PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Citizen
DATE: 2008.09.15
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A11
COLUMN: Khorshied Samad
BYLINE: Khorshied Samad
SOURCE: The Ottawa Citizen
WORD COUNT: 1093
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Back to school in Kabul
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Canadians' September ritual is familiar to a privileged few in the West, but increasing violence is threatening much of recent progress on education in Afghanistan
The feel of fall is in the air again, the mornings crisp and cool, and the days grown shorter. Yellow buses have appeared driving children to school, many wearing new clothes, lugging new backpacks filled with school supplies, and a hearty dose of apprehension and excitement about school days ahead. It is an image that most of us in the West are quite familiar with, but in reality exists for only a privileged few.
In Afghanistan this image exists only on celluloid or in the imaginations of many a bright-eyed child. Afghan children do not take yellow buses, nor carry new backpacks brimming with supplies or nutritious lunches to school. They are considered extremely lucky if they can go to school at all, and if they happen to be school age girls able to get an education, they are part of a small percentage -- a shrinking percentage at that.
Since the fall of the Taliban nearly seven years ago, more than 5.4 million Afghan children have returned to school, an estimated 1.75 million of them girls. It is an achievement worth recognition, but so much more needs to be done. A recent Oxfam report estimates half of school age children do not attend school -- with significant gender and provincial disparities. From 1996 to late 2001, only 700,000 boys were allowed to attend school, run under strict Taliban code.
Women and girls were forbidden to attend school or receive an education, instead relegated to forced domesticity. They were also forbidden to work, travel without a male relative, receive medical attention by male doctors, and suffered a host of other indignities as non-citizens under the ruthless Taliban regime. The very few who did study or teach did so in peril through underground schools, and thousands did defiantly holding out hope against illiteracy and oppression.
In 2002, a few months after my arrival in Kabul, I witnessed Afghan girls and young women returning to school for the first time since the Taliban regime had been driven out. Thousands of them clogged the dusty streets, dressed simply in long black skirts and flowing tops, their hair covered by white head scarves. Many of them held hands in delight, giggling, laughing aloud, some hidden by umbrellas against the bright morning sun, as they proudly walked to school; the majority of them for the first time after six years of medieval darkness. It was a breathtaking parade of joy and hope, of sunny optimism after the fall of tyranny.
Inside barren classrooms, some without roofs, some even without walls, adorned with only a chalkboard and a few desks if any, the students lined up by age group to receive their lessons. The younger girls were in the front rows, faces scrubbed clean, eyes sparkling with excitement. In the back were teenagers, perhaps a bit embarrassed to be in the same class with much younger girls, but just as eager to learn. This was their chance to study and stimulate their minds, and to try and catch up on so much stolen time.
Out of a population of approximately 28 million, an estimated 11 million Afghans are illiterate. The estimated literacy rate among women is 15.8 per cent compared to 31 per cent for men, and drops considerably in the rural areas. These epidemic proportions are in dire need of improvement and earnest support by the Afghan government and international community. Although 3,500 new schools have been built since 2002 with the help of the United States, Canada, EU members, and other donor nations, many thousands of communities still do not have access to schools, with thousands of children still forced to learn in cross-border madrasas where the seeds of intolerance and exclusion are sown.
Sadly, over the last two years, instead of an increase in numbers and overall attendance at school by Afghan students, there has been an overall decrease, especially among girls, because of the terror tactics used by the Taliban and growing insurgency along the tribal belt provinces. More than six per cent of newly built schools have been burned down by the Taliban during the last 18 months -- easy soft targets for their cowardice -- and 220 students and teachers brutally killed in 2007 alone. Families have been openly told not to send their daughters to school, otherwise face the same tragic fate as the others. Fear has once again gripped the psyche of the Afghan people, and disheartened the intent of the donor community.
If anyone wonders why the Taliban are so fearful of girls and women getting an education, we need to revisit the misguided ideology that drives them. Educated minds will rebuild with purpose and dignity, perhaps becoming future leaders. Educated women are movers and shakers in Afghanistan, true agents of change becoming empowered ministers, MPs, journalists and human rights activists. They are a force to be reckoned with, held up as role models by so many young girls, and respected by both men and women who long for real change in their country.
Since the Taliban's aim is only to destroy, murder and intimidate, rebuilding Afghanistan is far from their agenda. They want to leave it a barren wasteland, a war-torn and opium-riddled country, inhabited by impoverished and illiterate men and women. Nothing speaks louder than the torching of more than 110,000 textbooks headed for schools over the last few weeks.
Without hope and awareness there cannot be real progress, and this is what the Afghan people so desperately need besides security, economic development and sustainability, and lasting peace. Every Afghan child and adult needs access to proper schools and trained teachers, protected and secure against the scourge of terrorism. The Afghan government needs to reinforce its strategy to protect education by working hand in hand with local communities and the international organizations involved in this sector.
We need to continue the course for the Afghan people, who deserve our unyielding support in the face of such overwhelming challenges.
Khorshied Samad is the former Kabul bureau chief and correspondent for Fox News Channel, and is the spouse of the Afghanistan Ambassador to Canada.
