October 7th 2015 marks fourteen years since
the United States invaded Afghanistan.
Tens of thousands of lives have been lost in
the longest war in US and Canadian history.
From the beginning the war has been mired
in controversy - from torture to corruption to
bombing and shooting of unarmed civilians,
many have questioned how much good
foreign forces are doing in Afghanistan. But
through all of this, the education of young
Afghans has remained one of the so-called
‘bright spots’ in the controversial war. Even
during the worst fighting, promising reports
came of new schools built, accompanied by
pictures of soldiers standing alongside Afghan
children, smiling proudly in front of their new
school.
Afghan Education: Myth vs. Reality
The United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) claims that the
number of students attending school in
Afghanistan has increased from 900,000 in
2002 to 8 million today, including 2.5 million
girls. Certainly these figures sound promising
- except that they are completely inaccurate.
An investigation by BuzzFeed news earlier
this year spot checked USAID-funded
schools in Afghanistan, and found that one in
ten of the schools were “closed, not operating,
or were never built in the first place”. And
at the schools that were still operating, they
found “far fewer students than were officially
recorded as enrolled... Girls, whom the US
particularly wanted to draw into formal
schooling, were overcounted in official records
by about 40%”.
In parts of Afghanistan where military
operation against the Taliban has been the
most intense, BuzzFeed News found that the
number of schools not functioning was even
higher: “In Kandahar province... a full third
of the 423 schools the Ministry of Education
publicly reported as open in 2011 were not
functioning, and in Helmand, it was more
than half.” In Zabul, as many as three quarters
of the schools were not functioning.
US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction John Sopko has also noted
that “the [Afghan Ministry of Education]
counts absent students as ‘enrolled’ for up to
three years before dropping them from the
rolls”. Of the 8.35 million students that the
Ministry claims are enrolled, 1.55 million are
‘absent’. Even these numbers could be overly
optimistic, as there is no outside verification
of the numbers. John Sopko told those
attending his May 5 presentation at Weill
Cornell Medical College in New York that
“I can report that a ranking USAID official
in Afghanistan has told us that the number
of students actually attending Afghan schools
may be on the order of four million, not the
eight million widely reported as enrolled.
This lower number has been confirmed by a
number of Afghan civil society organizations
also.” But even this number - more than
fifty percent less than official counts - does
not necessarily reflect students attending
full-time. Even those who currently attend
school are often forced to come late or miss
classes because they need to work to feed their
families.
Even for students who attend classes regularly,
the quality of education is questionable.
A 2011 report by the Afghan Ministry of
Education stated that 68% of teachers “did
not meet standard qualifications for trained
professional teachers (grade 14 graduate of
Teacher Education Colleges (TTC), or their
qualification is lower than 12th grade.” In
fact, it is questionable whether all teachers
are even literate themselves. As well, schools
often lack enough books for the students, or
students cannot afford books and supplies.
Some ‘schools’ do not have buildings or even
tents for the students, but instead are held in
open air. In this situation, how could students
attend school through Afghanistan’s long,
cold winters?
Even when there are buildings, they are often
in shambles. BuzzFeed News reported that
the “overwhelming majority of the more than
50 US-funded schools it visited resemble
abandoned buildings — marred by collapsing
roofs, shattered glass, boarded-up windows,
protruding electrical wires, decaying doors,
or other structural defects. At least a quarter
of the schools BuzzFeed News visited do not
have running water.” A report by the SIGAR
office found many of the same concerns.
Even those fortunate enough to attend a
school with qualified teachers in an actual
building do not receive the same level of
education we would see in most countries,
including Afghanistan’s neighbours. School
days are about three hours, and the curriculum
varies widely - Dari or Pashto, English, math
and science are taught in some schools, while
others only teach basic literacy and religious
subjects.
Girls Losing Out
For girls and young women - who the US and
NATO claimed they were in Afghanistan to
‘liberate’ - education has in fact improved very
little. As noted earlier, girls are overcounted by
about 40% in schools. While the lack of girls
in school is often blamed on Afghanistan’s
social conservatism, the reality is that there are
often simply no schools for them to attend.
Many Afghan girls and young women would
love to grow up to be doctors or teachers,
writers or scientists - but without access to
even basic primary education, these dreams
will not become reality.
Although conservative families do prevent
some Afghan girls from going to school,
there are many practical and safety concerns
as well. Girls attending school have been the
victims of numerous poisonings and acid
attacks by those who do not believe they
should receive an education, making many
parents justifiably nervous to send them. As
well, the lack of female educators is a major
problem. According to the Afghan Ministry
of Education, “there are no qualified female
teachers in 230 districts out of 412 rural and
urban districts. As a result, retention and
continuation of girls’ education in secondary
grades are affected. There are no girls in upper
secondary grades in 159 districts”.
