Afghan Schools to Reopen with International Support

(Classroom reopening seen as a sign of returning stability) (1440)
By Charlene Porter
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- Schools are set to reopen in Afghanistan March 23 as a
result of an enormous international logistical effort to provide
school supplies, facilities and teacher re-training, bringing an end
to a five-year Taliban imposed shutdown. An event considered routine
in stable countries, a new school term in Afghanistan is being
described as a return to stability, a reassertion of the rights of
women and a breath of hope in a country that has known too much
desperation, violence and turmoil.

The Director of Education for Afghanistan's Laghman Province, Mohammed
Aslin Arjan, said in an interview, "The fighting may have destroyed
buildings and infrastructure, but it hasn't destroyed our spirit to
learn." Quoted in a press release issued by the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), Arjan said, "We need international support
to address the economic issues until we are able to take over and
address them on our own."

When the Afghan Interim Administration identified the priority for
resumption of formalized education for an estimated 1.5 million
children, the international community responded. Planning for this
March 23 school reopening has been underway since the fall of the
Taliban in early December.

The United States has been making contributions through private,
government and corporate channels. President Bush emphasized the
importance of the school reopening in a March 16 speech. The United
States is shipping millions of books to the region to support the
educational effort, 10 million by year's end, Bush said. "These
textbooks will teach tolerance and respect for human dignity, instead
of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry," Bush told a
national radio audience. "They will be accompanied by blackboards,
teacher's kits and other school supplies."

As international donor nations were drawing the very first lines of a
reconstruction blueprint for Afghanistan at a conference in Brussels
December 20 last year, U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID) Administrator Andrew S. Natsios placed a high priority on the
importance of getting the children back to school. Educating
youngsters would be the obvious payback on that effort, but Natsios
told reporters that it was important to put an early priority on
rebuilding the education system because of the multiple benefits it
might offer for the overall revitalization of the country as female
teachers reentered the workforce.

"That would be very useful in terms of making a statement about
women's role in Afghan society," Natsios said. "Two, if women were
paid either with food for work or cash, Afghan teachers will ensure
the feeding of their own children."

The Afghan Minister for Women's Affairs Sima Simar also saw how school
reopenings might provide an opportunity for women to get back to work.
With support and donations from nongovernmental organizations and
private companies in the garment industry, Simar has organized a
campaign for the donation of materials to allow Afghan women to make 3
million school uniforms for children.

Responding to Simar's proposal, First Lady Laura Bush, who helped
mobilize the donors, described the school uniform project on March 20.
"By sewing these uniforms, Afghan seamstresses -- many of whom are
widows -- will be providing for their families -- some for the first
time in years. These women are contributing to the re-organization of
Afghan schools that are rebuilding literally from the ground up."

Afghanistan's school reopening is an educational event and economic
opportunity, and USAID administrator Natsios has also described it as
a security issue. "Attending school helps restore a sense of normalcy
to children's lives," he testified before a Congressional committee
March 14. "It gets them off the streets and back into established
routines, enhancing security in the process."

In the months since that first reconstruction conference, U.S. and
international agencies have been pushing to allow school reopening on
the traditional date, March 23

The Taliban broke with that tradition after taking power in 1996 when
it shuttered most of the schools in the country. The Taliban did not
operate schools as a public service for the general education of
children. And so education -- a child's rite of passage -- became an
activity conducted in secret. Meeting like cells of revolutionaries
themselves, children surreptitiously attended informal, improvised
schools, hiding books in shopping bags so their destination would not
be advertised as they walked to these secret classrooms.

The long abandonment of public education has left school buildings in
disrepair and unequipped. It has allowed teachers to fall behind in
their skills, and children to fall behind in their educational
progress. UNICEF reports that only about 32 percent of the school age
population was attending school of some kind during this shut-down.
Among girls, the percentage was much lower -- only 8 percent were
pursuing education.

According to the Central Intelligence Agency's World Factbook, only
31.5 percent of the Afghan population over the age of 15 can read and
write. Among women alone, literacy is much lower, only 15 percent.

With the Interim Authority in the lead, U.S. and international aid
agencies are devoting significant energies and resources to try to
insure that literacy statistics begin to improve this year. It starts
with the absolute basics. The International Organization for Migration
is providing nearly 1,500 tents to serve as schools and classrooms.
Lagham Province Director of Education Arjan says that some classes
will be meeting under a tree in the open air because school buildings
have been so damaged.

Then there is the need for supplies. President Bush is calling on
Americans to participate in a grass-roots campaign to get more school
supplies in the hands of Afghan children. In a March 20 speech at a
Washington area school, he urged citizens to participate in
fund-raising campaigns to help the American Red Cross assemble school
kits containing notebooks, crayons, pencils, rulers, and even soccer
balls and jump ropes.

UNICEF is making a major contribution in supplies -- 6,000 metric tons
of pens, pencils, slates, stationery, chalkboards, schoolbags and
books. From a warehouse and packing facility in Pakistan, all of this
is being transported in hundreds of trucks winding their way across
damaged roads and bridges to supply children in formal schools, home
schools and whatever learning environments have been arranged by the
regional and provincial education authorities.

UNICEF and the United States are also conducting teacher training
programs to brush up the skills of teachers who've been locked out of
their classrooms for so long. UNICEF and the Interim Authority
conducted 10-day teacher workshops to help teachers learn new
educational techniques. The United States is sending 20 teams of
teacher trainers to conduct sessions with thousands of Afghan
educators.

Teachers trying to nurture young minds know that the effort meets with
far greater success if the body has been nurtured as well. In a
country where starvation appeared imminent just six months ago,
feeding the students and the teachers is another component in the
back-to-school campaign.

UNICEF and the World Food Program (WFP) are both conducting campaigns
to improve the nutritional status of Afghan children. WFP reports that
it will be operating in-school feeding programs, and providing food
incentives to teachers by supplementing their meager pay with food
rations. Food commodities are also slated to go to workers who take
jobs in school reconstruction projects.

While all these efforts are being undertaken to insure that the basics
are in place when children return to the classroom at long last, a
UNICEF study indicates that books, pencils and food can't solve all
the problems of Afghan children. War has pounded the nation for 23
years, so the children know nothing else. UNICEF has found that the
trauma and psychological wounds are deep and long-lasting.

The UNICEF study was able to collect some anecdotal data from school
teachers who had been able to continue to work in Kabul. They reported
"that many of their pupils have been suffering from sleeplessness,
nightmares and anxiety," and difficulty in concentration, according to
a UNICEF report on children's mental health issued in November 2001.
"For Afghanistan to have a decent future, we must help children leave
their nightmares behind," said UNICEF director Carol Bellamy.

As Arjan counted the final days to the reopening of school, he told
UNICEF, "I feel that we are really starting at zero in terms of
education in Afghanistan. Fortunately, the only way we can go, the
only way we must go, is up."

(The Washington File is a product of the Office of International
Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site:
http://usinfo.state.gov)