Amid the poverty, pollution of Karachi, hope lives
Herald writer Robert Remington travelled to Pakistan with a group of Calgary entrepreneurs, visiting facilities run by the Aga Khan Development Network. This is his first instalment
Robert Remington
Calgary Herald
Saturday, February 19, 2005
Minutes after landing in this frenetic city of 15 million people, it becomes evident that there is little need to worry about kidnapping, robbery, carjackings, hepatitis, terrorism or the many other concerns one takes into account when travelling to Pakistan. The gas fumes will kill you long before any of that.
In a city where the average monthly wage barely covers rent, a new set of spark plugs would be a luxury for the average Pakistani, for whom health care coverage is non-existent and the only guarantee of old-age security is a large family.
The nauseating exhaust is inescapable. Gas-powered rickshaws that run on noisy engines requiring a mixture of oil and gasoline -- think of a chainsaw -- are everywhere, their sputtering, popping, tailpipes adding to the din of Karachi's infamous traffic.
For a group of Calgary business leaders, all pleading for the bus windows to be rolled up, it's like sucking on a tailpipe. Morning traffic on the Deerfoot may sometimes slow to a crawl, but at least you can't see the air.
The six-member Calgary group is in Pakistan at the urging of Sherali Saju, a Calgary businessman and chief Alberta fundraiser for the Aga Khan Development Network.
Led by oilman Jim Gray, the Calgarians have come to see first-hand the work of the AKDN, a group of non-denominational, politically neutral agencies operating under the auspices of Prince Karim Aga Khan, the 49th hereditary imam of the Ismaili Muslims, a progressive sect of Shiism committed to bettering the human condition, guided by the ethics of Islam.
The Aga Khan network focuses much of its work in education, which appeals to Gray. A founder of the private Calgary Academy, Gray believes in education as a solution to societal problems and is interested in raising funds in Canada for the AKDN, perhaps for a teacher training institute in East Africa.
Although the Aga Khan network is active in 10 countries, Gray has decided the best place to learn more about the organization is in Pakistan, where human development needs are among the highest in the Third World. Here, malnutrition among children is common. For every 1,000 children born in Pakistan, almost 100 will die before their first birthday, and half of those will die within their first month of life. Literacy rates are the lowest in South Asia, especially among women, where 70 per cent are uneducated. In some rural areas, the female literacy rate is a disheartening 10 per cent.
Why, one might ask, should we care? Pakistan's problems are a world away. Or are they?
For Gray, Pakistan -- like all of the Third World -- is closer to our own backyard that many Calgarians care to admit.
"For the first time in human history, the poor can see how poor they are in real time. And for the first time in human history, they can do something about it. 9/11 taught us that. Afghanistan taught us that. You can hunker down in Arizona and play golf, or you can try to do something about it," says Gray.
We are sitting in the lobby of a downtown Karachi hotel where a car bomb exploded outside the front entrance in May of 2002, killing 10 French technicians, six Pakistanis and injuring 34. Karachi, Pakistan's most violent city, is accustomed to ethnic and sectarian killings, but this was a rare suicide bombing.
A Toyota Corolla packed with explosives rammed into the French technicians' bus in an attack that police said had a "Middle Eastern touch." Al-Qaeda sympathizers were suspected. At the time, Pakistan had recently joined U.S.-led efforts to flush al-Qaeda operatives from the country's rugged tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. The hunt for Osama bin Laden was on.
None of the Calgarians, except Saju, have been to Pakistan, and the group is understandably wary. It is early December, and the Canadian government is not advising travel to Pakistan except for "critical or compelling business or family reasons."
In October, an explosion occurred at a major hotel in Islamabad, where the Calgary group is scheduled to visit. Even the normally safe trekking area of the Hunza region, which is also on the itinerary, carried a warning following the murder of an unaccompanied tourist in the northern town of Gilgit, where the Calgary delegation would overnight.
Karachi itself carries strong cautions from Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs, which warns of "outbreaks of ethnic and sectarian violence including bombings, shootings and mass demonstrations resulting in deaths." On the streets, armed guards ride shotgun in vehicles, their sawed-off shotgun barrels poking out of rolled-down windows as a warning to anyone intent on a carjacking.
Why risk travel to a country where the world's most wanted terrorist, bin Laden, is rumoured to be hiding, perhaps in the mountainous tribal region on the Afghanistan border or in a safe house in a major city like Islamabad, Peshawar or even Karachi?
