Late last month, suicide attacks hit Pakistan’s International Islamic University in relatively peaceful Islamabad, killing at least six people – another violent event that continues to pull the capital further into the fray. In even less secure areas, such as Pakistan’s Swat Valley in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, Pakistan’s largest province, such targeted violence is well known – militants in mid-January imposed a ban on girls’ schools, claiming that they do not abide by the teachings of Islam. Since then, hundreds of boys’ and girls’ schools have been systematically shuttered or burned down and girls threatened with acid or death for violating the ban and bravely attending school anyway.

This situation, coupled with rising violence as the Pakistani government increases efforts against militant forces, has caused growing security challenges to Books for Asia’s operations in Pakistan. When the program first started back in the 1950s, security posed little risk and books were delivered on the backs of camels across rugged terrain. Now, the danger involved in traveling with a truckload of books to institutions in remote destinations is by far the program’s greatest concern.

When the Books for Asia program began operation in Pakistan in the 1950s, books were delivered by camels, as pictured here.

Determined not to neglect any part of the country, the Books for Asia program takes books from Islamabad to a central location in far-flung provinces such as Peshawar or Quetta. The idea is to invite institutions in the area to travel short distances to pick out books from the location themselves. These “Book Fairs” help overcome security challenges by providing a centralized, secure location that allows books to reach people in more remote or insecure areas. The fairs are wildly successful and have allowed the program to distribute nearly 40,000 books so far through this model. Currently, more than 40 percent of all books donated in Pakistan go to institutions in the North-West Frontier and Baluchistan Provinces.

Representatives from different institutions select books at a Books for Asia Book Fair.

Another Day, Another Challenge

In a warehouse in San Leandro, California, just south of Oakland, stacks of boxes filled with books, shrink-wrapped and methodically tagged by destination – Sri Lanka, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Pakistan – are balanced atop rows of wooden forklift pallets. It’s hard to imagine that these sparkling new books donated by major publishers – from learning ABCs to Botany 101 – can ever make the arduous journeys that lie ahead. The books are loaded onto container ships at Oakland’s port, from where they travel days, weeks, even months, to their respective destinations: primary schools and universities, libraries, and resource centers across Asia.

Despite often treacherous voyages and head-spinning transportation logistics, The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program has been distributing books like these throughout Asia since 1954. Which, despite the challenges, is how more than 3 million books have reached the hands of people in Pakistan, including in some of the country’s most conflict-riddled and remote areas.

Fighting Illiteracy, One Page at a Time

Pakistan’s literacy rate, at around 50 percent, remains an acute development challenge, while the pre-existing gap between girls and boys has only worsened with the recent targeting of girls’ schools. The situation is worse along the Afghan border of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where the literacy rate for girls hovers in the single digits, compared to 30 percent for boys.

The battle against illiteracy is partly due to a lack of educational institutions. However, many factors contribute to the problem, including poverty, a lack of skilled teachers, reluctance to send girls to school, fear of attending school due to security concerns, as well as insufficient commitment from the government. These challenges are more severe for children internally displaced by conflict. The past year has seen approximately 2 million people displaced from northwest Pakistan, and now more than 100,000 from South Waziristan. Hundreds of thousands have returned home to northwest Pakistan, but displacement continues, as does violence. Education has been disrupted considerably. Hundreds of thousands of children have been left with no access to schools, and tens of thousands of four- to six-year-olds live in camps for Internally Displaced Persons (IDP).

Due to increased conflict in certain areas of Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of children have been displaced, such as these above, and are living temporarily in IDP camps.

Despite these dismal circumstances, it could be said that a silver lining is emerging for some displaced children whose schools were destroyed or who were banned from attending school in their hometown. The Pakistani government and international NGOs are now working together to build tent schools in the camps, providing a semblance of education in a relatively secure environment. In partnership with the Government of Pakistan through the National Commission for Human Development, the Ministry of Women Development, and Islamic Relief, and with local civil society groups, Books for Asia has begun donating books to IDP camps. Plans are in place to donate more books when the new container of books arrives in the coming months from the warehouse in San Leandro.

Since the IDP schools reach children, especially girls, who might otherwise not receive an education, parents living in the camps often express pleasure at the exposure to education, however limited. They also show great interest in continuing their children’s education upon return to their homes. However, challenges remain. These schools need basic supplies and equipment such as desks and chairs. With winter approaching, sitting on the bare floor will no longer be a viable option. The camps are overcrowded and demand for books is very high. Finding funds to pay delivery freight charges for the books is another reality, since host institutions normally pay freight fees and the IDP schools are in no position to take on such a cost.

