2 weeks Ago By Jonathan Addleton
Recent news that the Trump administration is shuttering the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is both disappointing and concerning. As a former US Ambassador, it is difficult to imagine a world in which development assistance is not part of the diplomatic toolkit available for engaging with other countries, whether as a humanitarian response to natural disasters (such as the earthquake that devastated northern Pakistan in 2005) or as a development partnership setting the stage for exponential economic growth that ultimately benefits both countries (such as what South Korea experienced as part of its long-term partnership with USAID beginning in the late 1950s). As a former USAID Mission Director to multiple Asian countries, including Pakistan, it is hard to stand by and watch USAID publicly maligned as a “criminal organization” populated by “radical lunatics”.
Ice-Breaking Interaction And as someone who was born, raised, and spent much of his life in Pakistan, it is heartbreaking to see long-time colleagues in both Pakistan and the United States lose jobs, even as long-term development connections between Pakistan and the United States move rapidly toward an untimely end. During the final years of my career as a senior USAID Officer, I often commented that the “key” to development success was not the project cycle, lasting as it typically does for only a few years; rather it should focus on pursuing constructive institutional partnerships, leading to lasting connections in ways that extend far beyond the much shorter life span of any single project. Recalling USAID’s long-standing engagement with Pakistan’s higher education sector, this has certainly been the case, underscoring that in the end it is institutions that matter most.
Indeed, the most enduring examples of the historic partnership between USAID and Pakistan are reflected in some of the connections established between US institutions and their counterparts in Pakistan, whether involving teaching, research, or both. Polio-Free Pakistan For my part, this observation has a personal aspect to it. During the late 1980s, as a junior Foreign Service Officer newly assigned to the USAID Mission in Islamabad, then-USAID Director Rocky Staples dropped by my office with a proposal from Syed Babar Ali to establish what later became the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), requesting that I review and reply to it.
As it happens, that reply became one of the first critical links in a chain that eventually led to a $10 million grant from USAID to LUMS to help construct the LUMS campus in Lahore. This grant followed in the wake of other support provided by USAID to other educational institutions in Pakistan. Examples include the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) in Karachi, which during the 1950s was staffed partly by faculty from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, funded in both cases by USAID’s predecessor Agency, the US International Cooperation Administration (USICA).
Similarly, USAID’s predecessor agency is also credited with helping to establish the University of Peshawar as far back as 1950, only three years after Pakistan gained its independence. Reflecting on Nicotine Regulation Approaches While USAID has played an instrumental role in strengthening higher education across Pakistan, the impact of that work is especially notable with respect to Pakistan’s agricultural sector. In fact, USAID played a key role in strengthening Pakistan’s premier agricultural universities in Faisalabad (Punjab), Peshawar (KPK) and Jamshoro (Sind).
In addition, USAID helped establish and support the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) and National Agricultural Research Center (NARC), both in Islamabad. Several US universities were involved in some of these early partnerships, including the University of Illinois and Southern Illinois University. More recently, both Arizona State University and the University of Utah helped support “centers of excellence” in energy, water and agriculture at the Mehran University of Engineering, Peshawar University of Science and Technology and National University of Science and Technology.
Pakistan-Belarus Synergies The impact of USAID-funded training in certain specific sectors has also been dramatic. For example, during the 1980s, USAID provided PhD Fellowships as well as short term training in Biotechnology, developing the nucleus for what later became the National Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering in Faisalabad. Strong people-to-people ties arguably constitute the most enduring part of any bilateral relationship.
Here, too, USAID has made significant contributions, funding thousands of scholarships for students from Pakistan to enroll in PhD and other postgraduate programs in the United States. In addition, strong people-to-people connections have been forged by those from both countries working together at the USAID Mission in Islamabad as well as its many implementing partners spread across the country. Forman Christian College (A Chartered University) has also benefited from USAID support, especially in the years immediately following denationalization in 2004.
For example, our largest female hostel, accommodating nearly 400 students from outside Lahore including KPK, Balochistan, Sindh and the Northern Areas, was funded by USAID. Similarly, USAID helped equip science labs and renovate buildings across the Forman campus. Forman’s Center for Public Policy and Governance (CPPG), established in 2007, also forged productive links with USAID over the years.
In particular, USAID funded Lahore Vision 2035, a strategy process that produced five position papers and three evidence-based research reports on energy, policing and the urban informal sector; subsequently, CPPG received additional USAID funding to organize seminars and policy dialogues as well as additional research and publications on civil service reform. Although Forman was not part of the most recent USAID/Pakistan project focused on higher education -- the five-year, $19 million Higher Education System Strengthening Activity (HESA) that commenced in 2021 -- I will always welcome USAID support for higher education, no matter who participates and which universities are involved. My sincere hope and expectation is that such support will continue during a post USAID era, perhaps through other mechanisms bearing different names that have yet to be established.
Indeed, I am confident that -- whatever the structures involved and whatever the mechanisms deployed -- connections between institutions of higher learning in the United States and Pakistan will strengthen rather than diminish in the years ahead, promoting friendship, goodwill and understanding in ways that solve problems and draw people together rather than pushing them further apart. Jonathan Addleton The writer is the Rector of Forman Christian College. Former US Ambassador to Mongolia and USAID Mission Director to Pakistan, India, Cambodia, Mongolia and Central Asia.
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