"If you believe, like I do, that our own self interests are at stake, you have to put a brick in the wall," says Gray. "I'm just one person. What can I do? It takes millions of bricks, but I think it's important to put your brick in the wall."
To Gray and group co-leader Brian Felesky, one of Canada's leading tax lawyers and former chairman of the Calgary United Way, the basic formula is simple: to win the war on terrorism you must first win the war on poverty, and to win the war on poverty you must win the battle to provide education to underprivileged members of society.
Few agencies do that better than the AKDN, which Margaret Huber, Canada's high commissioner to Pakistan, calls "a role model for other NGO's (non-governmental organizations)."
The AKDN runs its education, rural development and community health programs with a squeaky-clean reputation for how its dollars are spent. Years ago, it took the pioneering step of asking the World Bank to audit its operations, without being forced to do so.
Despite its reputation, Gray is compelled to judge the organization for himself.
"I recognize that you just can't up and decide to do something on your own. You have to work with somebody with long experience," says Gray, who is here to convince himself of the effectiveness of the AKDN.
Regardless of whether they subscribe to the liberal Ismaili interpretation of Islam, Pakistanis obviously hold the work of the Aga Khan in high regard. The Calgary delegation would have no security throughout its eight-day trip through the Pakistan. Its Aga Khan insignia marked bus would be good enough, getting friendly waves and quick passage everywhere.
The group's first stop is Aga Khan University. Smack in the middle of bustling, polluted Karachi, the university is set amid 88 park-like acres, an oasis of beautiful, architecturally-coordinated buildings finished in locally-quarried pink marble and imported teak from Burma. Three of its buildings were funded by Canadians, including one built with $4 million from an anonymous Calgary donor.
Critics say the resort-like campus -- Pakistan's first private university -- is ostentatious and elitist. But to the Aga Khan, a student of architecture, physical settings built with enduring quality have the ability to inspire. Twenty-one years after its opening, the university's classrooms are devoid of graffiti.
Focused on the health sciences, human development and teacher training, the Karachi campus has a needs-blind admission policy based on merit, rather than ability to pay.
In nation where the education of women has historically not been given high priority, 44 per cent of the Aga Khan University faculty and half the students in its medical college are female. This, in a nation where less than half of those girls who do manage to go to school complete Grade 5, where a disheartening 18 per cent of girls complete primary school and where a pitiful one per cent of the female population finishes high school.
"Where can we get nurses and teachers in a country that has such a weak human development base?" frets Jim Irvine, a champion of early childhood education who heads the Aga Khan University's Human Development Program.
The Aga Khans -- a titular honour bestowed on the spiritual leaders of the Ismailis -- have long recognized that, as family caregivers, women are society's front-line providers of education and health. "If you can afford to educate only one member of your family, educate your daughter and she will educate the rest," Prince Karim's grandfather said in a memorable speech in Bombay in the 1940s.
The AKDN's focus on empowering women is not an easy task in Muslim nations, where women have traditionally not been educated for cultural and religious reasons. Today, cultural barriers prevent mixing gender in schools and many areas devote their only school facility to boys.
Against this background, the Calgary group -- Gray, Felesky, Saju, investment broker Chris Robb, Calgary and Area United Way president Ruth Ramsden-Wood and Gray's daughter Janice, a health care worker -- found female students at the university's School of Nursing preparing portable health exhibits designed for rudimentary lessons at the village level in community health care, teaching other women health basics. Among them was a display on the causes of tetanus, warning new mothers against the common rural practice of using cow dung on severed umbilical cords of newborns to stop bleeding.
"If we want to make a difference in the world, we have to address poverty, hopelessness and despair and the best way to do that is through education," says Shamsh Kassim-Lakha, the university's influential president, who previously met Gray on a trip to Calgary.
The university's creed -- "be relevant, make a difference" -- is part of an AKDN philosophy that is taken to the streets.
In the Subzi Mundi (vegetable market) neighbourhood of Karachi, the group visited a free medical clinic where Aga Khan University medical students are required to volunteer their services as part of their training. One man, suffering symptoms of arthritis, had tears of thanks in his eyes as he was examined.
Gray is impressed. "From what we've seen so far, the organization and dedication is tremendous."