Reviving the Books for Asia’s “Box Libraries Initiative” could be part of the solution. Running from 1986 to 1990, the initiative provided local-language children’s books as well as new Books for Asia-donated English-language books. These were packaged in large metal boxes for distribution to community schools and resource centers that lacked the sufficient infrastructure to support full shipments of English-language books.

English language education is mandatory in much of Pakistan. Many girls and boys, generally segregated until university, attend English-language track schools that begin English curriculum at age six, or attend regular government schools taught in the local language but which require students to take and pass English-language courses. But in the case of the IDP camps, where education for children has been disrupted, providing such tools as box libraries with local-language books alongside English books could complement the curriculum and better prepare students when – and wherever – they return home.

Syed Zahid Abbas (zabbas@asiafound.org) is the Manager of the Foundation’s Books for Asia Program in Pakistan, and Alma Freeman (afreeman@asiafound.org) works in The Asia Foundation’s Communications office. Read more about The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia Program in Pakistan.

“We will tackle subjects that are controversial in nature,” says former National Human Rights Commissioner Sunee Chaiyarose, who will moderate the program. “To address challenging issues, differences need to be openly discussed in a respectful way, and not ignored.” Ms. Sunee was a member of the Constitution Drafting Assembly and played a significant role in bolstering the human rights agenda in the 1997 Constitution drafting process. She is also a respected authority on community rights and labor law issues.

The show’s debut episode, on November 5, centers on the contentious Article 67 of the 2007 Constitution, which has made national headlines. Following a court injunction, 76 industrial projects worth 400 billion Baht located in Rayong province were put on hold. Representatives of disgruntled communities adversely affected by these mega-industrial projects will meet face-to-face with relevant government officials to voice their grievances and try to find a common solution. The November 12 episode will convene law enforcers and victims of the southern unrest to debate the efficacy of special security laws in curbing the ongoing insurgency.

From afar, Mongolia and Laos may not have a lot in common. From an environmental point of view, however, both nations share the same concern: water is a precious resource that needs to be protected.

I learned first-hand of that shared concern when I traveled to Mongolia in September. I was there to learn from The Asia Foundation’s impressive Water Quality Monitoring (WQM) program in Mongolia and to find out if the program could be adapted and used in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, where I am based and where a water quality and environmental monitoring project on a much smaller scale was launched by the Foundation in 2008. Both Mongolia and Laos rely heavily on their water resources and share similar concerns about environmental degradation possibly caused by pressing needs for the countries’ economic development.

Monitoring and evaluating Mongolia’s river water quality is one of the key components of “Securing Our Future,” an innovative, ground-breaking program managed by The Asia Foundation. (More information about the program is available here.) The program is based on the idea that citizens can play a critical role in monitoring their local environments – and rivers provide a good subject for environmental monitoring. The water-monitoring program uses aquatic macro-invertebrates (or “waterbugs”) that inhabit a river site as indicators for river water quality monitoring.

Using a kick net to collect waterbugs.

Why waterbugs? They’re sensitive to pollution in the river but cannot move easily to escape it. And they are big enough to collect by using non-sophisticated, inexpensive equipment that can be used repeatedly. The protocol used in the WQM program is simple for average people to be trained in sufficiently enough to enable them to do the monitoring themselves.

The two citizen workshops on water-monitoring that I observed in Arhangai aimag – a largely pastoral province with a population of less than 100,000 people – were inspiring. Participants learned the concept and techniques of water quality monitoring in class. Thanks to the population’s high literacy rate, the seemingly daunting – and bulky – WQM manual wasn’t difficult for participants to follow. After learning theoretical applications, they got into the river to collect waterbugs and analyzed the creepy crawlies for telltale sings of the river’s health. The Field Guide of Aquatic Invertebrates of Mongolia, where waterbugs are categorized into three groups (with green, yellow, or red marks) generally tells how they are sensitive to or tolerant of pollution. Field equipment was given to the communities after the workshops for them to continue monitoring their rivers.

The workshops were attended by a broad cross-section of the community, including a local environmental inspector, a biology teacher, a doctor, a water deliveryman and a local hospital worker. I was impressed with their enthusiasm, engagement and initiative, not to mention their willingness to exchange information and ideas. Every participant found collecting waterbugs a fun activity. Interestingly, they had not noticed these bugs before. Had it been in Laos, the local people would tell you not just which kinds of bugs are edible but which ones are the most delicious.

