MISSION SPOTLIGHT: AFGHANISTAN
In this section:
Post-Taliban Afghanistan Makes Progress
Afghan Schools Repaired and Constructed
After Taliban, Afghan Children Learn at Accelerated
Rate
Post-Taliban Afghanistan Makes Progress
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Two newly elected members of parliament discuss their
political agenda before a debate. USAID and the United
Nations in recent months provided an orientation and
training course for the newcomers to parliament, which
included the political process and how legislation is
drafted.
Ben Barber, USAID |
One and a half years after FrontLines Editorial Director
Ben Barber went to Afghanistan to report on U.S. assistance
to the central Asian nation of 25 million, he returned to
assess new progress.
Afghanistan continues to emerge from 10 years of war fighting
a Soviet invasion army, six years of ethnic civil war, and
six years of religious repression under the Taliban regime.
Today, Kabul’s streets are filled with people rushing
about their business. A sense of purpose strikes a visitor.
Dozens of multistory apartment houses are rising in the north
and in other parts of the city. A shopping mall has opened.
The battle-scarred Darul-Alam area, which was the battle line
between warlords in the early 1990s, is quickly being rebuilt.
Schools, which only enrolled 900,000 boys in 2001 when the
Taliban were ousted by a U.S.-led coalition, now enroll 5
million—about half of them girls.
On the streets, women wear the burka if they wish but increasingly
just use the headscarf.
A new parliament is meeting and a sense of optimism is expressed
by nearly all Afghans questioned. It is, however, an optimism
hedged by acute awareness of the challenges that remain: terrible
poverty, rolling back poppy production, ethnic tensions, reigning
in the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists hiding in remote regions,
and building an economy capable of standing on its own as
foreign assistance tapers off in coming years.
This section includes a few stories of the current progress
made with U.S. assistance.
FrontLines Editorial Director Ben Barber visited the Afghanistan
regional mission recently and wrote this series of articles.
Afghan Schools Repaired and Constructed
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Students play by Panjsad Family High School, one of
dozens of schools USAID has refurbished throughout Afghanistan.
Ben Barber, USAID
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KABUL, Afghanistan—It’s just about freezing
as a half dozen workmen lean from their wooden scaffolds to
plaster the walls of the huge, sprawling Panjsad Family High
School in the northern part of this city.
Inside the courtyard, although school is on three-month
winter vacation across the country to spare students the unheated
classrooms, a dozen boys play fierce games of volleyball amid
a frozen expanse of snow and ice.
“All of our schools were damaged and destroyed in 20
years of war,” said Ajmal Rachimi, 18, taking a break
from watching his friends play ball.
“This work,” he said, pointing toward the men
fixing walls, roofs, windows, and floors, “will improve
the school. It’s good quality work and the people are
satisfied.”
The work at Panjsad is part of a school construction and
rehabilitation program funded by USAID and carried out by
the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
By January 2006, IOM had refurbished 162 schools and was
working on 118 more. The group had built nine new schools
and was at work on 25 others.
The cost per job was about $40,000 to fix up the old schools
and $140,000 to build new ones, each with eight classrooms,
external latrines, and an electric generator.
“When you use local Afghan contractors to do the work,
it’s a challenge to build the quality and quantity we’re
aiming for,” said Karoline Lund of IOM.
“Mostly, we’re making good and beautiful buildings.”
Another student, Mirwais, 15, was walking past the school
as the workmen began to end their day’s work and clean
their tools.
“This is very good work,” he said, clutching his
notebook, filled with English, Dari, and math notes. “Students
will do better work and won’t be lazy and be better educated
in the future.”
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Mirwais, a student at Panjsad Family High School who
wants to become an engineer, stands by his school as
repairmen paint the building. Panjsad is one of many
schools USAID has refurbished in Kabul.
Ben Barber, USAID
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His father and mother are illiterate, like most of the 10,000
students in the high school. There are three shifts and tent
classrooms in the courtyard to accommodate the large number
of returned refugees from Pakistan and Iran.
Mirwais, whose concise and neat penmanship reveals eagerness
and intelligence, wants to become an engineer.
At nearby Zulaikha High School, the need for work was apparent.
Workmen were repairing broken or missing wooden window frames,
replacing glass, and sealing roofs made of tin sheets resting
on logs to keep out the rain. Bright yellow walls and white-painted
woodwork brightened up the scene, even in the absence of school
children.
IOM says it’s not easy to find skilled workmen and
to find decent building materials and low prices. Proper monitoring
is provided by an NGO that sends inspectors to assure work
is adequate.
And while it’s easy to deliver plaster, cement, wood,
steel sheets, and other materials to schools in Kabul, Herat,
Mazar-i Sharif, or other cities, schools in remote villages
are reached only across miles of dirt tracks that turn to
mud in the rain and snow, sinking delivery trucks to their
axles and even the windows of the driver’s cab.
