Education and Development in Afghanistan: Challenges and Prospects 9783839436370

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Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Anne-Marie Grundmeier, Reinhart Kößler, Diana Sahrai, Fereschta Sahrai (eds.) Education and Development in Afghanistan

Global Studies

Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Anne-Marie Grundmeier, Reinhart Kössler, Diana Sahrai, Fereschta Sahrai (eds.)

Education and Development in Afghanistan Challenges and Prospects

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

© 2019 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld Cover concept: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustrations: left to right: (1) »Pomegranatepip-tree«, Oil on canvas, 63 x 67 cm, Laila Sahrai, Leipzig 2008, Copyright Laila Sahrai; (2) »Spielende Kinder«, Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative, Adreskan 2001/2002, Copyright: Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e.V.; (3) »Nomadenmädchen«, Philipp Steck, Adreskan, 2012, Copyright Sarghuna Nashir-Steck Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar Print-ISBN 978-3-8376-3637-6 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8394-3637-0 https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839436370

Outline

Preface

Ulrich Druwe & Walter Rohrer | 9 If you Want Peace, Educate for Peace Education in Afghanistan

Francisco Rojas Aravena | 11 Introduction: Education and Development in Afghanistan between History, Expansion, Hope and Disillusions

Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Anne-Marie Grundmeier, Reinhart Kößler, Fereschta Sahrai & Diana Sahrai | 15

I.

DEVELOPMENT AND E DUCATION FOR PEACE ? S OME PERSPECTIVES Development – Analytical Value and Ideological Baggage of an Elusive Term Some Considerations on Principle

Reinhart Kößler | 47 Local Languages and Their Role in Education for Development in Afghanistan

Adele Jones | 63 Highly Motivated, Transnational, Heterogeneous, and Barely Interconnected An Explorative Online Survey among German Organizations Operating in Afghanistan: Characteristic, Commitment and Content

Stefanie Harsch & Uwe H. Bittlingmayer | 79 Schools on the Frontline The Struggle over Education in the Afghan Wars

Thomas Ruttig | 101

II. TEACHER EDUCATION AND HIGHER E DUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN Crisis and Reconstruction in Teacher Education in Afghanistan 2002 – 2016 From Emergency to Stability

Susan Wardak | 143 Macro-Trends and Dynamics of Change in the Afghan Public Education Sector A Concise Compilation and Contextualization of Key Data Variables and Progress Indicators

Craig C. Naumann | 157 Private Higher Education in Afghanistan An Overview

Asadullah Jawid | 175 Teacher Education at the Faculty of Education at Herat University History, Recent Trends and Ongoing Challenges

Pohand Mohamad Joma Hanif | 193

III. E DUCATIONAL P ROGRAMS AND P ROJECTS Training Teachers in Peace Education in Afghanistan Achievements and Challenges

Razia Stanikzai, Khalil Fazli & Dianne Denton | 201 From Education in Emergencies to Facilitating Change in Afghanistan’s Teacher Education System Achievements of German Development Cooperation in Afghanistan’s Education Sector since 2004

Andrea Müller | 219 Private Scholarships for Students from Poor Families at Herat University A Small Substitution or Structural Compensation of a Governmental Task?

Heide Kässer | 237

The Project of the German-Afghan Initiative with Nomads and Semi-Nomads in the Province of Herat

Sarghuna Nashir-Steck | 245 How Afghan Embroiderers from Laghmani Discover Writing as a Tool for Communication

Pascale Goldenberg | 255 History Alive Cultural Education as a Key to Multicultural Consciousness and Understanding

Laila Sahrai | 271 The Visual Heritage of Afghanistan Photographic Testimonials between Destruction, Decay and Oblivion

Dominic Wirz, Anke Schürer-Ries & Paul Bucherer-Dietschi | 281

IV. CONCLUDING STATEMENTS Afghanistan Today – Perspectives of an Afghan Living in Exile

Anonymous | 295 More Schools for Afghanistan

Laila Noor | 299 Access to Education as an Essential and Urgent Need

Sima Samar | 303 List of Authors | 309

Preface U LRICH D RUWE & W ALTER R OHRER

We all know and can witness day-to-day how close the world has become in the recent time. A few clicks and we see the beauty of every corner on our earth, a hop on an airplane and we can dive into the treasures of foreign cultures. But unfortunately a lot of the current global issues are threatening and do not accord with our common idea of a peaceful, just, reasonable and sustainable world. Also many people are excluded from moving freely in the world for several reasons. It seems that most of the current challenges worldwide, such as wars, imbalance of income and wealth, pollution and global warming as well soak up a lot of energy and funds. Obviously mankind is not very successful in defeating these problems – and we fear that if we want to create a brighter future, we are running out of time. Apart from cultural distinctions, we have a common view of how the majority of people worldwide want to live. Instead of focussing efforts on realizing the necessary condition, people are tangled in religious or ideological struggles. Hence as one impact of this, millions cannot believe in a future in their own country and are forced to escape. Even if many individuals can find a new home, the destination countries are both not able and not willing to guarantee a dignified life. So what could be done? The necessity of money to develop poor countries is often emphasized. It is said that investments in infrastructure and economy should be provided. In 2015, the Nobel Prize in economic sciences was awarded to Angus Deaton for his analysis of consumption, poverty and welfare. One of his conclusions is: development aid prevents (people from) establishing a responsible population and prevents eventually democratic structures and welfare as well. Let us skip the debate and not concern ourselves with matters we cannot influence. What could be done?

10 | ULRICH D RUWE & W ALTER ROHRER

As teachers we have to prepare children’s and young people’s ability to advocate for a better world in which they can live a life in freedom and dignity. That is the noble major task of education. Education itself is powerless without appropriate preferences in politics and population. But on the other hand, education is strongly needed because a peaceful life together, the acceptance of certain principles as human rights, the cause of economic prosperity and democratic structures are never perfectly established. These issues are nourished by permanent debates concerning how we can maximize our efforts. In such deliberation debaters ought to be able to bear and respect different opinions. They should be able to convince others. They should also be able to get convinced by means ofbetter reasons. All of this points to the fact that the most important aim of education is not giving fixed arguments but to educate the ability and willingness to consider permanently claimed reasons – including our own. Education in that sense is a threat to those who believe exclusively in only one truth, however if it is religious, political or ideological. Precisely in those countries in which education could lead to economic and social improvements there are opponents who fight against even with criminal offences and attacks. And in many societies education is often considered in a functional manner in order not to serve human beings themselves but for the sake of economy only. This is a sting in the heart of all fellow educators. It represents also the peak of the iceberg: Education is nowhere taken for granted. Briefly said, all efforts in terms of education are menaced by ignorance, violence and cutting of resources, even though education is enshrined in constitutions and laws. However a gloomy view is drawn, there are also many positive examples. And the most significant circumstance is the willingness of children and young people to learn. Therefore we rather want to underline every single occasion of sharing ideas and encouraging each other. As educators we all need ideas, passion and inspiration, particularly as we have no guarantee to be successful. Anyhow global collaboration seems to be a valuable contribution in order to convey our objectives. We are convinced that any international experience in teacher training programs is essential. More than ever it is important to bring people together who want to share concepts and who want to search proposals in a challenging world of education. We hope our efforts will continue and will thrive in any forms of merging and cooperation.

If you Want Peace, Educate for Peace Education in Afghanistan F RANCISCO R OJAS A RAVENA

In a society at war, what kind of education is necessary? Students need to understand the reasons for violence, the reason why men and women in their communities die, why they are afraid, why international actors are involved in their country’s conflict. In a society that is divided and trapped by conflict, education for peace is the number one requirement. This means education for non-violence, education for inclusion, education for social cohesion, education for Rule of Law, education for legality and ethics. Secondly, educational desertion must decrease and enrolment increase, ideally through reaching all the school-aged population, as well as by improving the quality of education, of the teachers and of the teaching methods. Thirdly, promoting education essentially requires improving the teachers’ competencies as well as improving, and in some cases, establishing and reconstructing, basic educational infrastructure that has been destroyed by decades of war and conflict. Additionally, developing education that promotes skills, values and behaviours that contribute to peace, justice, sustainable development and solidarity is fundamental. A society whose people do not value peace in their minds and in their hearts, will be condemned to repeat cycles of conflict and violence forever. The type of education that we need to promote is education for the 21st century, an education that leaves behind the trauma of decades of history of conflict. An education that uses new technologies to open horizons and promote the value of peace as a vital objective. Today, this means promoting the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals; from an integral perspective and where the weight of SDG No. 16 will be the key factor to achieve the other goals.

12 | FRANCISCO ROJAS ARAVENA

Finally, the education needed is one that allows a process that promotes the respect for human rights and the protection of the planet. If we can advance in this dimension of necessary education, we will be able to find adequate solutions to reduce national tensions. We can find participatory solutions that are capable of building a stable society. This will allow the post-conflict process to achieve the peace and security necessary for development in a short amount of time, as well as the establishment of a society that is free from fear and has the skills to guarantee its basic needs regain its dignity. Without peace, rights cannot be exercised. Without peace, there is no right to education. Without peace, human rights are deeply and increasingly violated. Where there is no peace, there is no development; without development it is not possible to have growth or prosperity, which only creates more poverty, more inequality, more tensions; and violence and conflict are aggravated. All this becomes a permanent way of life where human loss does not matter and neither does the loss of infrastructure, or of the country’s culture and collective memory. At the University for Peace (UPEACE), we welcome the publication of this extraordinary book, Education and Development in Afghanistan: Challenges & Prospects. This book has multiple perspectives and looks at key situations in Afghanistan that jeopardize peace, development, security and education. It is a critical reflection about how development and education can affect peace and how this can be applied to a situation of permanent tension and conflict, such as those taking place in several parts of Afghanistan, including its capital and more secluded communities. World history shows that peace and conflict resolution through pacific means are key conditions for sustainable development. Without these pre-existing conditions, it is not possible to create inclusive education of any kind. On the contrary, school desertion transforms into an increase in violent and extremist militants. Only peace creates possibilities for development and prosperity, which allow for inclusive education structures and the construction of cohesive societies in peaceful coexistence. Resolving a highly complex conflict such as the one in Afghanistan demands reaching multiple consensuses between the actors involved, at a local level as well as with the regional and international actors involved. In order to reach a consensus towards the end of the conflict, the people, their dignity and their needs should be put at the centre, along with a respect for human rights for each one of them. These are the foundations for building governance skills and for developing a Rule of Law for everyone. Without Rule of Law for the whole population and over the whole of the national territory, the possibility of having an extensive, plural, integrative educa-

