Sunday, January 30, 2011

Single currency for East Africa ?

Experts from the east African Community (EAC) are meeting in Tanzania this week to set the stage for negotiations for a single currency as part of the region’s economic integration.
The EAC consists of partner states Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.
The EAC Secretary General Juma Mwapachu opened the meeting of the High Level Task Force (HLTF) that will negotiate the protocol to establish a Monetary Union by emphasizing the importance of the next stage of the integration process to the region’s economy.
“The introduction of a common currency will provide a stronger and more solid basis for investment and economic growth,” Mwapachu remarked, adding, “Certainly, for an efficient and effective common market to operate, a monetary union, and not simply the free movement of capital, is essential”.
The EAC Secretary General noted that the partner states need to integrate their economies more deeply for the region to achieve the Monetary Union, the third pillar of the integration agenda after the Customs Union and Common Market.
Mwapachu also observed that a monetary union would help eliminate price instability and exchange rate volatility, which he said would translate into a competitive business environment that spurs investment flows and growth.
Heads of country delegations appointed to the HLTF were unanimous in voicing their commitment to steering the negotiations to a successful conclusion. At this week’s meeting the HLTF is expected to among others, consider and adopt the methodology of work, review and refine the draft roadmap towards the EAMU, and lastly agree on the calendar of activities for the negotiations process. Negotiations for the Protocol are slated to commence in March this year.
The HLTF comprises senior officials from the partner states Ministries of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, East African Community Affairs, as well as Central Banks, Capital Markets Authorities, Insurance and Pensions Regulatory Agencies, and National Statistics Offices.






Source: CP - Africa
http://www.cp-africa.com/2011/01/21/single-currency-spur-east-africa-regional-growth/

