Homelands seek bright side of grey matter

The Arab world has suffered heavily from the emigration of its educated young men and women to the West. Many Arab professionals who moved to the United States, United Kingdom and other European countries in the Sixties and Seventies to pursue higher education have become prominent figures in their host countries and contribute to their success — while their native countries lag behind.

The biggest wave of emigration from Arab countries occurred in the second half of the 20th century and continues at an alarming rate in some of them.

Arab countries are among the top victims of the brain-drain, according to international statistics. While China, India and African and Latin American nations also suffer from it, they are trying hard to get their migrant intelligentsia to return.

However, there is no unified pattern or system that explains how the problem evolved in the Arab world or why educated Arabs emigrate. Besides the general characteristics of the political and social systems in the Arab states and the lack of political freedom, each individual had specific reasons to settle abroad.

Against this backdrop, a group of scientists and scholars met last month at the First Knowledge Conference in Dubai, where they came up with suggestions that could help to convert the migrant intelligentsia into assets for their homelands.

"The issue of investing their expertise in their original nations does not lie with them. It lies with the culture and the atmosphere that makes their return useful and effective," said Farida Allaghi, chairperson of the Arab Gulf Programme for the United Nations Development Organisation (AGFUND). "The process of return has been tagged ‘brain gain'. It sounds interesting and a bit nostalgic. It is crucial to allow Arabs to catch up with ages of a virtually crippled approach to development in the fast-changing world."

Migrant Arab intellectuals have a common thread connecting them with their original societies: It is their willingness to impart their native countries with the knowledge they have acquired from their host countries. They all believe in the importance of a knowledge culture for development. After all, they are the ones who contributed to the success of the Western countries in almost every field of science, Allaghi said.

The only simple but difficult-to-achieve condition that could ensure the success of this exercise is political and social willingness. It is very crucial, she added.

Dr Ghaleb Hasan Daouk, a paediatric kidney specialist, stressed the need for Arab countries to frame a policy to tap the potential of Arab migrants who have developed their expertise in the West.

To start with, he said, he didn't like the expression "brain hemorrhage" being used to refer to brain drain because that condition often leads to stroke. "Going back to Arabic medical heritage, stroke is called falej and it has no treatment, while brain drain is not without treatment," he said.

Narrating his experiences as an emigrant in the many years he spent in the United States, Daouk said he began as a student in upstate New York. When he returned home to Lebanon as a specialist, his homeland was in the grip of civil war.

"I returned to work in my country but due to the civil war in Lebanon in the Eighties, I left my beloved city of Beirut [and went] back to the US. I went to Boston, where I was offered training in Harvard Medical School-affiliated hospitals to become a paediatric kidney specialist. I conducted biomedical research and practised academic clinical medicine in one of the most intellectually vibrant cities in the world. This gave me excellent professional and life experience," Daouk said.

"My approach to the brain drain is inspired by the apple picking season in the New England area where I lived and I suggest that like an apple orchard, Arab families have children who come with different natural endowments of tastes and qualities. We should take excellent care of them ... to lead to the best fruit — the brain, in our case," he said. "We should also know the right time to pick and preserve them in the best way, hence capture the best value and increase it and provide excellent seeds for future generations of apples."

Saying that some nations have adopted methods to utilise, nurture, engage and retain minds for their countries' best interests, Dr Daouk suggested the following measures for the Arab world to follow:

Recognise them: The best mind may go undetected if there is no mechanism to shed light on it early in life. This should be followed by public recognition to make them feel proud of their societies. Without recognition, intellectuals may go to waste or emigrate to seek recognition.

Cultivate them: It takes more than recognition and circumstance to bolster a young mind's self-worth. Young minds need to be cultivated through multiple mechanisms — starting with respect for their individuality and accomplishments, keeping in touch with them when they are away, inviting them back to talk about their work and asking them to participate in the local decision-making process.