IF

YOU

W ANT P EACE, E DUCATE FOR P EACE

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tion, which promotes cohesion and coexistence, is very difficult. The State’s primary task is to have effective control over the national territory and with it, over the monopoly of violence. This will allow control over illegal actors and groups and over the illegal arms trade, thus reducing the opportunities for violence. This must be accompanied by public policies aimed at solving basic human needs, including the development and promotion of education. In fractured and polarized societies, finding social identity and social cohesion is fundamental. These are two key values in which solidarity plays a fundamental role in promoting more and better civic coexistence. In this sense, incorporating the basic concepts of peace education will help promote a perspective of non-violence in children and youth, through the use of tools for finding peaceful solutions to everyday conflicts, towards the construction of a national identity that is capable of encompassing ethnic and religious diversity and solidarity as a shared good amongst the whole population. In order to advance in these dimensions, it is necessary to transform basic consensuses into State policies. These will help the country’s inhabitants to overcome the fundamental problems they are suffering. Among these are high levels of poverty, discrimination – especially towards women and girls – and a lack of security. These situations create the foundations that inhibit the ample participation of boys and girls in schools. An essential task refers to coverage, which should increase and, as a result, the consensuses leading to stability and peace, should also increase. Important challenges in the field of education must be overcome, which relate to polarized ideological views, as well as excluding religious perspectives, which prevent substantial agreements and feed cycles of violence. The Afghan society is trying to say, “End violence”. The Afghan society demands peace and coexistence. The society needs to leave illiteracy behind, for which the role of education is fundamental. However, we know that education alone is not enough to guarantee peace. Substantial agreements are necessary to establish the Rule of Law and to enforce that law. From an educational perspective, as this book points out, many obstacles that complicate tasks in the long term must be overcome. This is why we must effectively advance its reach, guaranteeing the presence of the big majority, and of all the boys and girls, in schools. Discrimination towards women must also be eliminated. Women are still being discriminated and do not attend primary or secondary school. Few go to university. As the United Nations has pointed out, the role of women is essential in processes of conflict transformation and resolution. They have more numerous and superior skills for facing conflicts and finding in-

14 | FRANCISCO ROJAS ARAVENA

novative solutions, which is why gender equality is key in the process for reaching a sustainable peace. Likewise, a fundamental task refers to quality. If we recognize the State’s inability to cover the whole of the national territory, in securing the basic public goods needed by its citizens, it is necessary to think about how challenges can be overcome through State, private sector and community partnerships. It is the citizens’ participation which can guarantee more efficient results in this process. At the same time, the new bureaucratic structures that originate throughout the process of establishing national peace should create more transparency and more reliable information than the one currently offered by the statistics on education. Having verifiable information is a complex and difficult task, but it is fundamental when prioritizing and assigning resources, especially for the weaker and more vulnerable sectors. In addition to developing and strengthening the formal education system, it is necessary to overcome the weaknesses and strongly develop initiatives where society plays a key role in the development of new and innovative proposals for education for the 21st century. The national effort put into education and expressed in the National Strategic Plan, which determines ways to face and overcome the new conflicts, opens opportunities for improvement and for building a harmonious society, around the principles promoted by peace education. That is, the promotion of the values established in the Declaration of Human Rights about inclusion and recognizing diversity, all within the context of recovering sustainable growth and development. This will ensure that peace, development and education become key instruments in the construction of the Afghanistan of the future, which, by recovering its historic identity, expresses new values learned in a process of plural education, which promotes national, social, ethnic and religious reconciliation. The University for Peace acknowledges the important effort involved in this publication. We open the doors to international cooperation in order to revisit the spaces for collaboration for a better future for the Afghan society, based on an ample, plural, high-quality education capable of facing the opportunities of the 21st century with optimism. If you want peace, work for peace. If you want peace, educate for peace.

Introduction: Education and Development in Afghanistan between History, Expansion, Hope and Disillusions U WE H. B ITTLINGMAYER , A NNE -M ARIE G RUNDMEIER , R EINHART K ÖSSLER , F ERESCHTA S AHRAI & D IANA S AHRAI

The history of education and development in Afghanistan is one of a bullet-shot kaleidoscope with complex social and political cleavages on a local, regional and global level and heterogeneous conflict lines turning it to a constantly significant political issue. For instance, increasing access to education for people in Afghanistan has been an issue since at least one hundred years and still is constantly discussed until today. Thus, education has historically been and at present still is a contested arena (cf. a.o. Giustozzi/Franco 2011, 2013; Ruttig in this book). Furthermore, it is generally connected to difficult questions of normativity. On the one hand education is closely linked to promises of general development, modernization of the country (MoE 2016), economic prosperity and welfare; on the other hand it is connected to westernization and colonialism that threaten the survival of existing social structures (D. Sahrai/Bittlingmayer 2015). Especially in the “After 9/11-Era”, a clear consciousness has risen that the educational system is one of the key contributors to conflicts. Since the World Conference on Education for All, education in conflict and post-conflict situations has emerged as a new challenge to be addressed by international community. Education is now no longer considered a neutral force for good (Spink 2005: 204).

Particularly in Afghanistan, the “education system, infrastructure and contents were severely affected due to the influence of political ideologies” (Thapa et al. 2010: 18). But besides general ideological questions in the everyday life of people in Afghanistan there are multiple practical challenges to the current Afghan educational system: The access to educational institutions is a key concern for

16 | U. H. B ITTLINGMAYER , A.-M. G RUNDMEIER , R. KÖSSLER , F. S AHRAI , D. S AHRAI

young Afghan returnees (Altai 2006; Habibi/Hunte 2006; Saito 2015) but also for returning adults who were excluded from education in their exile in Iran or Pakistan (cf. The Guardian 2014). Surely, education needs to be discussed in the framework of corruption and the challenging security situation that constantly cause backlashes (Giustozzi/Franco 2011; Naumann 2012; GCPEA 2014; cf. Samar in this book). Additionally, the lack of coordination between different external organizations and institutions engaged in education, e.g. the US-government, DoD, USAID, just to name a few (SIGAR 2016), the underfinancing that this sector faces increasingly, time-limited projects and the lack of evaluation in terms of effective outcomes represent furthermore urgent challenges (for a positive example of an evaluated project cf. Stanikzai et al. in this book). Finally, the problem of Brain Drain despite local capacity-building counteracts the idea of sustainable development which makes the need for a change in paradigm in the relationship between security and development or peace an alerting issue. Looking into the current foreign policy agenda under the Trump administration, when it comes to Afghanistan (e.g. increase of intransparency and power submission to the military), the increased gain of territory by the Taleban, the faltering negotiations between the conflict actors and thus an increase of attacks and violent confrontations, the development of a broad education system in terms of sustainability becomes less auspicious. Furthermore, the intransparency in terms of other hidden actors building Ghost Schools, Ghost Teachers und Ghost Students cause an additional level of complexity that is hard to encounter systematically (a.o. Tolo News 2015a, 2015c, 2016a, 2016b; cf. Naumann and Ruttig in this volume). Despite all the above-mentioned challenges, education remains an emergency (cf. Samar in this book). However, there is hardly any aspect in the realm of education in Afghanistan that is not severely contested. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the contributions in this volume represent a broad spectrum of positions, some of which are even contradictory. For example: There are positions that plea for a strategy which concentrates primarily on the security situation (Hanif, Anonymous) and there are positions that do not (Samar, Wardak); there are positions that associate increasing educational access directly with positive societal development (Wardak, Kässer, Nashir-Steck, Noor), there are positions which do not (Ruttig, Jones, Naumann, Jawid) and there is a position which questions very much the principle idea of development for countries of the Global South (Kößler). In this volume we do not pretend to have sophisticated answers to the complex questions that pop up in the context of education in Afghanistan. However, we try to follow two lines simultaneously: first we give space for perspectives on education

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and development in Afghanistan from different angles in order to illustrate education as a contested arena; second we present theoretical (Kößler, Ruttig), empirical (Harsch/Bittlingmayer, Wardak, Naumann, Jawid), practical (Stanikzai et al., Müller, Kässer, Nashir-Steck, Goldenberg, L. Sahrai, Wirz et al.) as well as political (Anonymous, Noor, Samar) perspectives in order to prevent the discussions about education and development in Afghanistan from being reduced to ideological issues. In this introduction we would like to give a brief overview of historical and current dimensions of the topic education and development in Afghanistan and to sharpen the understanding of the complexity of the topic.

P ROMISES OF THE N EAR P AST AND THE C URRENT S ITUATION After 40 years of monarchy under the rule of King Zahir Shah (1933-1973), the coup by his cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan and the exclamation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (1973-1978) and the subsequent carnages of the different communist fractions within the scope of the Saur Revolution in 1978, the following intrusion of the Soviet army in 1979 provoked further conflict parties (the Mujaheddin) to contribute to the potentialization of violent clashes. Finally, the ongoing brutal Afghan Civil War (1992-1996) – after the withdrawal of the Soviet army in 1989 and a short period of communist reign under Mohammed Nadschibullah (1987-1992) – led to the rise and reign of the Taleban regime (1996-2001) and their push back in 2001 by the NATO led invasion called ISAF. Tired by the cumulation of violent conflicts and oppressions in this war-torn country the people saw some hope in the presence of the international community and indeed experienced (even if partially) a sense of development. A bunch of promises in terms of extensions in the educational, cultural, political and economic sectors encouraged many Afghans to participate in the reconstruction of the country. The basis of the idea of a humanitarian intervention “providing access to education was one of the rights-based aims President George W. Bush used to justify the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001” (Burde 2014: 32). Other crucial issues were the rights of woman which were severely suppressed by the Taleban (cf. Samar in this book) and the enforcement of human rights for children (Heath/Zahedi 2015). U.S. women’s rights activists contributed much to legitimize the war against the Taleban in order to improve the situation of Afghan woman. Finally, the invasion should be a palpable and visible strike against terrorism after the declaration of the global war on terrorism by the Bush Administration. Meanwhile, a lot of criticism against this intervention has been ex-

18 | U. H. B ITTLINGMAYER , A.-M. G RUNDMEIER , R. KÖSSLER , F. S AHRAI , D. S AHRAI

pressed by the Afghan people as well as by Western scientists, intellectuals and even politicians. The results of more than one and a half decades of military commitment by the ISAF in Afghanistan are shattering: Although the German government points out in a recent official publication that the situation in Afghanistan is better than in 2001 and that a considerable development in the right direction has taken place (German Government 2015), most experts from disciplines like political sciences, international affairs, peace studies, military studies, social geography, and sociology express legitimate doubts regarding this less differentiated perspective. Looking at the proclaimed aims that were meant to justify the heavily military led intervention, not a single one has been fully reached: the abolishment of the Taleban-movement and the installation of a democratic state, the end of drug production and sustainable economic development, security and enforcement of women’s rights or the fight against corruption. Those objectives that figure most prominently on the official agenda are far from being realized (cf. for the German discourse Ruttig 2014; Krüger 2014; Ruttig 2015 cf. for the international discourse a.o. SIGAR 2016). To sum it up very briefly: “grand promises made with the 2001 invasion have not been kept” (Heath 2015: 16). Norway is the only country so far that has unsparingly and publicly evaluated its own contribution to the NATO-led Afghanistan campaign. The so-called Godal report documents very clearly the failure of the mission; at least as far as official aims are concerned. The cynical result of the report is that the most important goal pursued by Norway’s administration and the only one fully reached is to “be recognized as a trustworthy supporter of the USA and a good NATO ally” (Wilkens 2016: 2). The failure of the NATO intervention and the recent developments should surprise nobody who was skeptical about the plan to transform Afghanistan into a centralized Western nation state from the very beginning (O.-Kh. Sahrai 2018). “The fetishizing and imposition of one-size-fits-all Western-style democracy and Western ideals and ideas are not necessarily appropriate for a tribal, dynastic society and can result in backlash” (Heath 2015: 12). There are plausible arguments that Afghanistan will never be a westernized democratic nation state because it lacks a strong centralized power and provinces that voluntarily accept the rules coming from the capital. According to this position, a more convincing model for Afghanistan would be a decentralized nation state with highly autonomous provinces, without necessarily having a capital and with a very strong type of federalism – the so called Swiss Solution (cf. Kux/Tenham 2015). Thus, one dimension of the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan is the very traditional fight for autonomy of highly independent regions against the centralized power of Kabul, which goes back in time to the efforts of Amanullah to

