The U.S. should condition its education aid to Pakistan and Bangladesh on their raising the level of expenditure in this field, asserted Samina Ahmed, South Asia Project Director, International Crisis Group that focuses on education.

She accused leaders in Pakistan and Bangladesh of a lack of political will and pandering to the religious right in testimony she delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Near East and South Asia’s experience in countering terrorism through education.

In a report that the International Crisis Group published on April 18 on ‘The State of Sectarianism in Pakistan,’ it concluded that “sectarian conflict in Pakistan is the direct consequence of state policies of Islamization and marginalization of secular democratic forces.”

The U.S. should “continue to condition education aid to Pakistan and Bangladesh on their raising education expenditure to 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Comprehensive reform efforts will not be sustainable under current expenditure levels,” Ahmed said.

Bangladesh’s madrassa sector has mushroomed, reaching an estimated 64,000 madrassas from roughly 4,100 in 1986, with little if any government oversight.

“This has accompanied the rise of militant Islam, including increased numbers of radical groups, some with ties to global terrorist networks, such as the Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami. Two Islamist parties — the Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikyo Jote — are coalition partners in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government. According to the latest official estimates (2003), there are 10,430 madrassas in Pakistan,” she pointed out.

“Both countries continue to harbor Islamist radical groups who seek recruits from poverty-stricken and education-deprived areas. Increased jihadi rhetoric in madrassas and mosques, including calls for an anti-American global jihad, is a major cause of concern. Without a viable public school system that expands students’ economic opportunities, more and more children are likely to drift towards extremism,” Ahmed warned.

“The Musharraf government has publicly acknowledged the problem, and made education reform a centerpiece of its modernization drive but has failed to follow through,” Ahmed said, accusing the government of diverting education resources elsewhere, yielding to political pressure from religious parties that havey opposed education and madarasa reform. This reliance on the religious right has also led the government to back down on its pledges to reform the madrassa sector,” she said.

“The U.S. should urge Pakistan to immediately resume reviewing public school curriculum and textbooks to address historical and factual inaccuracies, glorification of armed struggle and jihad and minority and gender biases,” Ahmed insisted, and “finally, with regard again to the broader political context in which the education system functions, the U.S. should strongly press the Government of Pakistan to reaffirm the constitutional principle of equality for all citizens by repealing all laws, penal codes and official procedures that reinforce sectarian identities and cause discrimination as well as those laws that discriminate against women and minorities and to disband all private militias, particularly those organized for sectarian and jihadi causes,” Ahmed declared.