Invest in them: To benefit from young minds, it is critical to invest in their work before others get a chance to engage them financially — as these "brains" have an obligation to work for the system that supports them. An occasional favour can be sought from "emigrant brains" but a whole productivity scheme cannot be based on favours. The mechanism for such investment should usually be through local non-profit organisations that are administered by boards of competent gatekeepers selected through a careful, unbiased process to ensure that the money is well spent.

Empower them: Once a working relationship has been established to support young or matured brains financially, they must be empowered to achieve their potential back home. One of the most often cited causes for "brain re-drain" is a hostile bureaucracy or antagonistic colleagues in the native country.

Retain them: By providing them with the security and the right conditions for a productive life, they can establish themselves and firm up their loyalty to the country or area.

Dr Daouk said these five measures could help the Arab world gain back much of its intellectual diaspora to the benefit of their home countries.

Meanwhile, Antoine Zahlan, a US-based professor, said the Arab countries have been the world's largest contributors to the brain drain. The 19th and 20th centuries witnessed a large number of Arab youths emigrating, either looking for lucrative jobs or seeking high standards of education in foreign universities.

A sizeable percentage of those who left to study abroad never returned, said Zahlan, a Lebanese who was born in Palestine and moved to the UK and then the US, where he earned his doctorate in physics.

Zahlan said: "Even those who went back to their countries were not able to stay there for long due to the lack of the infrastructure they needed to pursue their specialisation in an effective manner. This weakened Arab societies and hampered their development efforts even further."

Most intellectuals and educated individuals who settled in foreign lands are willing to serve their native countries if the governments and the societies offer them what they need to employ their experience. They are willing to utilise what they have learnt to develop their countries of origin.

Zahlan said: "It will be possible to convert the Middle East into a knowledge-based society, as per the project announced by Dubai at the World Economic Forum in Jordan this year.

"If the governments in the region develop a well-devised plan that looks into research, education and promotion of equal opportunities for the region's youth, there is no reason to think that Arabs cannot achieve their targets," he said.

The relationship between education, research, standing of scholars and development in the Arab world constitutes the critical factor in setting the priorities of the project initiated by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.

The Arab world is facing a problem in keeping pace with international developments and any organisation that looks to stimulate progress must first look into the factors that contributed to the backwardness of Arabs as compared with nations such as China and India.

Generally speaking, there are two reasons for underdevelopment in some societies: the lack of human capital or the weakness of an enabling environment.

"Each of these two causes has a cure but the cures are different," Zahlan said.

If the underdevelopment arises from a shortage of human capital, the cure is to expand and improve the system of education. If it arises from the lack of an enabling environment, then that factor should first be attended to.

There are many ways of studying this challenging question. One notes, for example, that China and India are now recognised as having well-functioning economic systems. Yet on the basis of available statistics, the Arab countries are doing better than both in terms of education on a per capita basis. This is true for education both at home and abroad.

Some might argue that development plans have succeeded in China and India because they are large countries — each politically united under one government. But a check of the statistics offered by both the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank indicate that small countries are doing better than their larger counterparts.

Seven out of the ten countries leading in socio-economic performance are small, with Norway and Iceland in the first two positions. So size is not a sufficient explanation for the difference between the performance of the Arabs, Chinese and Indians in the field of economy.

The statistics provide proof that the Arab countries do not suffer from a shortage of human capital. "What is preventing the Arab countries from advancing is neither the quality of their human capital nor the scarcity of their numbers. It is more likely that the obstacles arise from the weakness of the enabling environment," he said.

Zahlan said the obstacles that confront the Arab countries could be overcome through the mobilisation and deployment of the human capital available at present. "Scholars and scientists are already available who could alter present conditions," he said.

By contributing to the mobilisation of available human capital in a manner that has a positive impact on intermediate organisations and on existing universities, Shaikh Mohammad's programme can attain multiple positive objectives — contribute to institution building, to R&D in the Arab world and to problem solving.

He said the challenges are no longer concerned with more engineers, scientists, physicians or university graduates. We face serious institutional, socio-political, cultural, organisational and intellectual problems. Their solutions can only be achieved through very serious research. "Unless we address and overcome these fundamental issues, it is difficult to progress towards a knowledge-based society. With more than 300 universities in existence, any contribution has to be focused in order to yield visible results," he said.