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modernize the country in the early 20th century. This dimension is important to remember particularly for education – we will return to this point extensively later. But even if one agrees with the idea that Afghanistan is able to manage a transformation to a Westernized democracy, it has to be admitted that the construction process of building the new Afghanistan was fraught with severe mistakes and shortcomings. Probably and most importantly, there was a failure to build a sustainable economy in Afghanistan. The invading forces brought a lot of money into the country, but they failed to establish economic structures that could survive the withdrawal of the foreign military. Thus, they saw themselves trapped into an old aid-dilemma: “it is easier – more direct, with more visible results – to give a man a fish than to teach him how to fish” (Burde 2014: 53). The presence of foreign troops, diplomats, NGOs and aid organizations brought jobs, most of all in the service sector, which is closely linked with their presence. For this reason, and due to the money spent in cooperation projects between the Afghan and foreign governments, the economy grew in average 9 percent during this collaboration between 2002 to 2012. But the effects were short-term. In 2014, the economic growth was only 1.5 percent (Ruttig 2015: 18). The international community left a country, which is not able to pay its own army, police and civil service (van Bijlert 2015: 6). Due to several reasons Afghanistan’s economy collapsed in 2014: first, the donor countries significantly reduced their financial aid. From 2010 to 2012, the U.S. alone reduced its financial aid from 4.5 Billion Dollar to 1.8 Billion Dollar. The consequences of NATO’s troop withdrawal reflect directly on the rate of unemployment. As seen in Figure 1, according to recent World Bank data (with questionable validity for Afghanistan) the rate of unemployment in Afghanistan explodes after 2012 to 40 percent; only Djibouti, DR Congo and Bosnia-Hercegovina did worse in 2015 (World Bank 2016a). However, even in the documentation of unemployment rates the numbers and shares differ dramatically – there are sources that count the Afghan unemployment rate even in 2016 at 8.6 percent (Trading Economics 2018). The comparably trustworthy recent overview of the World Bank (2018) sums up the current economic situation as follows: Economic recovery is slow as continued insecurity curtails private investment and consumer demand. Growth remains principally driven by agriculture. The fiscal position remained strong in the first half of 2017. Poverty has increased since the start of the international troop withdrawal in 2011 and amid the resulting decline in economic growth.

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Such evaluations and data make it highly unlikely that anybody would claim that the latest Western Afghanistan campaign was a success story and based on sustainability. But on the other hand, it is important to note that for the case of Afghanistan it is not reasonable in the first place to pose binary questions: “Did we fail or did we succeed? Is the situation better or worse? Will the country fall apart or will there be progress? […] Afghanistan’s reality tends to be more mixed” (van Bijlert 2015: 7). As the situation in Afghanistan went from bad to worse in many realms in recent years, the question of how this country might develop along a non-violent path has gained urgency. Among all analytical and practical works and trials, there is one answer which apparently has the potential to bridge most of the gaps in this conflict and which is very promising in many respects: expand education significantly! “If well designed, a country’s education system is the backbone of societal development and as such can be a stepping stone and springboard toward a more stable, prosperous, sustainable future” (Naumann 2012: 5). Figure 1: Afghanistan’s unemployment rate in percent

45

40

40 35 30

25

25

20 15 10

8,4

8,6

8,4

8,7

8,5

8,4

8,7

8

5

0 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 © World Bank (2016a)

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E DUCATIONAL E XPANSION : A P ROGRAMMATIC I SSUE WITH M ANY P LAYERS I NVOLVED Apart from the poor record of the Western military and non-military commitment, still there are some visible developments and improvements that are reported. In this anthology, we want to focus particularly on education and its possible contribution for development and empowerment in Afghanistan. In the confusing pool of ideas about how to improve the situation of people in Afghanistan, one suggestion is very widespread and enjoys high levels of agreement amongst a large number of governmental institutions, NGO’s and private social actors and official organizations: focus on education! The strategy to expand education significantly is obvious since education on the ground in Afghanistan is still very poor. The UNESCO Office in Kabul (2016) describes the status as follows: Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, currently estimated at about 31 % of the adult population (over 15 years of age). Female literacy levels are on average 17 %, with high variation, indicating a strong geographical and gender divide. The highest female literacy rate, for instance, is 34.7 %, found in the capital, Kabul, while rates as low as 1.6 % are found in two southern provinces of the country. Male literacy rates average about 45 %, again with high variation. The highest male literacy rates are in Kabul, at 68 %, while the lowest is found in Helmand, at 41 %.

It is noticeable that a great variety of numerous players exert an incredible amount of effort to improve the educational situation. It is no surprise that the UNESCO is heavily involved in these efforts. For instance, the UNESCO program “Enhancing the Literacy in Afghanistan” (ELA) is funded for three periods of time alone, more than a decade. Furthermore, education is a long-standing topic of the World Bank, which has been vigorously active in the Afghan educational sector. The World Bank still follows the neoliberal approach, presupposing that investment in human capital will lead to economic growth and development. At the Afghanistan Conference in Brussels in October 2016, World Bank representatives still upheld their mantra. As the second of four key massages, they pointed out that “agricultural development and increased investment in human capital can drive economic growth and job creation” (The World Bank 2016b). The proof relies on statistical data: “The poor are considerably less educated than the non-poor in Afghanistan. The poor are 20 % more likely to be illiterate and 15 % less likely to have completed primary education past the age of 15” (The World Bank 2016c: 14).

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Third, education plays an important role in the Cooperation Agreement on Partnership and Development (CAPD), which was signed by Afghanistan and the EU in 2015 (Tolo News 2015b). Lastly, educational activities are very important for the policies and developmental aid strategies of foreign countries. Next to the U.S.A., Japan, Denmark, Sweden, China, Iran and Germany are committed in education activities in Afghanistan at the level of national administrations and ministries on a grand scale. In terms of finance, the commitment is really high: between 2002 and 2014. USAID, the U.S. government and the Department of Defense spent about 759 Million US-Dollars on education programs (SIGAR 2016). Table 1: DOD, State, and USAID Programs and Funding to support primary and secondary education in Afghanistan (FY 2002 – FY 2014) Number of Programs

Amount Spent

DOD

1

$141,725,444 a

State

7

$3,884,753 b

USAID

31

$613,974,138

Total

39

$759,584,135

Notes: a) Although the scope of the overall audit FY 2002 covers through FY 2014, information for DOD only includes data from FY 2004 through FY 2014. DOD spent at least $141.7 million on efforts to support primary and secondary education but the total amount DOD spent is likely higher. b) Reported State program and funding data include data from FY 2011 through FY 2014. © SIGAR analysis of DOD, State, and USAID data (SIGAR 2016: 6)

Beneath the governmental or ministry levels, there are subordinated institutions and organizations that execute the political will to cooperate with Afghanistan’s institutions and support the political developmental aims. The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for example runs programs, mostly fellowships, all over Germany that support Afghan researchers, teachers and students who are willing to visit Germany as well as Germans who want to work in Afghanistan. Based on these programs, universities and institutes of higher education signed memorandums of understandings to foster teacher & student exchange (cf. Jawid

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and Hanif in this book). Moreover, in Germany alone approximately 250 NGOs are running projects in Afghanistan, partly due to transnational relationships of Afghan migrants living in Germany, and most of them are actively involved in educational projects (cf. Harsch/Bittlingmayer in this anthology). The number of actors committed to support the educational system in Afghanistan is vast (cf. Naumann 2012), but some actors are more visible and dominant than others in terms of delivering financial aid, etc. The Afghan Ministry of Education pointed out very clearly that their next educational Five-Year-Plan was built in close cooperation with actors from the important donor countries: Afghanistan’s Development Partners (e.g. USAID, DFID, the World Bank, the UN Agencies and the Embassies of Sweden, Canada, Germany, Australia, Japan, Norway, Finland and Denmark) have been fully involved in the planning process for NESP III. Civil society and NGO implementing partners have been represented also through the participation of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, Save the Children, the Aga Khan Foundation and Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief. (MoE 2016: 2)

The main reason why Afghan’s Ministry of Education works so closely with foreign institutions is that the Afghan government is unable to finance the high cost of modernizing the educational system. The reasons why so many foreign institutions are involved in this field is that they see educational development as a long-term investment strategy for a lot of goals.

P ROMISING D IMENSIONS OF E DUCATION : E CONOMIC D EVELOPMENT , P EACE AND S ECURITY , N ATION B UILDING ? In international discourses on development, economy and educational sciences, education is seen as a precondition for a sound societal development. First of all, education is directly linked to economic development, particularly in terms of economic growth. During the official launch of the third phase of the UNESCO program “Enhancing the Literacy in Afghanistan” (ELA), the former Minister of Education, Farooq Wardak, said that “literacy is the only approach for improvement and growth in the country” (MoE 2013). This direct link between education and economic growth is taken from the idea of a globalized knowledge society in which the production and application of academic, respectively scientific knowledge has become more important for value production than manual work. The theory of the knowledge society origi-

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nated with Daniel Bell (1973) and Peter Drucker (1969) and outlined a postindustrial U.S.-American society in which there was a considerable change from non-skilled manual work to work done by academics (technicians, engineers). The knowledge society reflects the end or the visible decline of the fordistic production regime and the early expansion of educational participation in highly industrialized countries. As one important consequence, directly linked to the rise of digital or cognitive capitalism (Schiller 2000), the knowledge economy is said to deliver the most valuable contribution to national economies (Foray 2004). “Formal knowledge is seen as both the key personal resource and the key economic resource. Knowledge is the only meaningful resource today” (Drucker 1998: 29). Since the 1990s, the idea of the knowledge society was heavily supported by the OECD and soon adopted by the EU (OECD 1996a, 1996b, 2000; Delors 1993; Commission of the European Communities 1994a, 1994b, 1996). After fifteen years of a global discourse about knowledge societies, most of the political administrations worldwide follow this programmatic idea – there are programs to establish knowledge societies and knowledge-based economies in India, Egypt and Brazil, China, Saudi-Arabia and Columbia, Azerbaijan, Tanzania, and also in Afghanistan (for an early critique cf. Sahrai & Sahrai 2006). It is not possible to go into detail here but the relationship between knowledge, education and economy is much more complex than the idea of a knowledge society suggests (cf. Bittlingmayer et al. 2016). For the Afghan case, it is urgent to take into consideration that an expansion of formal education does not necessarily lead to an expansion of labor market opportunities – as recent experiences in SouthEuropean countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal have clearly shown. All of these boast a much higher rate of academics than Germany, Switzerland or Austria, while at the same time, rates of unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, are much higher in the Southern European countries mentioned. Apart from the economic line of the argumentation for educational expansion, there is another important argument to strengthen the education of Afghan people and to increase their educational participation that is (at least partially) independent from expected economic benefits. Every Afghan has an individual right to education (cf. Jones in this volume)! Nowadays, the access to education is seen as a most valuable human right and the struggle for education, wherever it takes place, seems to be an end for itself. In this perspective, Afghanistan made visible progress and enrollment rates for children and adolescents increased remarkably (cf. Naumann and Wardak in this book). According to official data from the Afghan Ministry of Education,