Sudan: Referendum vote over, now the hard work begins


The referendum vote on the future of Southern Sudan defied critics by passing off peacefully, but the region still faces challenges that could threaten stability, say experts and officials.
"The referendum environment was peaceful, secure and orderly to allow voters in large numbers to exercise their democratic rights with relative ease," Victor Tonchi, head of the African Union observer mission, told reporters at the release of a preliminary report on 16 January.
Despite previous warnings of the risk of violence, the 9-15 January voting period was peaceful and calm, observers said. Enthusiastic voters queued patiently for hours, with a high turnout in the South. The numbers were, however, far lower in the North.
"This is our moment in history, when we get to choose our destiny for the first time in our lives," voter Susan Tombe said. "Nothing is more important to us as the people of the South, and nobody would do anything to spoil it."
The referendum is the climax of a 2005 peace agreement that ended two decades of civil war. That conflict claimed some two million lives, according to observers.
Final results are not due to be released until 14 February, but early returns suggest an overwhelming support for secession, a view backed by the US-based Carter Center.
"Based on early reports of vote-counting results, it appears virtually certain that the results will be in favour of secession," it said in a 17 January statement. "The Center finds that the referendum process to date is broadly consistent with international standards for democratic elections and represents the genuine expression of the will of the electorate."
US President Barack Obama congratulated Sudan on the peaceful vote. "The sight of so many Sudanese casting their votes in a peaceful and orderly fashion was an inspiration to the world and a tribute to the determination of the people and leaders of South Sudan to forge a better future," Obama said on 16 January.
Similar sentiments were expressed by observers including the Arab League, the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and European Union.
Before 9 July, when the South could potentially become independent, observers say key issues remain outstanding. These include negotiations on citizenship, the sharing of oil revenues - with reserves mainly in the South, but pipelines only running North; border demarcation and Sudan's crippling debt, estimated at US$38 billion.
Abyei
One key concern is the border area of Abyei, where at least 30 people were killed in clashes as voting began.
Abyei was due to hold a separate referendum at the same time as the South, when its residents would decide whether to become part of the North or South. But progress on that vote remains in deadlock, with the largely Northern-supported Misseriya community - who travel through the region annually to graze their cattle - demanding a right to vote.
That demand is rejected by the largely Southern-supported Dinka Ngok people, and Southerners, who say only permanent residents should be allowed to vote. A deal signed on 17 January between Khartoum and Juba over Abyei agreed a raft of measures including boosting security with extra Joint Intergrated Units - the special North-South military force.
Observers suggest the issue of Abyei will now be wrapped in post-referendum negotiations, with the South working for an annexation of the land, and the North wanting to extract a hefty payment in debt, oil and border deals elsewhere. Such a deal would need to involve agreement from those on the ground, but many are still demanding their promised referendum goes ahead.
"Just as commitments were made for a Southern Sudan referendum, so were binding commitments made for an Abyei referendum," said Deng Mading of the civil society group, the Abyei Referendum Forum. "We must have resolution of our status."
According to Douglas Johnson, a Sudan expert and former member of the Abyei Boundaries Commission, "Abyei has so far proved to be the most difficult part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement [CPA] to implement, more difficult than the determination of the rest of the North-South boundary or the division of oil revenues."
Senior Southern officials such as Deng Alor have accused the North of backing militias in the region - claims rejected by Khartoum's ruling National Congress Party (NCP).
"We are telling the NCP that it is better to stop doing this because when your house is built of glass don't throw stones at people - the NCP is very vulnerable and they know it," Alor, Minister for Regional Cooperation, said.
Johnson, while calling for the implementation of the referendum provisions before the end of the dry season in May, called for the creation of "long-term mechanisms" to enable both Misseriya and Dinka Ngok to "collaborate in secure annual movements of pastoralists".
In spite of the tensions, the risk of renewed conflict is low, say some officials.
"We have spent so many years bleeding in the bush and losing our close friends and brothers, that both North and South will have to think twice about war," Gier Chuang, Southern Sudan's Internal Affairs Minister. "We are working for a peaceful, stable South Sudan."
Challenges
The key challenge is that major humanitarian and development problems remain. More than 180,000 Southerners have returned from the North in the past three months, adding pressure to communities already struggling to cope, according to figures released by Georg Charpentier, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan.
"Every effort is being made to ensure that the basic needs of the returnees are met, including food, access to water and sanitation, blankets and water," Charpentier said.
But the long-term needs are huge. "The chronic poverty, lack of development and the threat of violence that blight people's daily lives will not disappear after the referendum," Melinda Young, head of Oxfam in Southern Sudan, said in a statement on the eve of the vote.
"Whatever the outcome of the vote, these long-term issues need to be addressed," Young added. "Failure to do so risks undoing any progress made in the past few years."
Concern is also growing in the North, where observers fear a possible backlash if the South breaks away. Demonstrations over rising food prices have sparked concern, as inflation grows and the Sudanese pound has weakened against the dollar in recent months.
Veteran Islamist opposition politician Hassan al-Turabi was arrested on 18 January after calling for a Tunisian style uprising in the capital Khartoum.
"There are a lot of people thinking, now what happens to us in the North?" said a civil society activist in Khartoum, who asked not be named.
"We assume the South will be separate," he added. "We have our problems too: Darfur and the east have had rebellions. Will they be the ones to ask, ‘now it is our turn?'"
Source: Africa good news 

Morocco King on holiday as people consider revolt

Discontent is ample in Morocco, the poorest, least developed North African nation, and many are inspired by developments in Egypt. Meanwhile, Morocco's King Mohammed VI rests in his French luxury chalet.
Morocco so far has been spared from larger protesting groups as those in Tunisia and Egypt, much thanks to the King's quick reversal of boosting prices for basic foods. The same move proved a good assurance for authorities in neighbouring Algeria.

But discontent is very widespread in Morocco. Despite an economic boom over the last years and some careful reforms ordered by King Mohammed VI - most prominently regarding gender equality and education - Morocco remains the poorest country in North Africa, with least employment opportunities and the lowest literacy rate.

The King, claiming to descend from the Prophet Mohammed, has an almost divine role in Morocco. Very few dare to criticise him, even in the mildest form.

Among the Arab majority, loyalty to the King is great, while the government - appointed by the King - and age-old ruling "Makhzen" class - controlling the administration, police, army and much of business - are the popular focus of hatred. In the streets of Casablanca, it is often said that the King is honest and wants to rule the country well, but the Makhzen is corrupting everything.