Identifying waterbugs and interpreting the results.

The key to Mongolia’s success in helping preserve its environment lies in the traditional sense among Mongolians that they are a part of the earth upon which they live and have a profound respect for all forms of nature. Mr. G. Chagnaadorj, who accompanied us on our trip to Arhangai, is a good example. He is the Executive Director of the Mongolian Nature Protection Civil Movement Coalition, a local partner of the Foundation whose vision is a healthy and safe environment for Mongolians. Originally from Arhangai aimag, he feels personally responsible for protecting his homeland from environmental threats. Little wonder he and the coalition of river movements he leads have played invaluable roles in Mongolia’s water-monitoring endeavors and in training people across Mongolia in environmental stewardship, including better monitoring of the quality and quantity of surface water.

The WQM program in Laos, in comparison to Mongolia’s, is still in its infancy. Laos hardly has any baseline data on the health of its river systems and limited resources for community training. Still, the Foundation’s WQM program in Mongolia offers valuable lessons for Laos. Perhaps the foremost of them is building awareness in Laos that there are easy things they can do to preserve and protect water resources. Efforts should also be made to make water monitoring relevant to people’s daily lives through the use of simple and practical yet credible methods. Building a reliable database about surface water quality and further encouraging the community-based monitoring approach that The Asia Foundation is spearheading are other important aims. Finally, Laos has a long cultural history of living in harmony with nature. Such knowledge, combined with training in water quality monitoring, ought to be passed on from local citizens to future generations.

My five-day trip to Mongolia wasn’t just fruitful from the professional point of view. I personally learned many things from this visit, especially about what one can do to use natural resources more wisely. The people of Mongolia showed me how precious water is. Both Laos, where I work, and Thailand, my home country, are tropical nations blessed with plenty of water. I could discard a bucket of water without feeling guilty. In sharp contrast, many gers (traditional Mongolian homes) in the countryside have a tiny water dispenser above sinks, with barely enough water for more than one person to use, at least according to Thai standards. And this water has to be retrieved from springs or rivers often a great distance from the ger.

During my trip, I brushed my teeth and washed my face with just two glasses of water. It made an impression on me. Upon my return, I changed my toothpaste – the older brand creates too many bubbles that required excess water to rinse. Maybe I will change my liquid soap as well.

Achariya Kohtbantau is The Asia Foundation’s Program Officer in Laos.

The presentation, pictured below, was given in English, Dari, and Pashto by the Foundation’s deputy country representative in Afghanistan, Michael Haines, and senior program officers Fazel Rabi Haqbeen and Fazel Rabi Wardak.

At The Asia Foundation press conference in Kabul, from left to right: Senior Program Officer Fazel Rabi Haqbeen, Senior Program Officer Fazel Rabi Wardak, Deputy Country Representative Michael Haines, and an interpreter.

Senior Program Officers Fazel Rabi Haqbeen (left) and Fazel Rabi Wardak (right).

Senior Program Officers Fazel Rabi Haqbeen (left) and Fazel Rabi Wardak (right). In the background is a poster that shows a field researcher walking between survey points in the mountains of Badakhshan province.

Deputy Country Representative Michael Haines (right) presents findings from the survey as Senior Program Officers Fazel Rabi Haqbeen (left) and Fazel Rabi Wardak (center) look on.

A poster in the conference room depicting the covers of the five Afghanistan surveys published by The Asia Foundation since 2004.

Photographs by Susan Marx, a member of The Asia Foundation staff in Kabul.

The entire poll, including its methodology and its questionnaire, is available on our website, here, where previous surveys from 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2008 can also be found.

With the end of the four-year term of the second cohort of elected local government leadership in mid-October, the rancorous public debate over the future of Pakistan’s famous Devolution Plan has moved, like much else in the country, to the superior courts. Supporters argue that elected local representatives must continue to exercise powers until new elections are held. Opponents want empowered provincial governments to legislate, a step that may include a complete roll-back of the plan.

The Devolution Plan, introduced nationwide in 2001 in some 100-plus districts in all the four provinces, fundamentally changed the architecture of the state at the provincial, district, and sub-district levels. The vast bulk of major province-administered social and economic services, such as land revenue administration, education, health, works construction, community development, and agriculture, were shifted to districts. Participation of women and minorities was enhanced through guaranteed seats in various local elected fora. Formula-based fiscal transfers to districts were introduced and provinces given minimal discretion to influence the budget-making of local governments.