I NTRODUCTION

| 25

[the] Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has made significant achievements with the support of the Development Partners (DPs) in rebuilding Afghanistan’s education system. The number of children in school has risen by almost nine times. Remarkable progress has been made in rebuilding schools and increasing overall enrollments from approximately 0.9 million students in 2001, almost none of them girls, to more than 9.2 million students in 1394 (2015) with 39 % of them being female. New schools have been established in rural villages to reduce the walking distance from home. The number of schools has increased from 3,400 to 16,400. (MoE 2016: 13)

Although the validity of the presented data is often questioned (cf. Naumann 2011; Naumann 2012; SIGAR 2016), it cannot be denied that much progress was made in regards to the educational participation in the last decade. It is noteworthy that the Afghan Ministry of Education is comparatively honest in naming current and expected problems and challenges that remain a concern after investing so much donor money (cf. MoE 2011; MoE 2016: Ch. 4; Wardak in this book). But furthermore, there might be some more fundamental problems with the focus on increased enrollment rates as a catch-all indicator for a positive development. First of all, it is not clear whether the incorporation of a standardized instrument of comparison is necessarily suitable for the whole Afghan country (cf. Steck in our book). Reports on Afghanistan and its education system always emphasize that particularly in terms of standards of education it is considered a “backward” country and that its reform needs support, most of all in terms of increasing measurable dimensions like students’ enrollment rates, number of university students, number of dissertations per year and so on. Although this assumption might be partly true (concerning technical development), it also implies a devaluation of all local forms of knowledge including informal ones and forms of knowledge on which the society is built in general. At the same time, Afghanistan is required to adapt officially to international standards it will never be able to live up to. The fruits of its efforts are then projected into the future with the promise that an even more thorough adaptation to international standards will finally bring success along “Western” lines. The third aspect when it comes to education in Afghanistan, is the hope that increased participation in the education system incorporates a “peace dividend”. This hope is based on different assumptions and arguments that education – in the Western idea of it – is said to be linked to the capacity of individual control in terms of violent behavior and of more reflective patterns of behavior (Elias 1976). A more systematic approach reflects the idea that schools could play a vital role and deliver a significant opportunity to support students in terms of developing, living and spreading a peace culture. A lot of programs in terms of

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publishing textbooks and materials promoting peace can be mentioned in this context. The Afghan Ministry of Education, in cooperation with the German GIZ has produced teacher and student manuals for peace education (cf. Müller & Krause-Harnak as well as Stanikzai et al. in our volume). Being aware of the fact that on the other hand schools as well as text books can be misused as henchmen of structural violence, spreading war culture instead and instrumentalizing them for other (political) interests or ideological formations, makes the legitimate positioning of the school institution an ambiguous concern and explains the questioning of the same in many areas, especially in Afghanistan regarding its historical experience of invasions and interferences. The arguments and strategies in favor of peace education are often accompanied by the idea and the general hope that education will lead to more peace. The commitment to implement peaceful, non-violent conflict transformation creatively and empathetically should nevertheless be carefully reflected on from multivariable aspects and perspectives since education cannot be negotiated upon detached from the actors financing or implementing the materials, neither from the political nor socio-cultural circumstances. Thus, implementing new materials, building up schools and other activities linked to education, always has to make sure to have the legitimacy of the population involved. Within a multiethnic, segmented – not to mention conflict-ridden – society, this is a big challenge. Another difficulty lies in the fact that the statement “more peace education less violence” is empirically hard to prove since there are a lot of empirical studies from youth sociology that do not underline this argument. Furthermore, from the perspective of development cooperation, there is another disturbing phenomenon that most suicide bombers are more educated than the average in their home countries (Burde 2014). To sum it up, the reasonable assumption that increased education leads to more peace confronts strong theoretical and empirical objections. A last crucial benefit that is expected from investment in education concerns the significant importance accorded to education for establishing and stabilizing a national state and a national consciousness. In the sociology of education, the implementation of a standardized school system on a given territory was – in its functional dimension – always closely linked with the enforcement of a national culture. Surprisingly, this important side-effect of legitimizing the political administration as the institution being generally responsible for this system through the establishment of a well-defined educational system is openly mentioned by various actors:

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The United Nations Children’s Fund characterizes education as a fundamental human right that is critical to development, can promote cohesive societies, and contributes to state building. The Afghan Ministry of Education’s 2011 National Priority Plan – Education for All characterizes education as ‘not only a prerequisite for economic development but also an essential building block in national efforts of reconciliation and peace-building’. (SIGAR 2016: 1; italics deleted)

But the flipside of this argument is that the different groups of insurgents, most of all the Taleban, believe the same (cf. D. Sahrai/Bittlingmayer 2015). This is the most important reason why there is an ongoing battle for schools (Giustozzi/Franco 2011). But it is of high relevance to note that this conflict has existed for more than a hundred years. Up to now, we have contextualized education and educational development in the light of current debates, strategies and efforts. In addition, we consider it also necessary to take on two further important dimensions that affect every current struggle for education directly and indirectly. These dimensions are firstly the history of the conflicts produced by attempts of educational reforms by political authorities, and secondly the struggle about understanding what exactly should be associated with development at all.

H ISTORICAL C ONFLICTS IN AFGHANISTAN

ABOUT

E DUCATION

As elsewhere in the world, formal education in Afghanistan has always been a privilege of the rich and powerful few. In general, education – in a broader sense of the word – has been integrated in everyday life as well as general socialization and was passed down by word of mouth and practical example from generation to generation. This informal and non-institutionalized education, imbedded in everyday life, provides the basis for vocational training as well as for the transmission of norms and values. Grassroots education has traditionally been limited to Quran schools, where pupils were taught to recite verses of the Quran. In recent years the Quran schools or madrasas gained special international attention because the Taleban regime tried to shape them into a normalized public school system. Contrary to the scandalizations in the western press, however, these schools have not been an invention of the Taleban but have existed and still exist besides secular schools in all Islamic countries. As for modern schools, access to Quran schools has traditionally been organized hierarchically according to socioeconomic background. While in such schools one could only read and recite the

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Quran, in higher schools and universities translations, analyses and interpretations of religious texts were carried out in a scientific manner. But what they all have in common is the fact that they were all religiously based on secular education, only forming a minor part of higher education. Thus, secular subjects like arts, aesthetics, literature, geometry, mathematics, astronomy etc. have always been the privilege of the upper classes as well as members of the nobility and were cultivated in some cultural centers like Kabul, Balkh, Herat, Kandahar, Bamyan and mostly at the courts of kings and rulers, where tuition was provided by private teachers. The majority of the population and members of subaltern and disadvantaged ethnic groups (e.g. Hazara) were often excluded from any formal and institutional education. The introduction, establishment and spread of the modern education system in Afghanistan cannot be fully understood without considering the national and international political and historical background. Thus, the direction a school system is given and the way it is established in each historical moment, always relates to the general political and ideological attitudes of the dominating powers towards e.g. modernization, religion and development in the country. In addition, it is always a result of efforts to create and/or maintain a national identity and sovereignty as well as build a nation-state with a central power along the lines of western democracies – a project not so easily accomplished for the Afghan society. Nevertheless, a public-school system is seen as one of the most important instruments to achieve this goal. Finally, the constitution of public education has always been regarded by foreign powers – Great Britain, the Soviet Union and now the U.S. – as a means to “westernize” the country, to bring it under their hegemonic power and thus to extend colonial policies also into the cultural sphere. This may also have been the main reason for the strong efforts of the British in materially and ideologically supporting a public education system in Afghanistan. The role of the British and other powers in developing an Afghan education system will be dealt with in the following sections. The beginnings of the modern education system in Afghanistan can be dated to 1904. At that time King Habibullah Khan – supported by teachers from British India – founded Habibia, the first modern high school in Kabul, which was under British administration until 1919. This school aimed i.a. to contract qualified staff for the Afghan administration to modernize the country politically, economically and administratively. One of the most important and influential figures for the modernization process of education and society in Afghanistan was Mahmud Tarzi. Influenced by western education and the “young Turks”, he returned to Afghanistan after King Habibullah ascended the throne in 1901. He was eager to modernize the country and to provide access to education for everybody. Tarzi,

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who is often called the father of modernization in Afghanistan, struggled against the British, fought for a strong and sovereign Afghan nation-state. Moreover, he was convinced that education was the only means to bring freedom and independence to Afghanistan. Tarzi’s notion of education was steeped in western concepts. He and like-minded intellectuals struggled for the constitution of a national education system according to a western model: they translated classic literary works of the age of enlightenment, and Tarzi was also considerably involved in the foundation of the Habibia High School. The political efforts concerning education in Afghanistan were linked paradoxically between the Afghan intellectuals and the British. Although Tarzi, as well as other intellectuals and the British were working to build an exhaustive enrollment and a public-school system, their main motives were clearly opposed to each other. Afghan intellectuals had an enlightened, emphatic, emancipative notion of education. For them education was an instrument which was meant to enable the Afghans to reach international standards in technological, medical and scientific fields. On the other hand, education was supposed to enhance a critical stance towards the powers and allow a free and sovereign life. The British intentions in developing a public education system were partially aimed at the adjustment of the country to international standards and to the transfer of technical know-how. Nevertheless, most of the time the British did not attempt to strengthen the emancipative forces through the extension of the education system in the first place, but rather strengthen and enforce British cultural hegemony (Sakhawaz 2005). Thus, a paradox situation existed with two groups of actors having divergent motives who worked for the proliferation of modern public education. Tarzi had to struggle for his ideals against the government and had to deal with censorship and limitations in his work during the reign of King Habibullah Khan. After the accession of King Amanullah and the proclamation of Afghan independence in 1919 he received official support from the government. King Amanullah was urging – along the model of Turkey’s Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – a modern, western-like, but independent and sovereign Afghan state. This included also the introduction of an institutionalized national public education system. Under the reign of Amir Amanullah Khan (1919-1929), the youngest son of Amir Habibullah Khan, new schools of diverse kinds emerged. They were not only established in the capital of Kabul – which at the same time was the modern cultural center of the country – but also in the provinces. More than three hundred elementary and primary schools, vocational schools in technical and agricultural sectors were included, most of them established in the course of only three years (Sadri 2002). For the first time Amanullah established a feeless com-

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pulsory six-year education in Afghanistan. Scholarships gave students the opportunity to study in foreign countries, and women also gained access to universities. The educational modernization process suffered a harsh setback after Amanullah was toppled due to the usurpation of the throne by Amir Habibullah Kalakani (also derogatorily called Bachae-Saqao “son of a water carrier”, a very low position in the Afghan social structure, by the people), who was supported by British strategic, military and financial aid. Although being in power for only nine months, Habibullah Kalakani managed to repeal all reforms initiated by Amanullah, for instance the extension of girls’ schools, the abolition of the prescription of veiling of women and other steps towards modernization. King Nader Khan, who took power in 1929, began his reign with rather careful and moderate steps towards modernization in order to prevent agitations among the population. For example reforms concerning women’s rights were once again abolished. King Nader Khan was killed by a student in 1933 and his son Zahir Shah became the new king of Afghanistan, he reigned over Afghanistan until 1973. During the sixties and the seventies of the 20th century, the Afghan education system reached its first peak of new as well as reopened schools and enrollment rates. The increasing number of new schools was facilitated by foreign aid of the great industrial powers which i.a. followed the logic of hegemonic and political interests of the Cold War. After the Second World War and especially during the fifties and sixties, Afghanistan had been in the focus of ideological and political competition. Both East and West were forthcoming in generously promoting the development of the country according to their own ideological direction. The same applied to the opening of schools and the supply of teachers and teaching materials. The re-openings of the Afghan-German Amani High School and the anglophone Habibia as well as the establishment of the francophone Esteqlal High School are some of the examples for this policy. The rising number of high school graduates led to an increased demand for higher education, which could not be met by the few universities and technical schools of the country. The growing demands for the improvement of the education system resulted in ideologically and politically motivated protests – a mechanism which is clearly described by Pierre Bourdieus study “Homo academicus” for the French student movement in the 1960s (Bourdieu 1984). A new intellectual elite was established during this era. Most of them had studied in foreign countries and – enthusiastic about the development in those countries – sought to import progress and development to Afghanistan. During this period not only the demands for more technical progress, but also for better education, improved medical care, more political participation and even for the