[email protected]
© The Calgary Herald 2005
Amid the poverty, pollution of Karachi, hope lives
Working for peace in terrorism's backyard
Working for peace in terrorism's backyard
Herald writer Robert Remington travelled to Pakistan with a group of Calgary entrepreneurs, visiting facilities run by the Aga Khan Development Network. This is his second instalment
Robert Remington
Calgary Herald
February 20, 2005
Getting to this remote village in the fabled Hunza Valley of the western Himalayas is easy, if you're a yak or a goat.
Humans must negotiate the perilous Karakorum Highway, a stomach-churning mountain road that winds north from Islamabad along the rugged, barren gorges of the upper Indus River system, eventually taking white-knuckled travellers over the 4,730-metre Khunjerab Pass into China's Xinjiang province.
About as wide as an average Canadian driveway, it parallels portions of what was once the legendary Silk Road, the ancient trade route from China to west and south Asia.
Albertans are no wimps when it comes to mountain driving, but to a group of Calgary business leaders on a 10-day trip through Pakistan, the Karakoram Highway, or KKH, is a bit unnerving. As oncoming buses careen around blind corners, you realize it is only the skill, perhaps luck, of your driver that prevents a plunge into the churning river far below, where bodies get mangled with rocks and logs as they are delivered into the arms of Allah the Merciful.
"I can't look," says Ruth Ramsden-Wood, president of the Calgary and Area United Way and my soulmate in nervousness at the back of our small bus hurtling up the KKH. Chris Robb, a Calgary merchant banker and veteran world traveller with no apparent vertigo issues, is less apprehensive.
"Look at that," he says, pointing out a rickety bridge in the valley far below. I peer into the abyss, feigning enthusiasm. There are no guardrails. I want to get sick.
The Karakorum Highway is one of the most historic mountain roads in the world. Built by China and Pakistan in the mid-1980s at a cost of one human life for each 1.5 of its 1,300 kilometres, it passes through some of the most breathtaking mountain scenery on Earth.
Arriving in Karimabad, visitors are rewarded the privilege of being in a truly special place. The Hunza region, bordered by the ranges of the Himalayas, the Karakorums and the Hindu Kush, is said to be the inspiration for Shangri-La, the idyllic, hidden valley of British writer James Hilton's 1933 novel, The Lost Horizon.
Asif Fancy used to make the trip over the KKH three or four times a year to oversee the establishment of a teacher training institute in this remote region of northern Pakistan, which the Calgary group is visiting as part of a tour of facilities run by the Aga Khan Development Network. During the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from food or drink between sunrise and sunset, it was an especially arduous trip for Fancy. From Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, the drive to this area takes 14 bone-jarring hours. Try doing that without a drink of water.
Fancy managed to lop 10 hours off the Calgarians' trip through the good fortune of a flight from Islamabad into Gilgit, the administrative centre of the Hunza region. Given the vagaries of weather in the western Himalayas and the visual flight requirements of Pakistani International Airlines' aging fleet of Fokkers, any flight that spares one a goodly portion of the Karakorum is considered a blessing.
The Calgary group is led by Calgary oilman Jim Gray, who is interested in raising funds for a possible development partnership with the Aga Khan network.
The non-denominational Ismaili Muslim organization is considered one of the world's leading non-governmental organizations whose work in 10 countries focuses on education, health and social development, with an emphasis on helping women, traditionally an underprivileged group in Muslim society.
Fancy, a former carpet dealer, is typical of the dedicated people who work for the AKDN. "My business was quite successful, but I found a higher calling," says Fancy, an Ismaili drawn to the organization by its non-denominational philosophy of bettering lives guided by the ethics of Islam.
The success of the organization in this wild corner of Pakistan is evident at an AKDN school for girls here, where the Calgary contingent met daughters from illiterate farming families intent on going to Yale. Later, back in Calgary, Gray would tell a group of students that if they want to get into the world's best universities, they need to look over their shoulders at competition not just from their own backyard, but from dedicated students from one of the most remote regions of the world who aren't going out on Friday night doing shooters.
The Calgary group, all interested in Third World development issues, has been impressed with the Aga Khan network.
"They do amazing work in the poorest of countries," says Ramsden-Wood, who has come at her own expense. With so many needs back home, which Ramsden-Wood confronts daily through the United Way, why should Calgarians be concerned about Pakistan?