“We use donkeys in some places to transport materials,”
said Lund. This delays work and raises costs.
IOM, which was formed after World War II to resettle survivors
of the concentration camps and other displaced people, has
been working in Afghanistan for 12 years, employing 60 international
staff and 500 Afghans.
“We’ll get this job done in 10 days,” said
engineer Lutfullah Khaliqyar, supervisor of the repairs at
Zulaikha High School. “We have to get it all done before
March when the 6,000 students, all of them girls, return to
school.”
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Shoghla Aqdas, 19, teaches a class of former mujahadeen
commanders—Afghan fighters who fought against the
Russians for 10 years, then fought each other, and have
now laid down their arms—how to use computers,
prepare documents, establish email accounts, and surf
the internet—especially Dari and Pashtu sites.
The month-long class in Kabul for groups of about 25
commanders is funded by USAID and aims to prepare them
for jobs other than war. The energetic young teacher
said “at first I was afraid” of the grizzled
war veterans. But they respect her and are good students
who want to learn, she said. See Mission Spotlight:
Afghanistan on pgs. 8-9.
Ben Barber, USAID
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After Taliban, Afghan Children Learn at Accelerated Rate
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Basira Kakar teaches an accelerated learning class,
where students 10 to 22 years old catch up on missed
schooling. USAID is spending nearly $17 million on accelerated
learning programs in Afghanistan this year.
Ben Barber, USAID
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KABUL, Afghanistan—In Basira Kakar’s small
classroom, off a snow- and mud-covered street on the outskirts
of this city, 28 girls and young women gather each day to
spend four hours studying to make up for their lost childhood
education.
“We covered the first, second, and third grade in one
year,” says Kakar. “In six months we completed the
fourth grade. Now we are on the fifth grade.”
Illiteracy, especially among girls, is one of the legacies
of the Taliban in Afghanistan. However, since the Taliban
government’s collapse in 2001, school attendance has
leapt from 900,000 to 5 million—with more than 34 percent
of the enrollees being girls, the highest in the history of
Afghanistan.
More than 170,000 students—including those in Kakar’s
classes, who range in age from 10 to 22—are in special
“accelerated learning” classes because their educations
are so far behind. Of the accelerated learning students, about
58 percent are girls.
A USAID grant to Creative Associates International created
the program throughout this mountainous nation of more than
25 million people. The NGO then hired five Afghan groups to
carry out the project. They trained “master trainers,”
each of whom taught other trainers who in turn each work with
and supervise about 10 teachers.
Kakar, who once taught in the Afghan public school system,
is one of those teachers. Her training took six hours per
day over 12 days for each of the six grades. In the end, she
learned how to integrate the curriculum into half the time
so her students could quickly catch up. And she also adopted
modern teaching methods such as student groups and greater
individual participation in learning, as opposed to traditional
lecture and testing.
“This style of teaching makes the students rush to
learn more,” Kakar said, while her students sat on cushions
on the floor holding their textbooks, also funded by USAID.
Kakar said she sold her gold jewelry to augment her $60
per month salary, supplied by USAID, and help pay for her
small school. Kindness and concern radiates from her face
as she speaks to visitors and to her students.
The children are all asked to bring some firewood to class
in these cold winter months to fuel the small metal stove
that heats the classroom.
Rohena, 11, stands up before the class to read from her
textbook. They are learning Pashtu, the language of the southern
and southeastern Afghans, as a second language. Their mother
tongue is Dari.
“I had no education,” said Rohena, one of the
few girls permitted by her parents to speak to a foreign visitor
within this conservative, traditional society. “Study
is important to know things and get knowledge. I want to be
a doctor.” Her cheeks turn red with embarrassment and
she pulls her flowered head scarf more tightly around her
before resuming her seat.
Rohena’s conservative father did not want her to go
to the local public school where boys and girls—albeit
in separate classes—both study in the same building.
However, the accelerated learning class she attends is only
for girls so her father allowed it.
After the sixth grade is completed—in a few months
at the accelerated rate the curriculum is being covered—she
and the other students will have to continue studies in a
government school.
“However, now she will finish with a certificate saying
she has a sixth grade education,” said one USAID official.
“In Afghanistan, that means a lot.”
Afghanistan has one of the world’s highest illiteracy
rates—more than 70 percent of people cannot read.
Some 90 percent of the 170,000 Afghan children in the accelerated
learning program have illiterate parents.
Another teacher in the program, Nazbobo Yousofzai, said
that her class includes several refugees who returned from
years in exile abroad, especially in Pakistan. One boy in
her class was weaving carpets there and only now has learned
to read and write.
“In my class, two students want to be doctors, three
want to be engineers, and the rest want to be teachers,”
said Yousofazai. “They were completely illiterate when
they came here.”
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