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abolishment of the monarchy were raised. To put it in a nutshell, a better life for all. In the sixties of the 20th century, Afghanistan’s universities became the main combat area for a range of political groups who struggled amongst themselves on the one hand and against the government on the other. In some phases the monarchy was forced to make concessions to avoid further protests during that time. Interestingly, general education was not introduced until 1975, when the king’s cousin and former Prime Minister Daud Khan staged a coup against the king and declared himself president: that was the end of the monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic of Afghanistan. In the so-called fundamental reforms, the six-year primary school and the three-year rural school were restructured into the eight-year primary school (Kazemi-Trensch 2003: 78). After the overthrow of Daud Khan’s regime and the assumption of power by Taraki and the socialist “Democratic People’s Party of Afghanistan“ in April 1978, radical reforms were introduced for the first time since Amanullah (1919 – 1929). In a very short period of time, a series of radical reforms were decreed in the fields of law, political participation, land ownership, education and last but not least equal rights for men and women were introduced (Grevemeyer 1990). Alhough these reforms proceeded within the scope of a strategic assumption of power, especially girls and women have profited from these reforms in the education sector. This applies also to some ethnic minority groups who had been culturally and linguistically discriminated. Thus, for the first time in Afghan history, there was a supply of books, teaching materials, radio- and television broadcasts in Uzbek language. Despite many reform efforts, Afghan education hardly progressed in a sustainable way. Reasons for this were, among others, mass-emigration particularly of the well-educated middle classes who mostly belonged to the privileged Shah supporters. Another reason was the war between the socialist government supported by the Soviet Union and the Mudjahedin, supported by foreign powers, above all Pakistan, USA, Saudi Arabia and China. During the period of socialist power, schools and universities worked at least in the urban areas. The situation became more fragile after the collapse of the communist regime in 1992, due to internal power struggles among the different groups of Mudjahedin and the following civil war. Thus, for the first time Kabul had been so strongly hit by the civil war that school and university infrastructures were seriously affected. After the assumption of power by the Taleban however, public education as it was established, suffered a complete collapse when the new rulers made schools and universities systematically inaccessible, especially for women. Most of them have been converted to Koran schools and thus religious education became the primary focus. A new euphoria about an ex-

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tended education emerged after the collapse of the Taleban and the American invasion in the year 2002.

I SSUES

OF

(E DUCATIONAL ) D EVELOPMENT

Development is an evasive term (see Kößler in this volume). Most versions of a socio-economic development discourse address, in one way or the other, issues of late development or in other terms, late industrialization or modernization. Sparked by the industrial revolution, which started in England during the last third of the 18th century, attempts and strategies proliferated around the globe to stand up to the challenge posed by this momentous change. Besides falling prices of commodities such as cotton cloth, these challenges concerned particularly the extension of Britain’s and, more generally, Western Europe’s military power. A series of drives for self-strengthening therefore strove to secure the means to fend off what was seen as a vital danger to societies which increasingly came under duress. These dangers ranged from colonial or semi-colonial occupation to deeply-rooted social upheaval. Strategists of self-strengthening met with various successes, as can be seen from instances such as the reforms of Tsar Alexander II of Russia from 1856 onwards, the Tongzhi Restauration (1862-1874) in China, the Meiji Restauration in Japan from 1868, the defeat of Italian colonialism by Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia in 1896, or the efforts of King Mandume ya Ndemufayo of Oukwanyama in today’s northern Namibia and southern Angola which ended in defeat in 1917. The reforms staged by successive kings in Afghanistan, above all Amir Amanullah, also fall into this line of efforts to grapple with the colonial challenge. Self-strengthening was predicated on appropriating crucial technologies that had emerged with the industrial revolution. In many cases, the strategy involved also attempts to avoid what was seen as deleterious effects of industrialization, such as the rapid growth of towns and the formation of an urban proletariat, along with the risks of social upheaval. Many of the issues that were debated a century later under the headings of modernization or development were already broached in hammering out strategies for early late comers which before the 1850s and 1860s included also the U.S. or Germany. One of the approaches that still figures quite prominently in debates on development goes back to the German economist and politician Friedrich List who in 1841 published a book that may be seen as a blueprint of self-strengthening with reference to Germany. One of List’s mainstays (see further Kößler in this volume) was his emphasis on ‘productive forces’, and here, mental capital, edu-

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cation and science figured prominently (see e.g. Daastøl 2016: 89-91). For such reasons, popular education and the qualification of the workforce have been widely considered as a vital prerequisite of successful catching up with supposedly advanced countries. This is not only because participation in industrial and generally modernized work processes requires at the very least proficiency in the famous ‘R3s’ – reading, reckoning and writing – and by now much more, such as a certain degree of dexterity in computers. Moreover, from its beginnings the school and in particular when it became a compulsory public institution everybody had to pass through, has functioned as a powerful instrument of secondary socialization, instilling into learners (self-)discipline and often also ideological stances such as nationalist convictions (cf. Thien 1984). Such forms of education and deeply-rooted educational change then may have been conducive and indeed indispensable for late development. But they were in any case also quite invasive – not only for the children subjected to this form of learning, but also to the families from which vital portions of the socialization process were taken and placed into the public realm, out of their control and subject to administrative whims and scrutiny. Even in a country like Germany, parts of which have known compulsory school education for more than two centuries, these issues have by no means fully been laid aside – just consider the sometimes heated debates about day care for very young children. The suitability of forms of schooling that may in one way or the other be considered as traditional at least in some areas, or of religious schools, may, especially from a mainstream developmental point of view, be seen quite critically. Such an evaluation will pertain at least as long as such institutions are not seen to convey the vital dexterities needed to function within a modernized environment. As mentioned, also religious schools come in quite different forms in Afghanistan and may hold attractions for those who can afford them. However, even then, from a developmental perspective, one would need to question the curriculum of such institutions. In the past, even an expanded education sector has led, in a number of countries, to frustration and academic unemployment when people did not take heed of actual needs for expertise or took upward mobility for granted as a spoil for higher education as such. Similar issues may arise from an emphasis on religious subjects. Again, mother tongue instruction is seen frequently as a means to bring the school nearer to the people, but once again this device offers a number of pitfalls (see Jones in this volume). Not least, these include the issue of linking up to up-to-date technology, otherwise seen as a prime reward for an advanced educational system. Furthermore, all of these considerations have to be read under the caveat that the endeavor of catching up, which is germane to any strategy of development,

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and, particularly, to the promises such strategies are associated with for those who may suffer and sacrifice for this goal, may well prove to be as elusive as the term itself (see Kößler in this volume).

C ONTENT

OF THE

B OOK

In this book we try to catch up with the challenge of the complex topic education and development in Afghanistan through a mixture of theoretical and empirical contributions as well as contributions that present concrete projects in the educational settings and political statements at the end of the book. In the first book section “Development and Education for Peace? Some Perspectives” contributions are presented which question the widely agreed close link between education, peace and development. Reinhart Kößler starts with a critique about the notion of development which is deeply rooted in optimistic modernization theories, hardly applicable for most of the countries located in the Global South. Afterwards, Adele Jones gives some background to the multiple languages of Afghanistan, the inclusion of ‘minority’ languages in National Education Strategic Plans, and considers their role in Afghanistan’s national cohesion/reconstruction, and current national, minority and foreign language teaching implementation strategies. She argues that there is a clear case to be made for the right of people to learn their own language, but there is also the question of the development of quality textbooks, and training teachers to teach other minority languages, and with it, the involvement of communities. Stefanie Harsch and Uwe H. Bittlingmayer analyze the commitment of German NGOs that run educational projects in Afghanistan. They present data from an empirical onlinesurvey they have conducted. The survey shows that Afghan migrants, living in Germany are often involved in long-term engagement in Afghanistan, including in rural regions, and to make excellent use of their access to funds and expertise from abroad. In the last contribution of the first section Thomas Ruttig gives a comprehensive overview over the historical and current dimensions of the conflicts on education, including an analysis of the educational situation and policy under the Taleban reign. His conclusion is that Afghanistan does not only need a functioning education system and a well-educated new generation, but also a political solution to the current conflicts and an end to the war. According to Ruttig, only this will ensure that much of what has been built after 2001 – despite an often agonizingly slow progress – can be protected and built on. The next section of the book “Teacher Education and Higher Education in Afghanistan” comprises four articles that give an overview about the current sta-

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tus of different realms of the Afghan educational system. Susan Wardak starts focusing on Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs), which were one of the main fundaments for the education expansion in the last fifteen years. Wardak argues that the current situation is, to some degree, much more stable than after the fall of Taleban reign in 2002. TTCs constitute a successful parallel structure in teacher education study programs next to the study programs of the universities. She shows the history of the structure of teacher education as well as recent trends. By establishing TTCs across the country a country-wide educational strategy was implemented that reaches not only the urban areas – the traditional field of universities – but also the remote areas that are traditionally hard to reach by educational policy. The second article of this section from Craig C. Naumann presents some very rare empirical data of the development of the Afghan educational system. He argues that most of the data – even the officially used – are not valid, particularly if shares and percentages are published. An amount of 50 percent enrolled students for example requires a census to know the exact share of the numerator. Therefore, almost every published number in the educational sector (but not exclusively there, the same is true for the health sector) are built by extrapolations based on small sample sizes and contain a very high amount of insecurity. Naumann tries to be more precise and argues that the official successstory of the Afghan educational system after the Taleban-reign must be relativized. In the next contribution, Asadullah Jawid analyzes the development of private tertiary education, particularly from the perspective of the Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education. According to Jawid, private higher education is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing segments in Afghanistan. He presents empirical data over the recent history, gives an overview over the permanently increasing numbers of study programs and identifies challenges and opportunities. He introduces the Gawharshad IoHE as a typical example of a comparatively young institution in tertiary education. However, the conclusion of Jawid is partly ambivalent: there is a remarkable increase of private higher education on the one hand. On the other hand, most of the Institutes of Higher Education are profit-driven which could be a problem for the future development of Afghanistan. In the last chapter of this section, Pohand Hanif presents the 1957-founded Herat University as the counterpart of private higher education. Since its beginning, this university was specialized in teacher education programs. Hanif also points out some historical developments of this institution, the topical situation (e.g. the remarkable high number of female students) and current challenges for Herat University (e.g. to increase the number of female university teachers). In the third section of the book “Educational Programs and Projects” governmental and non-governmental projects in the realm of education were de-