A Corrupt System
USAID alone has spent $850 million on
Afghan education; the government of Canada
has spent $227 million. Yet it seems as though
much of these aid dollars are going nowhere
- or, more accurately, are funding corruption
rather than education. Massively overpriced
school construction projects often go to
warlords or corrupt ‘aid’ organizations. These
schools are typically poorly constructed, or in
some cases, never built but still paid for.
In a study of the state of education in Ghor
province, the Afghan Analysts Network
found that salaries were often paid to absentee
teachers, or were withheld from the teachers
and collected by officials in the Ministry
of Education or local warlords. A 2005-
2006 internal audit by Afghan Ministry of
Education found that at least $12 million in
salaries were going to ‘ghost teachers’ annually.
Afghanistan Independent Human Rights
Commission provincial director Jawad Reza’i
has noted that in some areas of the country
the education system exists on paper only:
there are “no classes, no professionally trained
teachers – and by the end of each year, fake
results of schools exams are being submitted
in order to pretend the schools are functioning
and to keep the salaries flowing.”
Education in Afghanistan Before the US
Invasion
As people living in Canada or the US, we
would never accept this poor excuse for
education for our own children. Why, then,
would we accept it for Afghan kids? Perhaps
it is because we have accepted that it is
better than nothing, or at least better than
what Afghans had before. But yet again, this
argument is completely false! In fact, only a
generation ago, Afghanistan was making
major improvements to its education system.
Although educational institutions were still
lacking in the country’s rural areas, progress
was being made and widespread literacy
programs had been established. And women
were well-represented in schools as well - at
the time, 40% of Kabul’s doctors and 50% of
its’ university students were women.
The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet
Union in 1979 and the civil war that followed
crumbled the country’s education system.
With a lack of formal schooling, many
children began to attend religious schools -
often funded by the United States.
The Washington Post reported in 2002 that
“In the twilight of the Cold War, the United
States spent millions of dollars to supply
Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled
with violent images and militant Islamic
teachings, part of covert attempts to spur
resistance to the Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of
jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets,
soldiers and mines, have served since then as
the Afghan school system’s core curriculum.
Even the Taliban used the American-
produced books...”
In 2014, the Washington post gave more
specific examples of the kind of books being
supplied by the US to ‘educate’ Afghan
children at the time:
“Printed both in Pashto and Dari,
Afghanistan’s two major languages, books
such as “The Alphabet for Jihad Literacy”
were produced under the auspices of the U.S.
Agency for International Development by
the University of Nebraska at Omaha and
smuggled into Afghanistan through networks
built by the CIA and Pakistan’s military
intelligence agency, the ISI.”
Many of the children
educated under this
curriculum grew
up to be fighters
with the Taliban,
which took power
in Afghanistan in
1996. Under the
Taliban, education
was strictly curtailed,
especially for girls.
However, even in
these dark days for
Afghan education, it
was not quite as bad
in practical terms as
the numbers that are
frequently cited by the media and government
agencies show. Although only about a million
students were officially enrolled in school,
others were educated through informal
home schools and schools run by certain
aid organizations. Even girls’ schools were
tolerated to a certain extent by the Taliban,
although not officially accepted. This is not
to say that education in Afghanistan was
in a good state at the time; however, the
official numbers used to show how much
education has improved under the US/NATO
occupation are certainly not accurate.
End the Occupation!
This month, the occupation of Afghanistan
will begin its fifteenth year. Tens of thousands
of lives have been lost in this war - and for
what? When the US first invaded Afghanistan,
they claimed that foreign intervention would
improve human and womens’ rights, education,
and democracy. Today, none of the stated main
objectives of this war have been achieved. In
terms of education, little if any progress has
been made. The schools we see being proudly
opened in news reports are often shuttered
within months. Those that remain open often
provide substandard education. Other factors
such as poverty, unemployment and a lack
of security - many of them worsened by the
US/NATO presence in the country - prevent
millions of children from attending school.
In practical terms, education in Afghanistan
today is little better than it was under the
Taliban - and certainly far worse than it was
before the country was torn apart by three
decades of war and occupation.
Over the last fourteen years, the US and
NATO have proven that they are incapable
of bringing any kind of positive change to
Afghanistan - the education system is just
one example. The presence of foreign troops
in the country is only fuelling corruption and
violence. Foreign armies and aid agencies
- including Canada’s - seem content with
showing off a few schools built and reporting
completely inaccurate facts about the state of
education in the country.
In light of their utter failure to improve
the lives of Afghans over the past fourteen
years, the US must pull all its troops and
contractors out of the country immediately, as
should countries such as Canada which have
military or police remaining in the country in
a so-called ‘advisory’ capacity. For centuries,
Afghans have built their own country, raising
it up time and again out of the destruction of
foreign occupation. They will once again. It will
not be easy, but it is the only way forward out
of the quagmire of destruction and corruption
which foreign forces have brought.
Those of us in Canada - and around the world
for that matter - must continue to call for an
end to the occupation of Afghanistan. Our
duty to stand with the Afghan people against
this atrocity did not end when Canadian
troops left the country, and it will not end until
the last foreign forces leave Afghanistan.
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