"I think Calgarians are very global thinkers. They get it. They know that what happens at the local level is extremely important and what happens in the poorest of countries is equally important. People in Calgary are well travelled and aware of issues on a global perspective.
"I myself feel very passionate that we have to build our own communities, but we also have to be aware of the growing disparity in the world between the haves and the have-nots."
Here, in this one-time kingdom sandwiched between China and India, hard work, subsistence farming and genetics have made the people of Hunza renowned for their longevity. Many live past 100 years.
Life, however, is not easy in Hunza.
"We are very poor," says Nasir Hussain, whose three-generation household share two rooms. The family cooks over a small stove that is the only source of heat for Hussain, his wife, five children and parents. In winter at this altitude, about 3,000 metres, temperatures can drop to -20 C. Portable kerosene heaters are all that warm the schools and many of the homes. Hussain is a mountain guide; his wife does needlepoint that she sells in the local shops.
Like most families, they also own one of the most important possessions in Karimabad -- a goat. Every morning, families bring the animals to a holding pen, a kind of goat day care, where they are turned over to local shepherds who take them into the hills to graze.
Trekking is also important to the local economy, but since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, few people have come to the area, says Rahmat Karim, a local mountain guide.
"They think it is dangerous," says Karim, who leads treks to several glaciers and to the base camp at K2, the highest peak in Pakistan and the second-highest mountain in the world. In fact, trekking in northern Pakistan at the moment is considerably safer than Nepal, where a Maoist insurgency continues.
Formerly known as Baltit, Karimabad was renamed for Prince Karim Aga Khan, the billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, the predominant religious group in Hunza. Ismailis, moderate on many aspects of the Muslim faith and even in their attitudes towards alcohol, are occasionally criticized by stricter sects of Islam for being too liberal. Yet they, like the Aga Khan network, are regarded as a moderating influence in tumultuous regions such as Pakistan.
In May of 2004, Margaret Huber, Canada's high commissioner to Pakistan, wrote a report after a visit to Pakistan's northern areas, lauding the work of the AKDN.
"The northern areas are a bellwether part of the region where a battle is now being waged for the hearts and minds of the people. Fundamentalist mullahs are seeking to persuade people to turn away from anything perceived as secular, including music and traditional dance. When the Aga Khan paid a long-awaited visit to Chitral (a town in the Northern Areas) last October, the visit was boycotted by the fundamentalist MMA Party. But 100,000 Ismailis and non-Ismailis alike turned out to greet him and hear his message of co-existing peacefully with other communities, avoiding drugs or drug cultivation, and working together for health and education improvements. We take pride in working with such partners," she concluded.
The Aga Khan network, however, is more than an instrument for health and education. It is also dedicated to the preservation of Muslim architecture and historic sites such as Baltit Fort, the traditional home of the ruling mirs of Hunza. At the highest point overlooking Karimabad, the 700-year-old fort stands as a sentinel over the terraced landscape.
It is easy to be left in awe of Hunza, not just of the geography, but of what the Aga Khan network has accomplished here in less than 20 years. In this remote region, 100 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Calgary group met high school girls who have gone through the Aga Khan system intent on being engineers, pilots and teachers. In an area where girls are wed in arranged marriages as early as age 10, and where the education of women had traditionally been regarded as unnecessary, the impact these young women will have on Pakistani society will be profound.
The Aga Khan and his legions of dedicated workers are attacking the root causes of terrorism -- ignorance, poverty and despair -- mostly by empowering women such as Ramzia Ashrafee.
A former Afghan refugee, Ashrafee, returned to her home country after finishing her education at Aga Khan University in Karachi. She is helping to re-build the broken health-care system in Kabul, where women were banished to their houses and not educated for seven dark years of dreaded Taliban rule. In an increasingly bunkered North America, where the Muslim world is regarded as a threatening cauldron of fanaticism, organizations such as the Aga Khan Development Network might offer better hope than smart bombs and homeland security.
Despite such educational achievements in a part of the world where female literacy was merely a dream 20 years ago, life goes on here much the way it has throughout history.
As dawn broke over the mountains one morning in Karimabad, a voice could be heard calling out to the village from a rooftop -- still the most effective way of communicating quickly.
Mola Dad Shafa, who runs the region's Aga Khan Institute for Educational Development, stood listening as the voice echoed across the valley, so mournful that even roosters stopped crowing.
"Somebody," he said, "has died."