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scribed in order to make the extraordinary large heterogeneity within the educational field explicit. The first contribution from Razia Stanikzai, Khalil Fazli and Dianne Denton introduces a peace curriculum development project that is internationally embedded (TED, UNESCO, GIZ, BEPA, ZFD) and closely linked to the Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs). According to Stanikzai et al., a teacher training course has been developed which is a mandatory part of the study program of the country-wide enrolled 35.000 teacher education-students at TTCs. In this article they also present evaluation results based on an evaluation of the implementation phase of the peace education program. In their view, the peace education program in Afghanistan serves as a useful case study for how behavior change and skills-building teacher education programs can be effectively developed and rolled out in conflict contexts. In the second contribution Andrea Müller shows the German engagement as one visible supporter of the Afghan educational system and outlines the contribution of the German government from 2004 on. Müller argues that Germany’s governmental efforts could be categorized in three different phases: In 2004 the Basic and Secondary Education Programme for Afghanistan (BEPA) was established by the German Ministry of International Cooperation (BMZ). The first phase was most of all an emergency response. In a second phase BEPA acted as a service provider und supported different partners (TED; TTCs, schools, etc.). In the current third phase the need to change the role of BEPA from being a service provider to being a facilitator and change agent became evident. The following three contributions of this section represent different projects of the Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V. (DAI; German-Afghan Initiative), located in Freiburg, Germany, in order to trace the heterogeneous commitments of NGOs and private engagements. These three projects should serve as examples of low-budget projects from small NGOs in the educational field which are often under the radar of (official) discourses about education in Afghanistan. But these kinds of projects are part of the transnational relationships that heavily influence the educational efforts in Afghanistan besides the public educational actors. In the first contribution Heide Kässer presents a private initiative to support mainly economically underprivileged girls from the countryside of Herat during their study period at Herat University. This project dates back to 2005 (DAI 2016). Kässer describes the project history and project developments and also includes statements from the supported persons. With their low-budget students’ project, they have been able to support around 50 students in a couple of years. She concluded that this project can only be regarded as a modest substitute for a governmental task but at least it can serve as a role model for low-budget projects supporting the educational structures in Afghanistan and particularly vul-

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nerable groups. The next contribution from Sarghuna Nashir-Steck introduces a project that is also based in the province of Herat and associated with the DAI. It focuses on the support of Kuchi-nomads in terms of preservations of their traditional ways of living as well as in terms of educating children of the Kuchis which have traditionally little access to education. According to Steck, the poor educational opportunities for the Kuchis and their children will very likely not improve remarkably in the next years due to general policy strategies from Kabul which aim to settle the Kuchis. Steck presents in her article an unresolved and tricky problem for the idea to educate all children in Afghanistan (MoE 2011, 2016) as best as possible. Another private project is introduced by Pascale Goldenberg, a textile artist from Freiburg. Her project is located in Laghmani, Parwan province, and aims to support young women in remote areas in their traditional skills in embroidery. Today around 200 women from Laghmani produce little pieces of textile embroideries. Goldenberg organizes exhibitions, gives talks and sells the pieces in Western countries in order to sell them directly. In her contribution, she draws a line from traditional handicraft skills to educational practices. The last two contributions of this section focus on the cultural heritage of Afghanistan from different perspectives. Both articles try to show that Afghanistan is much more than war and violence and aim towards reinventing knowledge about Afghan history, particularly for Afghanistan’s younger generation in and outside of Afghanistan. In her article Laila Sahrai presents a project conducted in Leipzig, Germany, addressing children and adolescents from Afghanistan and their parents. The project “History Alive” took place in 2012 for one year and aimed at contributing to the development of a cross-cultural historical consciousness while at the same time strengthening the intercultural consciousness in the German society. According to L. Sahrai, this project established an open space and created the opportunity to deal with very different aspects and approaches of Afghan culture – e.g. Afghan music, current lifestyles and fashion or Afghan history – and led to very personal reflections on cultural identity under circumstances of migration. In the last contribution of this section Dominic Wirz, Anke Schürer-Ries and Paul Bucherer-Dietschi present some insights and practices of documentation from the Bibliotheca Afghanica, a worldwide known research library and a place for systematic documentation of Afghanistan, which is located in Bubendorf, Canton Baselbiet Switzerland. For more than 40 years, the Bibliotheca Afghanica works successfully to preserve Afghan nature, history and culture and either conducts research by themselves or enables interested people to do research on a wide range of topics around Afghanistan (cf. Koellreuter/Seidt 2015). In their contribution for this anthology

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they introduced the ongoing project Phototheca Afghanica. The aim of this project is building an archive of images and visual material of historic Afghanistan in order to bring Afghan history to Afghan people, at least digitally. The article gives a few examples of historical perspectives and analysis based on images. Establishing an archive of historical images could have positive effects on a national consciousness of Afghans that is not limited to current negative experiences of war, civil war and occupation. The book ends with a section of “Concluding Statements” from people living inside Afghanistan or in exile. The section starts with a short statement from an Afghan, living in German exile, which for security reasons has been kept anonymous. He argues a better future for Afghanistan – without exception – depends on a peace agreement with the Taleban. Educational efforts for people in Afghanistan are relativized in this statement and clearly subordinated under the necessity to bring durable peace to Afghanistan. The second statement comes from Laila Noor, daughter of the last mayor in Kabul before the military campaign of the Soviet Union in 1979 and chairwoman of the Independent Afghan Women Association (IAWA). In her statement she reconstructs her role as a political activist in German exile, focusing mainly on the rights of women. During the last one-and-a-half decades, a lot of educational projects, including school buildings, were conducted. According to Noor, the main task of the IAWA is to help establish educational structures in Afghanistan. In this regard she claims that the building of 2000 more schools in Afghanistan would be necessary in order to fulfill the educational needs for all the children who are still waiting for educational access. The last statement of this anthology comes from the Alternative Nobel-Prize Awardee Sima Samar, who is well known as a medical doctor who runs hospitals and health care centers in contested areas in Afghanistan. Comparatively little is known about her remarkable commitment in the educational realm. She is for instance a co-founder of the Gawharshad-Institute of Higher Education. In her statement she argues from the human rights perspective and mentions that the access to quality education is first of all a human right of every living person, independently how difficult regional or local circumstances might be. She points out that the low level of education in Afghanistan is, for a great variety of reasons, a continuous cause for the prolongation of the Afghan conflict. Therefore, education must not be seen as a target to reach in times of peace but education itself is an emergency and needs to be immediately addressed if a durable peace in Afghanistan should be a realistic option.

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R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Altai (2006). Integration of Returnees in the Afghan Labor Market. An Empirical Study. October 2006. Retrieved from http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/ public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_184885.pdf (15.01.2018). Bell, Daniel (1973). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books. Bijlert, Martine van (2015). After the Rollercoaster Comes What? Afghanistan in 2015. AAN [Afghan Analysts Network], January 7th. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/after-the-rollercoaster-comes-whatafghanistan-in-2015/ (03.01.2017). Bittlingmayer, Uwe H., Boutiuc, Alina F., Heinemann, Lars & Kotthoff, HansGeorg (2016). Jumping to Conclusions – The PISA Knee-Jerk: Some Remarks on the Current Economic-Educational Discourse. European Education, 48 (4), 294-305. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2016.1249188. Bourdieu, Pierre (1990). Homo Academicus. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burde, Dana (2014). Schools for Conflict or for Peace in Afghanistan. New York: Columbia University Press. Commission of the European Communities (1994a). Europe and the global information society. Recommendations to the European Council. EU: Brussels (High-level group on the information society – Bangemann Report). Commission of the European Communities (1994b). Europe’s way to the information society. An action plan. Brussels: European Commission. Commission of the European Communities (1996). The implications of the information society for the European Union – Policies preparing the next steps. Brussels: European Commission. Daastøl, Arno Mong (2016). Friedrich List: the international dynamics of mindpower. In E. Reinert, J. Ghosh & R. Kattel (Eds.), Handbook of Alternative Theories of Economic Development (pp. 87-108). Cheltenham & Northampton, US-MA: Edward Elgar. Delors, Jacques et al. (1993). Learning: The Treasure Within. Report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century. New York: UNESCO Publications. Drucker, Peter (1969). The Age of Discontinuity. Guidelines to our Changing Society. Boston: Heinemann. Drucker, Peter (1998). From Capitalism to Knowledge Society. In D. Neef (Ed.), The Knowledge Economy (pp. 15-34). Boston et al.: Butterworth-Heinemann.

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Elias, Norbert (1976). Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation. Soziogenetische und psychogenetische Untersuchungen. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Foray, Dominique (2004). Economics of Knowledge. Cambridge, Mass., London: MIT Press. GCPEA [Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack] (2014). Education under Attack. Retrieved from http://protectingeducation.org/sites/default/ files/documents/eua_2014_full_0.pdf (01.07.2018). German Government [Die Bundesregierung] (2015). Das deutsche Engagement in Afghanistan. Berlin: Presse- und Informationsamt. Giustozzi, Antonio & Franco, Claudio (2011). The Battle for the Schools. The Taleban and State Education. AAN Thematic Report 08/2011. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/ 2012/10/2011TalebanEducation.pdf (01.07.2018). Giustozzi, Antonio & Franco, Claudio (2013). The Ongoing Battle for the Schools: Uprisings, Negotiations and Taleban Tactics. AAN Briefing Paper 2/2013. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/06/20130610_AAN_Taleban_and_Schools_FINAL.pdf (01.12.2017). Grevemeyer, Jan-Heeren (1990). Afghanistan. Sozialer Wandel und Staat im 20. Jahrhundert. Berlin: VWB. Habibi, Gulbadan & Hunte, Pamela (2006). Afghan Returnees from NWFP, Pakistan, to Nangahar Province. AREU Case Study. Retrieved from https://areu.org.af/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/609E-Returnees-fromNWFP-to-Nangarhar-CS-web.pdf (15.01.2018). Heath, Jennifer & Zahedi, Ashraf (Eds.). (2015). Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace. Austin: University of Texas Press. Heath, Jennifer (2015). Introduction. In J. Heath & A. Zahedi (Eds.), Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (pp. 1-33). Austin: University of Texas Press. Kazemi-Trensch, Nosrat (2003). Bildung von Mädchen und Berufsleben der Frauen in drei islamischen Ländern: Afghanistan, Iran, Jordanien. Ein Vergleich. Unveröffentlichte Dissertation, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Verfügbar unter http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/ 4407/1/Dissertation.pdf (15.01.2018). Koellreuter, Andreas & Seidt, Hans-Ulrich (Hrsg.). (2015). 40 Jahre Bibliotheca Afghanica. Beiträge zu Recht, Politik und Kultur in Afghanistan. Liestal: Verlag Basel-Landschaft. Krüger, Uwe (2014). Schadensfall Afghanistan. Ein Krieg und seine Folgen. Bonn: Bouvier.