Minorities, however, to a wider degree dare to blame the King for their mischief. This includes large parts of the indigenous and disadvantaged Berber people. Estimates of the Berber population wary from 20 to 60 percent of the Moroccan total, with official estimates being the lowest. Unemployment is highest among Berber youths, of which many view the Arab King as a foreign imposer.

A growing Islamist movement in Morocco, which faces the same repression as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, also is loosening its loyalty to the King, which they see as a marionette of US and Israeli interests. Moroccan Islamists however are split in their view of the monarchy.

Moroccan youths are still struggling with poor education and employment possibilities. Official unemployment figures are only set at between 9 and 10 percent - although believed to be much higher - while the youth unemployment rate is set as closer to 20 percent, officially. Great masses, now mostly barred from migrating to Europe, are building up a similar rage as youths in Tunisia and Egypt.

As the tourist market in all North Africa now is crumbling - many travellers fear Morocco could be next - the kingdom's greatest growth and employment sector could soon be strongly impacted. A sudden growth in unemployment due to falling tourist arrivals could spark revolt.

The most united resistance to the King is found in occupied Western Sahara, where the indigenous Saharawis are denied most basic human rights. Rebellion is almost continuous in Western Sahara, with the population only waiting for a situation when troops must be pulled out of the territory to fight a rebellion in Morocco-proper.

A revolution attempt in Morocco therefore could catch the kingdom's extensive police and military forces fighting at very many fronts at the same time. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, urban protests would probably be quickly followed by rural Berber uprisings and a Saharawi attempt to oust the Moroccan occupiers.

Some few events have already occurred. At least four Moroccans have so far set themselves on fire in an attempt to spark unrests similar to Tunisia. Minor protest marches have been held.

But the population majority is watching what is happening in Egypt, which due to its large armed forces is more comparable to Morocco than Tunisia. If the people succeed in Egypt, many will be encouraged to try the same in Morocco.

King in his chalet in France
Meanwhile, the 47-year-old King seems assured that the situation in Morocco is in firm control. There are confirmed reports that Mohammed VI on Friday arrived at the private Paris airport Le Bourget in his luxury jet.

From Le Bourget, he was driven to his extensive private property in Betz, 70 kilometres north-east of Paris. The luxury chalet, often referred to as a palace, on a 70 hectares property, was bought by his father, King Hassan II, in the 1970s and is only one among a large list of luxury palaces owned privately by the Moroccan King.

The King's luxury spending is not reported by the Moroccan press, which is heavily censored on all issues regarding the King and his family.

According to reports from the Moroccan newspaper 'Hespress' and Spanish Morocco specialist Ignacio Cembrero, Mohammed VI was accompanied on his trip to France by "a delegation of high officials from the security and military forces." Mr Cembrero says he has information that "the situation in the Maghreb since the fall of [Tunisian Dictator Zine] Ben Ali" was to be discussed together with officials from the King's allied French government.

News from King Mohammed VI's stay at his luxury chalet in Betz has still not reached Moroccans and could cause further indignation.


Moroccans are following the developments in Tunisia and Egypt with great interest. The human rights, democracy and social conditions in the country are not very different from the revolutionising countries.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