[email protected]
Herald writer Robert Remington travelled to Pakistan with a group of Calgary entrepreneurs, visiting facilities run by the Aga Khan Development Network. This is his second instalment
Robert Remington
Calgary Herald
February 20, 2005
Getting to this remote village in the fabled Hunza Valley of the western Himalayas is easy, if you're a yak or a goat.
Humans must negotiate the perilous Karakorum Highway, a stomach-churning mountain road that winds north from Islamabad along the rugged, barren gorges of the upper Indus River system, eventually taking white-knuckled travellers over the 4,730-metre Khunjerab Pass into China's Xinjiang province.
About as wide as an average Canadian driveway, it parallels portions of what was once the legendary Silk Road, the ancient trade route from China to west and south Asia.
Albertans are no wimps when it comes to mountain driving, but to a group of Calgary business leaders on a 10-day trip through Pakistan, the Karakoram Highway, or KKH, is a bit unnerving. As oncoming buses careen around blind corners, you realize it is only the skill, perhaps luck, of your driver that prevents a plunge into the churning river far below, where bodies get mangled with rocks and logs as they are delivered into the arms of Allah the Merciful.
"I can't look," says Ruth Ramsden-Wood, president of the Calgary and Area United Way and my soulmate in nervousness at the back of our small bus hurtling up the KKH. Chris Robb, a Calgary merchant banker and veteran world traveller with no apparent vertigo issues, is less apprehensive.
"Look at that," he says, pointing out a rickety bridge in the valley far below. I peer into the abyss, feigning enthusiasm. There are no guardrails. I want to get sick.
The Karakorum Highway is one of the most historic mountain roads in the world. Built by China and Pakistan in the mid-1980s at a cost of one human life for each 1.5 of its 1,300 kilometres, it passes through some of the most breathtaking mountain scenery on Earth.
Arriving in Karimabad, visitors are rewarded the privilege of being in a truly special place. The Hunza region, bordered by the ranges of the Himalayas, the Karakorums and the Hindu Kush, is said to be the inspiration for Shangri-La, the idyllic, hidden valley of British writer James Hilton's 1933 novel, The Lost Horizon.
Asif Fancy used to make the trip over the KKH three or four times a year to oversee the establishment of a teacher training institute in this remote region of northern Pakistan, which the Calgary group is visiting as part of a tour of facilities run by the Aga Khan Development Network. During the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from food or drink between sunrise and sunset, it was an especially arduous trip for Fancy. From Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, the drive to this area takes 14 bone-jarring hours. Try doing that without a drink of water.
Fancy managed to lop 10 hours off the Calgarians' trip through the good fortune of a flight from Islamabad into Gilgit, the administrative centre of the Hunza region. Given the vagaries of weather in the western Himalayas and the visual flight requirements of Pakistani International Airlines' aging fleet of Fokkers, any flight that spares one a goodly portion of the Karakorum is considered a blessing.
The Calgary group is led by Calgary oilman Jim Gray, who is interested in raising funds for a possible development partnership with the Aga Khan network.
The non-denominational Ismaili Muslim organization is considered one of the world's leading non-governmental organizations whose work in 10 countries focuses on education, health and social development, with an emphasis on helping women, traditionally an underprivileged group in Muslim society.
Fancy, a former carpet dealer, is typical of the dedicated people who work for the AKDN. "My business was quite successful, but I found a higher calling," says Fancy, an Ismaili drawn to the organization by its non-denominational philosophy of bettering lives guided by the ethics of Islam.
The success of the organization in this wild corner of Pakistan is evident at an AKDN school for girls here, where the Calgary contingent met daughters from illiterate farming families intent on going to Yale. Later, back in Calgary, Gray would tell a group of students that if they want to get into the world's best universities, they need to look over their shoulders at competition not just from their own backyard, but from dedicated students from one of the most remote regions of the world who aren't going out on Friday night doing shooters.
The Calgary group, all interested in Third World development issues, has been impressed with the Aga Khan network.
"They do amazing work in the poorest of countries," says Ramsden-Wood, who has come at her own expense. With so many needs back home, which Ramsden-Wood confronts daily through the United Way, why should Calgarians be concerned about Pakistan?
"I think Calgarians are very global thinkers. They get it. They know that what happens at the local level is extremely important and what happens in the poorest of countries is equally important. People in Calgary are well travelled and aware of issues on a global perspective.