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Kux, Dennis & Tenham, Georges (2015). Eine “Schweizer Lösung” für Afghanistan [A Swiss Solution for Afghanistan]. In A. Koellreuter & H.-U. Seidt (Hrsg.), 40 Jahre Bibliotheca Afghanica. Beiträge zu Recht, Politik und Kultur in Afghanistan (S. 181-184). Liestal: Verlag Basel-Landschaft. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2011). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan II. 1385 – 1389 [2011 – 2016]. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2013). Joint Press Release. 22.10.2013. The Programme for Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan Phase III (ELA 3). Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://moe.gov.af/en/news/joint-press-release (15.01.2018). Ministry of Education (MoE) (2016). National Education Strategic Plan III. 2017 – 2021. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Naumann, Craig C. (2011). Modernizing Education in Afghanistan: Cycles of Expansion and Contraction in Historical Perspective. Lisbon: Periploi. Naumann, Craig C. (2012). Books, Bullets, and Burqas: Anatomy of a Crisis – Educational Development, Society, and the State in Afghanistan. Wien/ Berlin: Lit. OECD (1996a). The Knowledge-Based Economy. Paris: OECD. OECD (1996b). Technology, Productivity and Job Creation: The OECD Jobs Strategy. Paris: OECD. OECD (2000). Knowledge Management in the Learning Society: Education and Skills. Paris: OECD. Ruttig, Thomas (2014). Einiges besser, nichts wirklich gut. In H. Thielecke (Hrsg.), Am Ende nichts? Krieg in Afghanistan – Bilanz und Ausblick (S. 1121). Potsdam: WeltTrends. Ruttig, Thomas (2015). Unerreichbare Schätze. Die riesigen Rohstoffvorkommen sind die einzige Hoffnung für das bettelarme Land. In S. Hansen (Hrsg.), Die große Unruhe. Afghanistan und seine Nachbarn (S. 33-37). Bd. 17 Le Monde diplomatique Berlin. Berlin: TAZ. Sadri, Mir Hafizuddin (2002). Erziehung, Bildung und Schulwesen in Afghanistan In Afrikanisch-Asiatische Studienförderung e. V. (Hrsg.), Afghanistan – Hoffnung und Perspektiven. Beiträge zu einem interkulturellen Wissensverständnis und zu den internationalen Wirtschaftsbeziehungen (S. 137-166). Jahrbuch 2002. Frankfurt a. M./London: IKO. Sahrai, Diana & Bittlingmayer, Uwe H. (2015). Entwicklung durch Bildung? Anmerkungen zur Idee, Afghanistan durch Bildungsexpansion nachholend zu entwickeln. In G. Hauck, I. Lenz & H. Wienold (Hrsg.), Entwicklung,

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Gewalt, Gedächtnis. Festschrift für Reinhart Kößler (S. 215-233). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Sahrai, Diana & Sahrai, Omar-Khaled (2006). Wissensgesellschaft und Globalisierung. Ein entwicklungssoziologischer Seitenblick. In U. H. Bittlingmayer & U. Bauer (Hrsg.), Die „Wissensgesellschaft“. Mythos, Ideologie oder Realität (S. 373-397). Wiesbaden: VS. Sahrai, Omar-Khaled (2018). Ethnizität, Widerstand und politische Legitimation in pashtunischen Stammesgebieten Afghanistans und Pakistans. Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang. Saito, Mamiko (2015). Education in Transition: A Key Concern for Young Afghan Returnees. In J. Heath & A. Zahedi (Eds.), Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (pp. 241-254). Austin: University of Texas Press. Sakhawaz, Bashir (2005). The Role of Afghan Intellectuals in Modernisation and Independence from Britain. Retrieved from http://archive.goftaman.com/ daten/en/articles/article47.htm (12.07.2018). Schiller, Dan (2000). Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Massachusetts: MIT Press. SIGAR [Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] (2016). Primary and Secondary Education in Afghanistan: Comprehensive Assessments Needed to Determine the Progress and Effectiveness of Over $759 Million in DOD, State, and USAID Programs. SIGAR 16-32 AUDIT REPORT. April 2016. Retrieved from https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/audits/SIGAR-16-32AR.pdf (15.01.2018). Spink, Jeaniene (2005). Education and politics in Afghanistan: the importance of an education system in peacebuilding and reconstruction. Journal of Peace Education, 2 (2), 195-207. Thapa, Manish, Dhungana, Raj Kumar, Mahalingam, Bhuvaneswari & Conilleau, Jerome (2010). Mainstreaming Peace Education in South Asia Learning and Recommendations from Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Save the Children Sweden. Retrieved from https://resourcecentre. savethechildren.net/sites/default/files/documents/3255.pdf (15.01.2018). The Guardian (2014). The price of an education for Afghan refugees in Iran. Written by Marketa Hulpachova. Friday, 5 September 2014 13:45. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2014/sep/05/irantheafghanistan-refugees (15.01.2018). Thien, Hans-Günter (1984). Schule Staat und Lehrerschaft. Zur historischen Genese bürgerlicher Erziehung in Deutschland und England (1790-1918). Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus.

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Tolo News (2015a). AIHRC Reports Millions Embezzled Through 'Ghost Schools' in Ghor Province. Written by Jawed Ziaratjayee. Friday, 26 June 2015 19:46. Retrieved from https://www.tolonews.com/afghanistan/aihrcreports-millions-embezzled-through-ghost-schools-ghor-province (15.01.2018). Tolo News (2015b). EU, Afghanistan Finalize Cooperation Agreement. Written by Zabiullah Jahanmal. Friday, 3 July 2015 19:01. Retrieved from https:// www.tolonews.com/afghanistan/eu-afghanistan-finalize-cooperationagreement (15.01.2018). Tolo News (2015c). Millions Embezzled In Ghost Teacher Scam: Baghlan Officials. Written by Hamid Shirzai, Sunday, 18 October 2015 18:45. Retrieved from https://www.tolonews.com/index.php/afghanistan/millions-embezzledghost-teacher-scam-baghlan-officials (15.01.2018). Tolo News (2016a). Task Team Uncovers Hundreds Of Ghost Schools. Written by Tamim Hamid, Saturday, 02 January 2016 18:27. Retrieved from https://www.tolonews.com/node/12463 (15.01.2018). Tolo News (2016b). Ghani Receives New Findings On 'Ghost Schools'. Written by Anisa Shaheed, Tuesday, 05 January 2016 19:01. Retrieved from https:// www.tolonews.com/index.php/afghanistan/ghani-receives-new-findingsghost-schools (15.01.2018). Trading Economics (2018). Afghanistan Unemployment Rate. Retrieved from https://tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/unemployment-rate (12.07.2018). UNESCO Office in Kabul (2016). Enhancement of Literacy in Afghanistan (ELA) program. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/kabul/edu cation/enhancement-of-literacy-in-afghanistan-ela-program/ (26.12.2016). Wilkens, Ann (2016). To Say It Like It Is: Norway’s evaluation of its part in the international intervention. AAN Report. 23.08.2016. Retrieved from https: //www.afghanistan-analysts.org/to-say-it-like-it-is-norways-evaluation-of-itspart-in-the-international-intervention/ (06.07.2018). World Bank (2016a). Afghanistan Unemployment Rate. Retrieved from http:// www.tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/unemployment-rate (31.12.2016). World Bank (2016b). Feature Story: World Bank: Agriculture and Education can drive Afghanistan’s development. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank. org/en/news/feature/2016/10/05/world-bank-agriculture-and-education-candrive-afghanistans-development (26.12.2016). World Bank (2016c). Afghanistan. Systematic Country Diagnostics. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/302911468190767498/pdf/ 103421-SCD-P152891-SecM2016-0055-IDA-SecM2016-0041-IFCSecM2016-0029-MIGA-SecM2016-0028-OUO-9.pdf (26.12.2016).

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World Bank (2018). The World Bank in Afghanistan. Overview. Retrieved from http://www.worldbank.org/en/country/afghanistan/overview (15.01.2018).

I. Development and Education for Peace? Some Perspectives

Development – Analytical Value and Ideological Baggage of an Elusive Term 1 Some Considerations on Principle R EINHART K ÖSSLER

Development can mean almost anything. The multitude of settings it may refer to is almost unfathomable. Just think of such diverse fields as psychology, strategy of the chess-game, geometry, military tactics, the theory of the modern novel, or biology. As can be ascertained from encyclopedias of the age when these were still printed in multi-volume editions, late socio-economic development, which concerns us here, has not figured largely or barely been mentioned at all in appropriate entries on the term. However, as is posited here, it is precisely this wide and indefinite semantic field commanded by ‘development’ which constitutes one of the term’s main and persistent attractions. Somehow, development denotes something forward-pointing, an upward movement. Otherwise, we talk about ‘mistaken’ development. Such positive connotations of the term have fostered widely spread acceptance of the perspectives that are thought to be associated with late development. Mention of ‘development’ still triggers hopes among many, and complaints by local people that ‘there is no development’ when improvements in their daily lives just do not happen, underscore this. Such observations should also remind us that reference to ‘development’ is by no means empty talk. In settings on the ground, such reference may refer to much needed sanitation, clean water, electricity, decent roads etc. The following considerations are by no means meant to belittle such needs

1

The following text is largely based on a talk on the same topic at the Graduate School of International Development, University of Nagoya, Japan, 17 November 2016. My approach has been set out more fully in Kößler 1998, 2014a, b.

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and desires. However, the linkage between such aspirations and the term of ‘development’ serves as a powerful ideological agent which in fact may actually obscure the path towards such very understandable goals. In the following, I wish to first give a glimpse at some central issues connected to the mainstream conceptualisation of development and some of its current critiques. Subsequently, I explore the semantics of the term a little further and explain some of its history I consider vital for an understanding of the present discourse. This discussion will lead us to consider important exigencies of late development, as experienced in a number of cases. I shall close by posing one further question – how to conceive of an equitable world society under current constraints.

AN E PISTEMOLOGICAL P UZZLE : T HE R ESILIENCE M ODERNISATION T HEORY

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According to many accounts, development discourse was initiated by a passage in the Inaugural Address of President Harry Truman in 1949. In a nutshell, Truman hoped that the enhanced spread of the American way of life would be decisive to contain and eventually roll back the perceived menace emanating from the Soviet bloc. This general motivation was underpinned by imminent decolonisation as the realms of Britain, France and other European powers in Africa and parts of Asia appeared less and less tenable and anticolonial movements showed a penchant to look for support by the Soviet Union. The drive to prevent such change helped to bring forth a development establishment, complete with implementation mechanisms, strategic planning and theoretical underpinnings developed during the following decades and has been thriving up to the present. As we shall see, the ideas Truman had articulated and which were soon to be systematised in the form of a bunch of theoretical approaches conveniently dubbed as modernisation theories, were by no means as novel as some of the proponents of such theories or their latter-day detractors would have it. Our interest here concerns the main rationale of these approaches. The gist of modernisation theory may be grasped from two prominent authors, development economist and practitioner Walt W. Rostow, and renowned sociologist Talcott Parsons. Rostow (1971) claimed to read off the British experience – that of the first industrialising country – precise stages of growth as well as the conditions to be met to finally arrive at the most advanced form of society, which he saw embodied in that of the United States in his day. The same goal was envisaged by Parsons (1964, 1977) when he set forth his grand concept of

