Focus on education for Afghan refugees

With nearly two-thirds of its adult population illiterate, Afghanistan is "lagging catastrophically" behind other countries in terms of education. The latest annual UNDP human development report estimated that less than one-third of Afghan children were enrolled in schools in 1999. Compounded by the ban on education of girls in Taliban-controlled areas, Afghanistan’s future, in terms of vital human resources, is being severely neglected. A strategy paper drafted by Save the Children and UNICEF earlier this year described the state of Afghan education as "a national emergency in every respect". While education inside the country is in a shambles, many Afghan parents consider neighbouring Pakistan as a place where basic education can be obtained for their children. Supported by international and local NGOs, the Afghan refugee community in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) has been trying to educate its young. There is even an Afghan University, albeit poorly equipped and severely under-resourced. "For the last 20 years, the education of Afghans has been in complete chaos, although there are some efforts to provide some kind of primary, and to a lesser extent, secondary education. But the tertiary or higher education is left pretty much alone," Aziziuhrehman Rafee, a programme manager at the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), told IRIN. Any form of technical training was in an even worse state, he added. "Most Afghan scholars, intellectuals and academics have either changed their occupation or have fled to the West," said Rafee. A visit to the male section of the Afghan University, five kilometres northwest of the NWFP's capital, Peshawar, is indicative of just how bad things are. There are hardly any laboratories, the library is old, and recreational and sporting facilities are nonexistent. There are departments of engineering, agriculture, medicine, law and political science, literature and journalism, computer science and Islamic law (Shari'ah). However, Rafee said, only those students studying medicine were likely to find work, as, once qualified, they would be able to run their own private clinics in town. The level of training they achieve is questionable, given the poorly equipped hospital available. Female students - on another campus - have to make do with training in an outpatients department, leaving them ill-equipped for more complicated procedures, such as minor surgery. Salimullah, 20, a second-year Afghan medical student at the Afghan University said he wanted to become a doctor. "I want to serve my countrymen inside Afghanistan, and in the refugee camps here," he told IRIN. However, poor college facilities and an outdated Pashto and Dari curriculum, put together at Kabul University in the 1970s with the help of UNESCO, have hindered his progress. The chancellor of the Afghan University, Professor Asadullah Shinwari, told IRIN that aid agencies would only finance primary education, and so the 2,800 students were asked to cover fees and expenses. The teachers' salaries at the university range from US $45 to US $70 per month. Relations with the local Peshawar authorities have been tenuous. According to Shinwari, since 1998, the city authorities have launched a campaign against Afghan educational institutions. This had led to the closure of some, and the merger of the five remaining colleges into one university. "When we were in Hayatabad [female college], we were served a notice by the Peshawar Development Authority to vacate the place in three days. The next day, 35 armed policeman raided the place during a class. This terrified us, and 700 female students fled the place in 10 minutes," she said. Denying allegations of harassment, Mohammad Ayub, an assistant director at the building-control section of the Development Authority, told IRIN that the campaign to remove commercial and educational institutions from residential neighbourhoods was not targeted at Afghans per se. "We have a comprehensive policy of shifting all such centres out of residential areas. The neighbours had resented the noise created by the Afghan refugee schools, especially in the mornings and afternoons," he said. While most educational projects for Afghans in Pakistan concentrate on primary education, little attention is paid to secondary and tertiary education. In the 1980s the Afghan Mujahidin designed a curriculum for Afghan refugee schools, which had a largely theological content, with an overwhelmingly anti-communist thrust. Although the curriculum was revised in the 1990s, this bias persists. A German NGO, Basic Education for Afghan Refugees (BEFAR), supports 301 schools with over 100,000 Afghan refugee pupils from all over the NWFP. BEFAR’s production and publication coordinator, Mir Abdul Malik Hashmi, told IRIN that poverty usually forces most parents to take their children out of school by the time they reach the age of 10. With the exception of medicine, Afghan education is not worth much, as it does not guarantee employment. "The dropout rate was very high at this age," Hashmi noted. The education coordinator with Afghan German Basic Education (AG BAS-Ed), Samiullah Taza, said the curriculum and infrastructure needed "a complete revision to bring it to a par with contemporary standards". He said more funding and a long-term donor commitment would be needed. "Any reconstruction plan [for Afghanistan] has to start with education," he said. The lack of resources for educating Afghan refugees in the NWFP remains a huge problem, yet because it is a relative improvement on Afghanistan itself, families still cross over, hopeful that their children, especially girls, can receive an education denied inside Afghanistan. Khatera, 19, migrated with her family to Peshawar three years ago so that she could attend classes. She can speak some English and is ambitious about her future. "I want to learn English and computers. That will earn me a good job and a decent living," she said.