What is proposed, Zahlan said, is to mobilise human capital of exceptional creativity to be based within universities in the Arab world and permitted to apply their creativity to the solution of specific problems. These scholars should be able to attain multiple objectives: Through their publications, they should influence important fields of knowledge, Arab society and education, and the universities.

"Needless to say, they will also have a continuing impact through their students," Zahlan added.

Leading loser

The Arab world, China and India are roughly on the same level in terms of education. Arabs score higher when it comes to the percentage of educated persons per 1,000. But in terms of brain drain, the Arab countries lose many more people than China or India. China and India are doing much better in establishing a knowledge-based society. Interestingly, the total number of emigrants from the Arab world, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is greater than the sum of Chinese and Indian emigrants.

The Arab World has contributed to the OECD as many highly-skilled persons (HSPs) as China and 30 per cent more than India.

According to Trends in International Migration Annual Report published by the OECD in 2004, Arab countries lose four to five times as many HSPs than China or India. In other words, the latter two countries are able to retain more of their professionals than the Arab countries. The $155-billion budget allocation by China for research and development explains why the Chinese can lure their skilled persons to return and contribute to the country's development. The budget is 35 times more than what the Arab world sets aside for the same purpose.

The Arabs have to follow suit if they want to achieve similar results.

Arab intellect in foreign lands

Ahmad Hassan Zewail: Born in Damnhur (60 kilometres south of Alexandria), Egypt, in 1946, Zewail was the winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1999 for his work in femtochemistry — the study of chemical reactions across femtoseconds (ten to the power of minus 15 seconds) using ultrafast laser technique that helps analyse transition states in select chemical reactions. He graduated from the University of Alexandria and completed his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania. He became a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1982 and was the first Linus Pauling chair in Chemical Physics.

Farouk Al Baz: An Egyptian by birth (Zaqziq Village of the Nile Delta in 1938), Al Baz has worked with Nasa. He assisted in planning the scientific exploration of the moon. He graduated in geology in 1958 from the Faculty of Science in Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt, and pursued a doctorate in geology from the University of Missouri. He worked with the Apollo team and took part in training the astronauts who landed on the moon in 1967. At present, he is a research professor of the centre for remote sensing at Boston University in the US.

Sir Magdi Habig Yacoub: A heart surgeon now based in Britain, Yacoub was born in 1935 in Belbis of Assiut, Egypt. He graduated from the University of Cairo and moved on to teach in Chicago, from where he migrated to Britain in 1962. Yacoub was appointed professor at the National Heart and Lung Institute, London, in 1986. He was involved in the development of techniques of heart and heart-lung transplantation. He became famous for his 1980 surgery on Europe's longest surviving heart transplant patient, who lived till 2005. He was knighted by the Queen of England in 1992. He chaired the UK government recruitment drive for overseas doctors and led a British team that cultured human heart valve tissue from stem cells in April 2007.

Edward Said (1935-2003): Born in Jerusalem when Palestine was still under the British mandate, Said became a refugee in 1948 following the formation of Israel. He completed his doctorate at Harvard University and became a literary theorist and professor in English and Comparative Literature at Colombia University. Said is the propounder of the Postcolonial theory, which deals with the cultural legacy of the colonial countries and the cultural identity of the colonised societies. Postcolonial theory became part of the critics' resources in the 1970s and formed the basis of his book, "Orientalism".

Mustafa Akkad (1930-2005): Syrian by birth, Akkad was a film producer and directed the series "Halloween". He is known for directing the film "Mohammad: The Messenger of God and Lion of the Desert". Born in Aleppo, Syria, Akkad left for the US at the age of 20 to study film direction and production at the University of California in Los Angeles. He possessed only $200 and a copy of the Quran — given by his father — when he left. In 1976, he produced and directed his film about Islam starring Anthony Quinn and Irene Papas, through which he intended to bridge the gap between the Muslim world and the West. Akkad faced resistance from Hollywood for making a film about the origin of Islam and had to go outside the US to raise money for the production of the film.