With hearts full of hope and eyes dampened by the tears of disappointment, we turn to Your Excellency with a solemn appeal regarding the £192 million recently transferred from the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency to the Government of Pakistan. While this fund is currently directed toward the creation of the Daanish University of Applied and Emerging Sciences in Islamabad, we beg Your Excellency to reconsider this course. This is not merely about infrastructure or prestige. It is about people. It is about giving voice and value to those who have long been forgotten. It is about Baluchistan—our nation’s bleeding heart—and the countless young lives that hang precariously between despair and dignity.
Islamabad already boasts 27 universities within its vicinity—institutions with polished gates and towering claims, yet little to show when measured against the yardsticks of global achievement. Despite abundant funding and infrastructure, the academic returns have been dismal. Few universities in Pakistan appear on international rankings, and most remain absent from any serious list of innovation or research output. This is not for lack of money or campuses. It is due to deeper structural rot—rigid bureaucracies, outdated curricula, and an obsession with irrelevant metrics like “impact factor”, which do not reflect the needs of our people or the nation’s economy. More universities, under the same broken system, only mean more disappointment and more waste.
What we propose is not a rejection of education, but a redirection of its purpose—toward empowerment, toward employment, toward immediate hope. Let us not again spend hundreds of millions on buildings that may stand tall but remain empty of impact. Let us not replicate failures in a new location at H-16 Islamabad. Let us not ignore the warning signs of our past.
For who can forget the story of the Energy Centres of Excellence at NUST Islamabad and Engineering University Peshawar—two institutions once hailed as Pakistan’s turning point, funded by the United States and envisioned to resolve the monstrous burden of circular debt through applied innovation in the year 2010? One of us, AHA, was a co-founder of these centres. With every facility, every laboratory, every promise intact, these centres had everything except one thing: integrity. Corruption, incompetence, and greed hollowed them from within. The very individuals entrusted to lead them chose personal gain over public service. What should have been the light at the end of Pakistan’s energy tunnel became another black hole.
The consequences were catastrophic. Our circular debt ballooned to US$19 billion, crushing our economy and sapping our national strength. And yet, the culprits not only escaped scrutiny—they flourished. While the nation suffered, they built empires. While our economy bled, they bathed in luxury. Their betrayal was so glaring, it contributed to the global suspension of USAID programmes under President Donald Trump. Today, those abandoned laboratories and disillusioned students stand as monuments not to failure, but to theft, betrayal, and lost opportunity.
Each day that passes without opportunity is another day handed to the enemy
Your Excellency, we must not allow history to repeat itself—not when we have the chance to redeem it. And no place cries louder for that redemption than Balochistan. This province, rich in minerals and heritage, remains impoverished in opportunity. It is where the soil is stained not just with dust, but with the blood of brave soldiers and the tears of grieving mothers. It is where injustice has planted deep roots, where schools crumble, and where youth turn from chalkboards to BLA, Majeed Brigade, and other banned organisations because they see no other way.
Sixty percent of Balochistan’s population is under the age of thirty. Yet over seventy percent of its university graduates remain unemployed. The education they receive is largely theoretical, with no bridge to the real world of work. Their degrees become burdens rather than blessings. There is no training in the trades that matter, no fluency in the English or Arabic languages that open doors abroad, no digital skills to thrive in the 21st-century marketplace. They sit idle, watching their dreams wilt, while insurgents whisper promises of purpose and power. Each day that passes without opportunity is another day handed to the enemy.
But it does not have to be this way. With Your Excellency’s wisdom, that same £192 million can become the foundation of a one-year transformation that will change the fate of Balochistan—and Pakistan. We propose a Skills Revolution, launched immediately and executed efficiently, without building a single new structure. Let every unused classroom in every primary and secondary school, college become an evening training centre from 1400 hours to 2200 hours. Let young men and women walk through those doors to learn trades that can earn them jobs abroad—electricians, plumbers, healthcare aides, oil and gas technicians, crane operators, IT professionals. Let them learn English and Arabic, not as academic subjects, but as keys to survival and success in foreign markets hungry for their labour. The trainers are ready—within the Frontier Works Organisation, the National Logistics Cell, and among our Chinese partners. The structures exist. The students wait. All that is missing is the will to act—and a guiding hand to point us in the right direction.
Let university students be equipped not only with theory but also with practical tools, such as advanced English, digital literacy, artificial intelligence modules, and training on freelancing platforms that enable them to earn a living from home. Let them enter the global economy not as beggars for aid, but as contributors to progress.
Within two months, this programme can begin. Within one year, thousands of youth from Balochistan can become wage earners, supporting families, sending home remittances, and uplifting entire communities. They can rebuild not just their province but their nation. They can heal the wounds of alienation, despair, and radicalisation. When a young man has hope, he does not pick up a weapon. When he earns with dignity, he does not sell his soul to violence. When he belongs to a nation that values him, he does not become its enemy.
This plan is not hypothetical. It is not idealistic. It is real, achievable, and urgent. It is also moral. For how long will Balochistan’s youth be asked to wait? For how long will they remain statistics in reports and speeches, but invisible in budgets and plans? This £192 million is not merely a sum—it is a question posed to the soul of Pakistan.
Do we want to invest in marble or in minds? Do we want another plaque on a university gate or a thousand families lifted from poverty? Do we want to honour the blood of our martyrs with action—or continue to betray it with silence?
Your Excellency, this is not just a fiscal choice. It is a moment of moral reckoning. If we act now, we will not only change lives—we will change the story of Pakistan. We will tell the world that when opportunity came, we chose the people. When despair knocked, we answered with hope. When injustice lingered, we delivered justice—not in speeches, but in skills, jobs, dignity, and peace.
We plead with Your Excellency to consider this vision. Let this £192 million serve not as another forgotten promise but as the beginning of a new chapter for Balochistan—and through it, for all of Pakistan. Should you find merit in this appeal, we are prepared to provide full implementation frameworks, timelines, and impact assessments. But more than plans, we offer this: our hearts, our tears, and our belief that in Your Excellency’s hands, this nation’s most wounded province can be healed—not with force, but with opportunity.
With deep respect, unshaken faith, and boundless hope in the justice Your Excellency represents.