akistan’s education crisis, particularly the persistent resistance to girls’ education, especially in parts of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, cannot be understood in isolation from the geopolitical history that has shaped the country over the past four decades. The 1980s witnessed one of the largest covert war-financing operations of the Cold War in the Afghan-Pakistan theatre. The long-term consequences of that investment are still unfolding in Pakistan’s educational and ideological landscape. Addressing today’s education emergency, therefore, requires not only domestic reform, but also strategic reinvestment by the states and institutions that helped construct the infrastructure of the past.

The investment in war

Between 1979 and 1989, the United States conducted Operation Cyclone, one of the most expensive covert programmes in CIA history, to support the Afghan mujahideen against Soviet forces. According to Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars and Congressional Research Service reports, US spending exceeded $2 billion over the decade, peaking at approximately $630 million in 1987. Saudi Arabia matched US public funding dollar-for-dollar, bringing combined American-Saudi state support to over $4 billion. When private Saudi donations, contributions from other countries and logistical assistance are included, total international aid to the Afghan resistance comes to between $6 and $12 billion.

Pakistan was the central conduit for this support. Between 1981 and 1993, the United States provided approximately $7.2 billion in economic and military assistance to Pakistan, divided between two major aid packages. This included $3.2 billion from 1981 to 1987 and $4.2 billion from 1987 to 1993. This did not include the separate $1.2 billion sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence served as the principal channel through which funds and materials reached Afghan resistance groups.

Saudi Arabia’s involvement extended beyond state funding. Private donors reportedly contributed up to $20 million per month at the height of the conflict. Institutions such as the Muslim World League and affiliated organisations funded schools, mosques and relief centres in Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan, often promoting conservative religious interpretations aligned with the Saudi doctrine.

The scale of this mobilisation was extraordinary. It did not merely finance a war; it financed an ecosystem.

Consequences

Large-scale financial flows during the 1980s reshaped educational and religious infrastructures in Pakistan’s frontier regions. Thousands of Afghan refugees settled in camps across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. In these spaces, religious seminaries proliferated, many funded through trans-national Islamic charities and Gulf-based institutions.

These seminaries were not uniformly militant. Nor were they uniformly hostile to girls’ education. However, they had allied networks in other social fields and often advanced highly conservative interpretations of gender roles and social order. The war was framed as a religious obligation; educational content frequently emphasised ideological mobilisation over critical inquiry. Over time, this infrastructure became embedded in local communities.

The result was the normalisation of a parallel educational system operating alongside, and sometimes in tension with, Pakistan’s state schooling framework. While Pakistan’s constitutional and legal commitments to education evolved, including Article 25-A guaranteeing free and compulsory education, ground realities in certain regions remained influenced by earlier ideological investment.

This historical layering matters. The opposition to girls’ education that surfaces periodically in parts of Pakistan is not entirely a spontaneous cultural phenomenon. In some areas, it reflects institutional legacies - curricula, leadership networks and narratives - rooted in Cold War mobilisation. The long-term impact of war financing was not confined to military outcomes; it altered social authority structures and educational priorities.

The education

emergency

Pakistan now faces measurable education deficits. According to national and international assessments, 22-26 of children remain out of school. Girls are disproportionately represented in out of school children in rural and conflict-affected districts. The gender gap widens sharply at the secondary level. Infrastructure shortages, teacher absenteeism and poverty compound the problem. However, ideological resistance continues to be a non-trivial factor in certain localities. This provides the state an alibi for sustaining its disinvestment on education.

This is not to suggest that external funding alone caused Pakistan’s education challenges. Domestic governance failures, demographic pressures and fiscal constraints were the central drivers. However, where ideological opposition to girls’ education persists, it often intersects with networks that gained legitimacy and resources during the 1980s and 1990s.

If billions of dollars once flowed to mobilise religious solidarity for war, the policy question today is whether comparable solidarity can be mobilised for education.

Saudi Arabia matters

Saudi Arabia and its public diplomacy institutions, such as the Muslim World League, occupy a distinctive position. They were among the central actors in mobilising financial, ideological and humanitarian support during the Afghan conflict. Today, Saudi Arabia is undergoing a significant domestic transformation, including investments in women’s education and workforce participation under Vision 2030.

This shift has created an opportunity for policy realignment. The trans-national networks that once promoted ideological mobilisation can now promote educational reform grounded in Islamic scholarship that affirms girls’ education as religiously legitimate and socially relevant.

The Muslim World League, which has sought to reposition itself globally as a proponent of moderation and interfaith dialogue, has vast institutional reach across the Muslim world. Its influence in religious discourse gives it the capacity to counter narratives that de-legitimise girls’ schooling. A strategic partnership between Pakistan’s education authorities and Saudi-backed institutions could support curriculum reform, teacher training, scholarship programs for girls, women’s leadership in education and public religious endorsements of female education.

Such investment will not be charity; it will be a structural course correction.

The Islamabad

Declaration

The Islamabad Declaration - positioning education, including girls’ education, as a core development and governance priority - offers a policy commitment framework through which such reinvestment could be institutionalised. Rather than launching fragmented initiatives, the Gulf states and trans-national Islamic institutions can commit funds transparently under this framework, aligning support with measurable outcomes: school construction, female teacher recruitment, digital access and secondary-level retention rates for girls.

Importantly, financial investment must be paired with narrative reform. Religious authorities affiliated with institutions like the MWL can issue authoritative statements and educational materials clarifying that girls’ education is consistent with Islamic jurisprudence and historical precedent. This will directly address ideological objections while avoiding external imposition narratives.

The geopolitical logic is straightforward. The Afghan jihad era demonstrated that coordinated financial and ideological mobilisation can reshape societies. Today the challenge is to mobilise comparable coordination for educational reconstruction.

Pakistan’s education emergency is not merely a budgetary shortfall; it is partly a legacy issue. Where past investments contributed, directly or indirectly, to infrastructures that complicated girls’ access to schooling, future investments can strengthen institutions that normalise and protect it.

If billions were spent to wage a war, committing sustained resources to educate a generation would represent not only developmental foresight but historical responsibility.

The strategic choice before Muslim states, particularly Saudi Arabia, is whether to allow past investments to define the region’s trajectory or to redefine it through education. Supporting girls’ education in Pakistan under the Islamabad Declaration will signal a decisive shift from conflict-era mobilisation to human capital formation.

In long-term geopolitical terms, the latter is the more durable investment.

The writer is a youth and social development consultant. He can be reached at [email protected].