the power of the nation`s elites to rig markets and political contests for their own benefit at the expense of the poor. That power stems from the corruption pervading the society -- especially the civil service, where appointments and promotions are heavily influenced by political factors -- and from the feebleness of institutions such as courts that are supposed to protect individual rights.

Among the most egregious examples is the clout exerted by rural landlords, redolent of the feudal systems that disappeared centuries ago in most countries.

Almost all elected Pakistani presidents have come from the class of large landowners, and landlords dominate local governments, winning elections by dispensing patronage and protecting their supporters in legal disputes. Although their power has been diluted in some parts of the country, they maintain oppressive control in Sindh province (home to nearly a quarter of Pakistan`s 140 million people) and the southern portion of Punjab province, Pakistan`s most populous.

A village down the road from Sachadino Sheikh, which is in Sindh province, illustrated how landlords engage in what social scientists call the ``elite capture of public goods`` -- in this case, the takeover of school buildings and the appointment of friends and relatives to teaching and administrative jobs, where they can earn salaries and pensions without exerting themselves.

A cluster of buildings in the village is supposed to serve as a boys` and girls` primary school, middle school and a library. But on a recent school day, only the girls` primary school was in session, with a single teacher. One school building was being used as an autaq,a sort of public meeting hall, by the landlord, who is also a local politician, and the library was being used as his guest quarters, according to local people. At the girls` middle school, no students were enrolled and no teachers were teaching, according to the headmistress, who was sitting in her office with nothing to do. She is one of the landlord`s two wives.

Haris Gazdar, a Pakistani social scientist, is all too familiar with such cases. Gazdar conducted a survey of 125 Pakistani village schools in which he and his associates showed up unannounced to find out how the schools were functioning. His study, published in late 2000, cited landlords using school buildings as farm sheds and for keeping goats, and schools where teachers who enjoyed the protection of powerful ``patrons`` (one, for example, being a landlord`s son-in-law) weren`t reporting for class.

The worst-performing schools were in regions where landlord power was strongest. But landlords are by no means the only culprits, according to Gazdar. ``Every single part of the system has to be viewed as being at fault,`` he said.

Gazdar`s researchers found a wide variety of problems that couldn`t be pinned on landlords -- for example, teachers using classrooms to store timber for sale in side businesses. They recorded cases of teachers who confided that local education officials were demanding bribes to keep them from being transferred to remote schools.

The researchers also found evidence of how education can run afoul of the myriad rivalries that divide Pakistanis along ethnic, religious and linguistic lines. In some villages, communities had organized to establish reasonably well-run schools, but often, those schools excluded children of less powerful rival groups.

The overarching finding was that only 38 percent of the schools were deemed to be ``functional,`` which meant that all teachers were present or accounted for, children were organized in classes, active teaching was being conducted, and efforts had been made to provide minimal infrastructure such as drinking water and usable blackboards.

Foreign Assistance

``I think we all agree that Pakistan is a hurry-up case,`` a senior World Bank official wrote in a July 1993 memo to his superiors urging prompt approval of a loan for a project that was stirring the enthusiasm of many on the bank`s staff.

Thus was born the Social Action Program, or SAP. The hope of those who conceived it was that Pakistan would finally make significant progress in fostering human development after decades of repeated flops. As far back as Pakistan`s founding in 1947, a national conference had set a goal of universal primary education within 20 years. A series of initiatives to improve education in the years that followed likewise set grand aims that were never achieved.

The SAP was based on seemingly sensible reasoning: Pakistan needed to spend much more on education and other social services, which had been badly squeezed because the government was pouring so much money into the military. Under the SAP, about $8 billion would be spent on education, health and improving water supplies, with the World Bank and other foreign donors putting up $2 billion in loans and grants, provided the Pakistani government fulfilled its responsibility to spend $6 billion of its own money.

But realities in Pakistan resulted in substantial ``leakage`` (World Bank-speak for money going where it wasn`t supposed to). A major scandal erupted in 1998 over the discovery of thousands of SAP-financed ``ghost schools`` and ``ghost teachers`` -- payments to contractors for school buildings that were never built, and payment of salaries to people who weren`t teaching.

A revamped SAP II incorporated elaborate financial controls at the insistence of indignant donors, but it fared little better. The rigidity of the controls generated other problems for honest public servants.

The World Bank ``stipulated these major headings under which money could be used by schools, such as repair of buildings and repair of furniture,`` said Themrise Khan, who worked at a quasi-government agency involved in the program. ``But some of the schools didn`t need those particular things.`` If a school with ample furniture desperately needed teachers, she recalled, ``we would say to the bank: `Can you please allow money to be used for hiring teachers? We`ll show you accounts to prove the money won`t be misused.` But they would say, `Sorry, that isn`t one of the categories.` ``

A World Bank official conceded that so much energy went into ensuring the proper accounting of vouchers and invoices that the Pakistani government and its foreign backers lost sight of the ultimate goal -- improving indicators such as enrollments.

``We underestimated, quite frankly, what it takes to fix a broken-down public institutional system,`` the official said. ``There has been a recognition that the [education] system was totally broken, and pumping in more money would just not do the trick in terms of getting kids to school.``

Another Opportunity

This time, it`s going to be different. That`s the message from Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan`s finance minister, as he explains why the government led by President Pervez Musharraf will far surpass its predecessors in making effective use of the money provided by the international community.

Reaping economic rewards for its staunch support of the U.S.-led coalition against terror, the military regime in Islamabad has successfully appealed for a substantial aid package that includes a $1.3 billion, three-year anti-poverty loan from the International Monetary Fund and several billion dollars more in loans and grants from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and a host of friendly governments.

Aziz has all the credentials -- and the reputation for integrity -- that might be hoped for in an official responsible for Pakistan`s economy. The former Citicorp executive has already impressed Washington with economic and budget policies that enabled Islamabad for the first time to meet the fiscal conditions set by the IMF for a one-year loan. He has also won plaudits from the World Bank for the government`s plan to tackle Pakistan`s most pressing social problems.

``We know that putting money into bottomless pits doesn`t get results, so we are all focusing on outcomes rather than just spending more,`` Aziz said. ``We now have a tracking and monitoring matrix to see what we`re getting for the money we`re spending, like the number of schools, absenteeism and dropout rates.``

Aziz and other top officials are particularly enthusiastic about an initiative launched by Musharraf that, they say, will help ensure that the foreign aid being showered on Pakistan ends up producing benefits. The initiative involves shifting a substantial amount of decision-making authority from the central government to elected local governments, the idea being that communities are far better suited to decide their priorities than Islamabad and that officials will feel a much greater sense of accountability to voters.

Yet skeptics wonder whether ``devolution`` of power to local officials will achieve much. ``The devolution effort can be expected to succeed only to the extent that it solves fundamental governance problems that have bedeviled earlier efforts,`` the World Bank said in its January report. ``In particular, devolution will succeed if local government officials exhibit a notably greater interest in improving the provision of public goods than in targeting private goods.``

Nowhere is the skepticism deeper than in places like Sachadino Sheikh. The latest dollop of foreign aid ``is not going to do any good,`` scoffed Shafi Mohammed Sheikh, the tenant farmer. ``That sort of thing never reaches the poor.``