Most importantly, in a complete departure from the local government reforms of the past, almost all power in the districts now resided with strong elected leaders. Several statutory provisions strengthened the autonomy of the office of the Nazim, the new (indirectly) elected head of the district, and curtailed the powers of provincial Chief Ministers, the elected executive heads of the four provinces, to direct elected local leaders.

Eager to support General Pervez Musharraf during the early, heady years of “national reconstruction,” multilateral and bilateral donors showered this reform effort with funds, assistance, and laudatory reports. Civil society also welcomed more grassroots participation, especially the enhanced role of women.

Such radical changes were bound to create big winners and losers. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), the ethnic party in Sindh that has a strong base in urban centres, was the big winner. It could now completely command Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, and several other major districts and towns.

Provincial chief ministers, ministers, civil servants, and a large majority of legislators were, however, unhappy because of the dramatic reduction in their authority and sphere of influence. They were especially bitter because a corresponding devolution of federal functions to the provinces did not occur as promised.

The stage was therefore set for a major power struggle between provinces and local governments. After the installation of elected governments in 2003, several changes were immediately introduced (by Musharraf’s recalcitrant provincial allies) to withdraw some of the functions of the districts back to the provinces. Many other planned reversals were, however, stalled by Musharraf.

Eventually, keen to protect his pet project in the face of opposition from provincial governments, Musharraf changed the constitution in 2003, making it impossible for provincial legislatures to amend the law without the consent of the President. However, once he was forced out, local governments faced bleak times.

Today, three provincial governments – of Punjab, Balochistan, and NWFP – and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), the leading partner of the Sindh government, are staunchly opposed to devolution. In fact, they allege that the Devolution Plan was actually a “Demolition Plan” that increased corruption and weakened government.

These challenges were expected. Local governments, much loved by Musharraf, donors, NGOs, many technocrats, the MQM, local councilors, an assortment of relatively powerless politicians and, reportedly, U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, have faced grave uncertainty since the Musharraf regime was routed from power following elections in February 2008.

Looking back, the legitimacy of the reforms was always in doubt. It was widely held that the Musharraf regime, like past military governments, used local governments to attempt to create pliable constituencies for itself. Several features of the devolution design, including indirect elections for the powerful office of the Nazim and the inability of parties to formally field candidates, were widely used to manipulate elections across the country. Circumscribing the provincial powers to amend local government laws with a constitutional amendment was also a clear departure from the federal spirit of the Constitution.

Any empirical and unequivocal assessment of the impact of the devolution plan on the delivery of government services would have helped clarify the debate. Unfortunately, high-quality independent studies documenting clear evidence of success are unavailable. There is general consensus, though, on various capacity and design issues – indirect election of Nazims, for example – that contributed to the relative absence of unambiguous progress.

Provincial governments have asked President Asif Ali Zardari to allow them to postpone the next elections, appoint civil servants answerable to the provincial Chief Executive, and administer district affairs until new laws are introduced immediately after December 31, 2009, when the requirement of presidential assent lapses.

Meanwhile, supporters of the Devolution Plan, the weaker group, are busy arguing their case in seminars to those already converted, and to the wider public through the media. Appeals to the judiciary are also being made through legal challenges. The plan’s opponents, presently much stronger because of the political power they wield, are also busy quietly drafting revisions in government secretariats and waiting for legal room to introduce the amendments. Abuses, aspersions, and civil suits are exchanged frequently. There appears to be no middle ground.

Such partisanship should have been avoided. There is a shared vision in Pakistan to empower representative local governments within a framework of provincial autonomy and legislative oversight. There are also many shared interests – representation through party-based elections, increased representation of women, expansion of the scope and autonomy of local governments compared with 1979 boundaries, and increased citizen participation in local schemes – that can be easily secured in any future revision.

More constructive engagement with genuine democratic political forces of the provincial governments, especially by leading NGOs, which are presently mostly partnering with Musharraf-era forces, is clearly the need of the hour. Fanatic devotion to the 2001 details of the plan should not close this window of opportunity. Devolution is, after all, a goal, not a dogma.

Zubair Bhatti is The Asia Foundation’s Director of Programs in Pakistan. He can be reached at zbhatti@asiafound.org.