George Clooney's "anti-genocide paparazzi" seems to be dominating nearly every transmission coming out of south Sudan this week. Clooney, along with the Enough Project, Harvard researchers, and some of his wealthier Hollywood friends, have hired satellites to monitor troop movements along the north-south border, particularly the oil-rich region of Abyei. Clooney, active for years in the Save Darfur movement, has also become something of a celebrity spokesperson for the independence referendum. Naturally, the international humanitarian blogosphere's snark brigade is out in force.
Laurenist: "If you're anything like George Clooney, you lounge around on your yacht off the coast of Italy thinking up ways to save Africa."
Texas in Africa: "While John Prendergast, George Clooney, and other advocates who don't speak a word of Arabic have been raising fears about violence for months … the likelihood that a genocide or war will break out immediately seems to me to be slim to none."
Wronging Rights: "Clooney has described it as 'the best use of his celebrity.' Kinda just seems like he's trying to recruit a mercenary for Ocean's Fourteen."
Troubling as this morning's border violence is, there seems to be good reason for skepticism about the satellite project. The imagery the satellites provide isn't all that clear, showing about 8 square miles per computer-screen pixel, making it difficult to figure out just what's going on on the ground. That level of imprecision can be dangerous when trying to assign guilt or innocence in crimes against humanity. There's also the question of how much of a deterrent this type of monitoring really is. Laurenist again:
In 2007, Amnesty International and the American Association for the Advancement of Science launched "Eyes on Darfur," a satellite project that monitored developments on the ground in Darfur. As you'll recall, mere months later, Darfur was saved after millions of people updated their Facebook statuses with a link to blurry photos of sand.
But what about Clooney's presence itself? The actor's use of the paparazzi and basketball as analogies for horrific human rights violations might be grating to those who study these issues seriously, but isn't it worthwhile to bring attention to an often overlooked conflict? Here's UN Dispatch's Mark Leon Goldberg:
I know some people (cough, cough, Bill Easterly, cough, cough) have hangups about celebrity activism.  But does anyone really think that Sudan's upcoming referendum would be covered on a National Sunday morning broadcast without George Clooney's handsome face to greet viewers?
(Interestingly, Bono-basher-in-chief William Easterly doesn't appear to have weighed in yet.)
Clooney has his own words for the haters:
"I'm sick of it," he said. "If your cynicism means you stand on the sidelines and throw stones, I'm fine, I can take it. I could give a damn what you think. We're trying to save some lives. If you're cynical enough not to understand that, then get off your ass and do something. If you're angry at me, go do it yourself. Find another cause — I don't care. We're working, and we're going forward."
This kind of "at least I'm doing something" rhetoric drives development scholars absolutely bonkers and for good reason. But for now at least, it's hard to see how Clooney's presence as a cheerleader is really hurting. Once the referendum is over however, I hope he heads back to Lake Como. In international negotiations, a certain degree of obscurity can often be just as helpful as the media spotlight. Making a new country is a messy business anywhere, and in Southern Sudan, it's going to involve some very ugly compromises. (I wonder, for instance, what Clooney thinks about the Southern Sudanese government expelling Darfuri rebels in what seemed to be a conciliatory gesture to Khartoum.)
In the difficult weeks and months ahead, Southern Sudan will certainly need international help, but it should come from people with a slightly more extensive background in the situation. Most of all, it's probably not helpful for celebrities and the media to promote a narrative of the Juba government as the "good Sudan." Even in the best-case scenario, it's bound to be shattered pretty quickly.
In any event, the Southern Sudanese themselves seem pretty nonplussed about Danny Ocean's presence in their midst:
"Who is that man talking?" a Sudanese journalist asked, gesturing to a white man with a group of reporters around him. When told it was George Clooney, a movie star, the Sudanese journalist looked confused and walked away.

