Elsewhere in the article on the adultery execution linked below, this comment is made:

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a professor at Islamabad’s Quaid-e-Azam University and one of Pakistan’s leading intellectuals says, “a Taliban victory will enslave our women, destroy Pakistan’s rich historical and cultural heritage, make education and science impossible, and make the lives of its citizens impossibly difficult. Some are already contemplating an exodus.”

Make education and science impossible? What follows is part of the GIK Insititute alumni association vice president’s thoughts on corporate donors – representative of the kind of thinking that goes on at top education and research institutions all over Pakistan interested in attracting corporate donations in the worst economy in modern history – about to be rendered moot by the Taliban’s presence, which will undermine corporate investment throughout Pakistan:

Corporate Donors: During our days at GIKI, we have all seen how rich are the corporates, and how much they are willing to give back to the community. We have all seen extravagant All Pakistan Competitions happen at GIK Institute, where the students were able to get 3-4 lakh rupee worth of sponsorships for event guides, for winning prizes etc. Why can’t we do better as graduates/professionals? We are working in these companies, and we should pursue leads in our companies and in other companies to formalize a corporate donor database and formalize access to these donors. If someone in the alumni works at Amrat Cola or knows someone at Amrat Cola, we should approach them to ask for possible scholarships. To make the offer attractive, we should rebrand our financial assistance program as something that is attractive for the corporate. For example, I was just thinking and the word ACES (Alumni and Corporate for Education and Scholarships) came to my mind as a potential brand. This could be attractive for corporations to invest in. All we have to do is to get a few corporate on board, like maybe mobilink, unilever etc and then getting the rest would be easier as we can market it as XYZ corporation is already on board, what would it take for you to get on board, a la peer effect model. Like a consortium of companies, coming together with alumni to provide funds for scholarship and education. To make this effective, we need to plan it out and market is appropriately, like having a program launch meeting, small news item in the papers etc, provide links on our website to these programs etc. This would make corporate wanting to invest into our programs. And we could have someone interested in Marketing from the alumni drive the marketing campaign. One caveat is that we should be mindful of not cannibalizing any potential sponsorship sources for GIKI students in their events. Of course, we need to do some ground work and chart out the feasibility of this venture before we take it on, but I am very confident that something like this can work and would also generate positive side effects.