"I myself feel very passionate that we have to build our own communities, but we also have to be aware of the growing disparity in the world between the haves and the have-nots."
Here, in this one-time kingdom sandwiched between China and India, hard work, subsistence farming and genetics have made the people of Hunza renowned for their longevity. Many live past 100 years.
Life, however, is not easy in Hunza.
"We are very poor," says Nasir Hussain, whose three-generation household share two rooms. The family cooks over a small stove that is the only source of heat for Hussain, his wife, five children and parents. In winter at this altitude, about 3,000 metres, temperatures can drop to -20 C. Portable kerosene heaters are all that warm the schools and many of the homes. Hussain is a mountain guide; his wife does needlepoint that she sells in the local shops.
Like most families, they also own one of the most important possessions in Karimabad -- a goat. Every morning, families bring the animals to a holding pen, a kind of goat day care, where they are turned over to local shepherds who take them into the hills to graze.
Trekking is also important to the local economy, but since the events of Sept. 11, 2001, few people have come to the area, says Rahmat Karim, a local mountain guide.
"They think it is dangerous," says Karim, who leads treks to several glaciers and to the base camp at K2, the highest peak in Pakistan and the second-highest mountain in the world. In fact, trekking in northern Pakistan at the moment is considerably safer than Nepal, where a Maoist insurgency continues.
Formerly known as Baltit, Karimabad was renamed for Prince Karim Aga Khan, the billionaire philanthropist and spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslims, the predominant religious group in Hunza. Ismailis, moderate on many aspects of the Muslim faith and even in their attitudes towards alcohol, are occasionally criticized by stricter sects of Islam for being too liberal. Yet they, like the Aga Khan network, are regarded as a moderating influence in tumultuous regions such as Pakistan.
In May of 2004, Margaret Huber, Canada's high commissioner to Pakistan, wrote a report after a visit to Pakistan's northern areas, lauding the work of the AKDN.
"The northern areas are a bellwether part of the region where a battle is now being waged for the hearts and minds of the people. Fundamentalist mullahs are seeking to persuade people to turn away from anything perceived as secular, including music and traditional dance. When the Aga Khan paid a long-awaited visit to Chitral (a town in the Northern Areas) last October, the visit was boycotted by the fundamentalist MMA Party. But 100,000 Ismailis and non-Ismailis alike turned out to greet him and hear his message of co-existing peacefully with other communities, avoiding drugs or drug cultivation, and working together for health and education improvements. We take pride in working with such partners," she concluded.
The Aga Khan network, however, is more than an instrument for health and education. It is also dedicated to the preservation of Muslim architecture and historic sites such as Baltit Fort, the traditional home of the ruling mirs of Hunza. At the highest point overlooking Karimabad, the 700-year-old fort stands as a sentinel over the terraced landscape.
It is easy to be left in awe of Hunza, not just of the geography, but of what the Aga Khan network has accomplished here in less than 20 years. In this remote region, 100 kilometres from the Chinese border, the Calgary group met high school girls who have gone through the Aga Khan system intent on being engineers, pilots and teachers. In an area where girls are wed in arranged marriages as early as age 10, and where the education of women had traditionally been regarded as unnecessary, the impact these young women will have on Pakistani society will be profound.
The Aga Khan and his legions of dedicated workers are attacking the root causes of terrorism -- ignorance, poverty and despair -- mostly by empowering women such as Ramzia Ashrafee.
A former Afghan refugee, Ashrafee, returned to her home country after finishing her education at Aga Khan University in Karachi. She is helping to re-build the broken health-care system in Kabul, where women were banished to their houses and not educated for seven dark years of dreaded Taliban rule. In an increasingly bunkered North America, where the Muslim world is regarded as a threatening cauldron of fanaticism, organizations such as the Aga Khan Development Network might offer better hope than smart bombs and homeland security.
Despite such educational achievements in a part of the world where female literacy was merely a dream 20 years ago, life goes on here much the way it has throughout history.
As dawn broke over the mountains one morning in Karimabad, a voice could be heard calling out to the village from a rooftop -- still the most effective way of communicating quickly.
Mola Dad Shafa, who runs the region's Aga Khan Institute for Educational Development, stood listening as the voice echoed across the valley, so mournful that even roosters stopped crowing.
"Somebody," he said, "has died."
[email protected]