The new scramble for Africa, not oil… ARABLE LAND

SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.
“They told us this would be the last rainy season for us to cultivate our fields; after that, they will level all the houses and take the land,” said Mama Keita, 73, the leader of this village veiled behind dense, thorny scrubland. “We were told that Qaddafi owns this land.”
Across Africa and the developing world, a new global land rush is gobbling up large expanses of arable land. Despite their ageless traditions, stunned villagers are discovering that African governments typically own their land and have been leasing it, often at bargain prices, to private investors and foreign governments for decades to come.
Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank say the practice, if done equitably, could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it.
But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse, they contend, much of the food is bound for wealthier nations.
“The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody’s mind,” said Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, now working on the issue of African agriculture. “Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won’t work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don’t think we want to see a second scramble of that kind.”
World Bank study released in September tallied farmland deals covering at least 110 million acres — the size of California and West Virginia combined — announced during the first 11 months of 2009 alone. More than 70 percent of those deals were for land in Africa, with Sudan, Mozambique and Ethiopia among those nations transferring millions of acres to investors.
Before 2008, the global average for such deals was less than 10 million acres per year, the report said. But the food crisis that spring, which set off riots in at least a dozen countries, prompted the spree. The prospect of future scarcity attracted both wealthy governments lacking the arable land needed to feed their own people and hedge funds drawn to a dwindling commodity.
“You see interest in land acquisition continuing at a very high level,” said Klaus Deininger, the World Bank economist who wrote the report, taking many figures from a Web siterun by Grain, an advocacy organization, because governments would not reveal the agreements. “Clearly, this is not over.”
The report, while generally supportive of the investments, detailed mixed results. Foreign aid for agriculture has dwindled from about 20 percent of all aid in 1980 to about 5 percent now, creating a need for other investment to bolster production.
But many investments appear to be pure speculation that leaves land fallow, the report found. Farmers have been displaced without compensation, land has been leased well below value, those evicted end up encroaching on parkland and the new ventures have created far fewer jobs than promised, it said.
The breathtaking scope of some deals galvanizes opponents. In Madagascar, a deal that would have handed over almost half the country’s arable land to a South Korean conglomerate helped crystallize opposition to an already unpopular president and contributed to his overthrow in 2009.
People have been pushed off land in countries like Ethiopia, Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Zambia. It is not even uncommon for investors to arrive on land that was supposedly empty. In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land, said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur.
In Mali, about three million acres along the Niger River and its inland delta are controlled by a state-run trust called the Office du Niger. In nearly 80 years, only 200,000 acres of the land have been irrigated, so the government considers new investors a boon.
“Even if you gave the population there the land, they do not have the means to develop it, nor does the state,” said Abou Sow, the executive director of Office du Niger.
He listed countries whose governments or private sectors have already made investments or expressed interest: China and South Africa in sugar cane; Libya and Saudi Arabia in rice; and Canada, Belgium, France, South Korea, India, the Netherlands and multinational organizations like the West African Development Bank.
In all, Mr. Sow said about 60 deals covered at least 600,000 acres in Mali, although some organizations said more than 1.5 million acres had been committed. He argued that the bulk of the investors were Malians growing food for the domestic market. But he acknowledged that outside investors like the Libyans, who are leasing 250,000 acres here, are expected to ship their rice, beef and other agricultural products home.
“What advantage would they gain by investing in Mali if they could not even take their own production?” Mr. Sow said.
As with many of the deals, the money Mali might earn from the leases remains murky. The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it.
“The Libyans want to produce rice for Libyans, not for Malians,” said Mamadou Goita, the director of a nonprofit research organization in Mali. He and other opponents contend that the government is privatizing a scarce national resource without improving the domestic food supply, and that politics, not economics, are driving events because Mali wants to improve ties with Libya and others.
The huge tracts granted to private investors are many years from production. But officials noted that Libya already spent more than $50 million building a 24-mile canal and road, constructed by a Chinese company, benefiting local villages.
Every farmer affected, Mr. Sow added, including as many as 20,000 affected by the Libyan project, will receive compensation. “If they lose a single tree, we will pay them the value of that tree,” he said.
But anger and distrust run high. In a rally last month, hundreds of farmers demanded that the government halt such deals until they get a voice. Several said that they had been beaten and jailed by soldiers, but that they were ready to die to keep their land.
“The famine will start very soon,” shouted Ibrahima Coulibaly, the head of the coordinating committee for farmer organizations in Mali. “If people do not stand up for their rights, they will lose everything!”
“Ante!” members of the crowd shouted in Bamanankan, the local language. “We refuse!”
Kassoum Denon, the regional head for the Office du Niger, accused the Malian opponents of being paid by Western groups that are ideologically opposed to large-scale farming.
“We are responsible for developing Mali,” he said. “If the civil society does not agree with the way we are doing it, they can go jump in a lake.”
The looming problem, experts noted, is that Mali remains an agrarian society. Kicking farmers off the land with no alternative livelihood risks flooding the capital, Bamako, with unemployed, rootless people who could become a political problem.
“The land is a natural resource that 70 percent of the population uses to survive,” said Kalfa Sanogo, an economist at the United Nations Development Program in Mali. “You cannot just push 70 percent of the population off the land, nor can you say they can just become agriculture workers.” In a different approach, a $224 million American projectwill help about 800 Malian farmers each acquire title to 12 acres of newly cleared land, protecting them against being kicked off.
Jon C. Anderson, the project director, argued that no country has developed economically with a large percentage of its population on farms. Small farmers with titles will either succeed or have to sell the land to finance another life, he said, though critics have said villagers will still be displaced.
“We want a revolutionized relationship between the farmer and the state, one where the farmer is more in charge,” Mr. Anderson said.
Soumouni sits about 20 miles from the nearest road, with wandering cattle herders in their distinctive pointed straw hats offering directions like, “Bear right at the termite mound with the hole in it.”
Sekou Traoré, 69, a village elder, was dumbfounded when government officials said last year that Libya now controlled his land and began measuring the fields. He had always considered it his own, passed down from grandfather to father to son.
“All we want before they break our houses and take our fields is for them to show us the new houses where we will live, and the new fields where we will work,” he said at the rally last month.
“We are all so afraid,” he said of the village’s 2,229 residents. “We will be the victims of this situation, we are sure of that.”

Senegal turns to Islam to stop begging by child 'disciples'

Senegal is increasingly turning to Islamic texts and the powerful sway of religious leaders to prevent thousands of children being sent to beg by their Koranic teachers in the name of religion.
The west African country has come under fire from human rightsgroups over the rising phenomenon, as poverty leads more and more parents to send children off to Koranic schools where some are exploited by unscrupulous marabouts.
At a conference seeking to find a solution to Senegal's problem of child-begging on Wednesday, Islamologist Abdou Aziz Kebe of the University Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar argued that solutions lay with theMuslim faith.
"Child protection is not the prerogative of the Western world against an Islamic world which does not concern itself with its children. Muslims have produced texts on this question," he said.
As an example Kebe quoted the 1981 universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights which states: "Each child has the right to be looked after and properly raised by its parents. It is forbidden to employ children..."
The conference was organised by the Canadian embassy and Dakar-based human rights group RADDHO.
"As soon as we denounce begging (by children), we get accused of tapping into Western ideology. But it is possible to draw from human rights texts within Islam ... it is a paradigm shift," said RADDHO president Alioune Tine.
According to a study by the World Bank, UNICEF and International Labour Office (ILO) some 7,800 children were begging on the streets of Dakar in 2007.
In April 2010 Human Rights Watch published a report saying at least 50,000 boys known as talibes (disciples), some as young as four years old, are "forced to beg on Senegal's streets for long hours, seven days a week, by often brutally abusive teachers, known as marabouts."
"The streets of our cities are overrun with children of all ages, all nationalities, barefoot, in rags, braving the cold with a penny in hand, to the benefit of shady adults hiding under the mantle of Koranic teacher," Senegal's Human Rights Minister Zandi Gaye told the conference.
Battling this one comes up against strong tradition in a country where rural families have long chosen a child to study Islam and the Koran under a marabout. Even President Abdoulaye Wade followed this path.
The marabout would be known to parents and the village and young disciples would sometimes be required to ask neighbours for mostly food to better understand poverty and humility.
But today children claim if they do not bring between 750 and 1000 CFA (one euro fifty cents) to their marabouts they face beatings and other forms of abuse.
To combat this phenomenon in a country where 90 percent of the population is Muslim, religious leaders are being regularly put to use in the state media to denounce it.
In a first for the country in September 2010 six Senegalese Koranic teachers and one from Guinea Bissau were convicted for sending children to the streets to beg, and given suspended sentences.
"Religious actors have often been ignored when it comes to street children. Now they have developed relevant initiatives" with the introduction of modern Islamic schools," said Cheikh Ahmadou Bamba Diaw, a leader of the Partnership for the Withdrawal and Rehabilitation of Street Children.
Mamadou Gueye from the Collective of Koranic Schools in Senegal notes that "the problem of begging (children) can not be resolved without the involvement of Koranic teachers" who need assistance from government and NGOs to keep their disciples off the street.
However, lawmaker Imam Mbaye Niang says it is "impossible to support all the Koranic schools ... and the solution is to integrate Koranic education into the national education system."