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social evolution. Here again, all human societies were seen to pass through obligatory stages that included features such as the taboo on incest, writing, the state, and in the last stage, mass democracy, once again along the lines seen by the author in the United States at the time of writing. Interestingly, Parsons saw, at the same time, individual societies which were conceived of as co-extensive with nation-states, in fierce competition when they engaged in the race for modernisation. Again, the development industry purported to provide the means and tools for success in this process. Mainly, their advice was based on what came to be known as modernisation theory. Such strategies involved institutional change away from ‘traditional’, patriarchal conditions towards rational bureaucracy in the state, as well as a marketisation of the economy. There was a lot of talk about mentality and individual endeavour to be groomed by a change of attitudes, particularly amongst elites. These approaches also included some push for education, for the eradication of illiteracy and for the building up of various capacities (cf. Ruttig in this book). Mobilisation of land and labour meant that land was turned into a commodity, and the same would happen to labour power, as long as people were in a position to find a market, in other words, employment. Massive investment in large-scale projects was linked to the expectation that riches accumulated on the one end of the social scale would eventually ‘trickle down’ to also reach the less privileged. This went along with strands that called for authoritarian regimes to harness material and social resources and to enforce discipline, while from this perspective, democracy was reserved for a later stage, as it were as a fruit of a certain measure of development. Success of these endeavours was very limited at best. Crises such as the debt surge of the late 1970s and 1980s wiped out modest gains in many countries of the Global South. Before, the strand of dependency theory, originating from Latin America and its experience of independence after colonial rule since the early 19th century, had pointed out that problems were rooted not so much in internal conditions, but in the unequal insertion of erstwhile colonial regions into the world market: In the course of ‘development of underdevelopment’ (Frank 1966), the plight of ‘underdevelopment’ was seen in a direct causal relationship to the accumulation of capital in the West. However, as noted early on, this criticism did not change the notion of development as such, which was merely geared to ‘benefit different classes’ (Cardoso 1980: 854). Still, the basic rationale is of lasting importance: an approach viewing ‘development’ not as a process to be set on stage more or less at will by any nation-state, but as one which is insolubly linked to global, asymmetrical relationships remains a lasting contribution of dependency theory as well as of the ensuing, closely related concept of a capi-

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talist world system which is structured by the interrelationship between metropoles, semi-peripheries and peripheries (cf. Wallerstein 1979). In turn, dependency theory was debunked by real world changes, at least in the strands that denied any possibility of changing a country’s position in the global hierarchy. The rise of newly industrialised countries in the context of a new international division of labour demonstrated the potential of such change in powerful ways. Again, these upheavals differed clearly from the prescriptions of modernisation theory. The consequences of these changes underline the unity of the world system and its inherently hierarchical regional structure. As shifts are occurring in the sense of the rise particularly of parts of East Asia, the loss of top positions is on the cards for various countries in the West. Apart from that, huge regions in Africa, Latin America, South Asia but also in parts of East Asia and specifically in inland China remain delinked from the dramatic rise on the western side of the Asia-Pacific fringe. What we see are substantial shifts in an overall process of uneven development, where unevenness addresses various regional scales, from the local through the global, as well as an array of social strata. Against this backdrop, the resilience of modernisation discourse within the development industry must appear puzzling. In spite of its many pitfalls, contradictions and untenable basic assumptions some of which have been alluded to in the introductory remarks while others will be addressed more fully below, this discourse still informs much of the common sense related to ‘development’, graphically present in pervasive references to ‘not yet’ or ‘still’, when speakers address desired change that somehow has not happened.

C HALLENGES FROM P OSTCOLONIAL S TUDIES P OSTDEVELOPMENTALISM

AND

Widely received criticism of mainstream socio-economic development thinking has come for some decades now from quarters that purport, in specific ways, to articulate views and concerns of the Global South. These have contributed in important ways to our understanding of problems labelled as development. Postcolonial and subaltern studies have emanated from debates on Orientalism (cf. Said 1978). The basic tenet here is to point out strategies of othering that project negative features on-to the outside, in many cases colonial ‘other’. At the same time, a powerful thrust consists in the de-centring of a historical narration that implicitly had claimed for long all movement and innovation to emanate from Europe. By ‘provincialising Europe’ (Chakrabarty 2000) the intricate crossrelationships come into view that have shaped human history for centuries but

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more particularly, the ways in which modern history has been shaped by the colonial relationship and further, how the erstwhile colonial metropoles were inextricably bound up in this relationship of an entangled modernity (cf. Randeria 2002). In this way, the concept of a unity of modern social processes is carried considerably farther than had happened in noting ‘development’ and ‘underdevelopment’ as closely interrelated processes or in Wallersteinian world system theory. Now, the ‘periphery’ can take centre-stage. However, all of this does not solve the predicaments that exist with the notion of development. One rather rough-shot way of going about this, popular in some quarters has been to denounce the whole issue as a Western stratagem to control the non-West (see e.g. Sachs 1992; Rahnema/Bawtree 1997). Once again, these approaches, while posturing as critique of ideology, leave open a closer analysis of the notion of development. Pointing to Truman’s Inaugural Address mentioned above, most of these authors seem to content themselves with stating the obvious, namely that ‘development’ has for long been enmeshed in the politics of the Cold War and ‘Western’ expansionism as well exclusivism. However, such insights tell us little about how the discourse actually works and does not explain why ‘development’ in this sense still can mobilise considerable expectations and even enthusiasm. For reaching some deeper understanding of these issues, I propose a brief look at conceptual history.

T HE C ONCEPTS

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E VOLUTION

The breadth of the semantic field of development is attributable to the concept’s largely forgotten origins. These refer to early European enlightenment, when the idea of divine creation was questioned and this spurred the study of ‘development’ in living beings. The investigation of ‘development’ in chicken eggs showed how the chicken came into being along a seemingly pre-ordained plan (ontogenesis), and this insight was readily transferred on-to other fields mentioned above. Such a concept crossed with new insights into the evolution of species (phylogenesis), which about a century later were understood to come about a by a mechanism broadly along the triad of mutation, selection and retention. In modern biology, such ‘evolution’ as an innovative, chance driven process bringing forth new species, and ‘development’, the coming about of a mostly ‘normal’ individual according to programmed processes, are carefully kept apart as distinct concepts.

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With the metaphorical transfer of these concepts to human society, things become more complicated. This is mainly because here, ‘evolution’ and ‘development’ cannot be held apart as neatly as in the context of origin of these concepts. If we conceive of ‘development’ as a process mostly involving individual nation states, then the issue may appear obvious, but on first sight only: As conceived by modernisation theory, ‘advanced nations’ may be seen as having charted the path for ‘late developers’ to follow. Very much like in the case of the chicken coming out of the egg, the end result appears clear: ‘Development’ would then lead to a known and more or less certain goal. However, such development processes do not take place in empty space or under stable conditions for all particular cases. Quite the opposite, each successful ‘late developer’ changes the playing field for all the others – including those that seemingly have ‘developed’ successfully. The current rise of China is a very good example for this. Chinese industrial products have entered consumer markets around the world and this has, for instance, led to the demise of the South African garment industry or significantly changed the textile industry in its ancient Italian centre of Prato. Africa experienced another ‘scramble’ for its natural resources during the 2000s, with China and other aspiring industrialisers trying to secure their needs for oil and metal ores as well as land and agricultural potentials. Current world economic debates on exchange rates or the creation of a BRICS 2 development bank as a pronounced alternative to the World Bank underscore fundamental changes that backlash on established Western powers in the form of de-industrialisation or the ‘shopping spree’ of Chinese corporations in Western Europe that started to draw attention from early 2016. Of course, the Chinese case is arguably the most momentous in a century and together with other East Asian industrialisers, it has led to a fundamental realignment of the international division of labour as has existed since the industrial revolution for some 250 years. Precisely on account of this, this case illustrates the point I am trying to make: The individual process of Chinese ‘development’ has resulted in changes that affect the basic conditions under which everyone else in the world operates. These conditions can be conceptualised as a capitalist world market, which of course is made up of competing nation states, besides of course a host of international institutions as well as transnational corporations. Still, nation states remain the main actors when issues of development are addressed.

2

This acronym denotes the group of countries with claims as new industrialisers: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.

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We can see, then, that in the case of late socio-economic development, processes that are termed in this way inevitably impact on the world scale, in other words, on human society at large. This means, processes easily dubbed as ‘development’ at first sight have consequences on the level of ‘evolution’. As a result, experiences of late comers cannot be replicated at will, and expectations to find a ‘recipe’ for successful catching up turn out illusionary. Rather, what happens is a surreptitious process of the opening up and closing of developmental options3. Such options are not available indefinitely, they are predicated on historical contingency. Structured largely as alternatives, the taking up and realisation of one option may foreclose the way forward along a range of others. Again, successful strategies may open up further options for the future. This concept dovetails with insight from investigations into developmental history (cf. Senghaas 1982; Menzel 1985, 1988) which, while upholding a positive take on perspectives of development, have shown clearly the singularity of each particular case in specific constellations between internal factors such as resource endowment, the level of popular education and industrial traditions, and external opportunities in the world market. On this level, two conclusions are obvious: (1) The celebrated controversy which has once marked the positions of ‘modernisation’ and ‘dependency’ theory, namely whether ‘development’ is conditioned by internal or external, world market factors, collapses in the face of a clearly greater complexity: Actual trajectories need to be traced to specific – and largely contingent – constellations involving both domestic, regional and world market factors (see Hauck 1996: ch. 9; 2014). (2) Success in catching up is singular in each case; it cannot be repeated but hinges on concrete conditions which may be created strategically only in part, but to a large extent are predicated by the wider, regional and global setting. On account of this, claims to propagate ‘one best practice’ have to be questioned for disregarding the complexities involved in such transfers between divergent societal settings. In conceptual terms, what remains is the idea of directional change (orthogenesis). Processes of such change cannot be staged purely at will, but being predicated on a complex set of conditions, they predefined, to a considerable extent, by the results of earlier change. In terms of developmental options, this may again be referred to the – conscious or fortuitous – taking up or missing of concrete options as they present themselves; these are recognised or disregarded,

3

The concept of developmental option (Entwicklungsoption) was first coined by Christian Sigrist and has been elaborated in Kößler (1988).

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and in many or most cases, become the subject of controversy regarding the direction society should take in its future course. In a different vein, one may be reminded here of the celebrated triad of Hegelian dialectics. In these terms, the stage of status quo, thesis, must be regarded as a given, although it is itself obviously the result of historical process and thereby, of a long succession of changes. The second component of the triad, antithesis, then, cannot be disconnected from the thesis. The inherent negation of the thesis can only concern aspects or the whole of the thesis itself. In Hegelian terms, we speak of a ‘definite negation’ (bestimmte Negation). The issue is not about negation point blank but of a negation within the terms of the thesis. Consequently, the third stage of the triad, synthesis, then, once again cannot be thought of without reference to thesis, since it flows from definite negation, leading up to a stage where aspects of thesis and antithesis are not only abrogated, elevated and preserved (all of which is contained in Hegel’s term of aufgehoben) towards a new stage, but find themselves in a novel constellation, which may be understood as the starting condition for the next dialectical process. Again, in the language of evolution, the concept of orthogenesis corresponds to the quite similar triad of evolution, where mutation introduces chance-driven change into the pre-existing stage (species), whereupon the process of selection decides on the viability of such change, and retention then signifies the establishment of the new and changed species. Again, the end result is conditioned decisively by the starting stage and of course, its environment. However, also contrary to what Hegel once thought about the trajectory of human history, all these processes are open-ended. There is no pre-set goal of evolution, as Charles Darwin was already aware, or of human history, of which ‘late development’ forms a part which for many people living today is of decisive importance. Still, the concept of orthogenesis allows for one further important modification in comparison to widely spread concepts of human history or social evolution, as well as of ideas underlying the modernisation approach addressed above. As noted, change in this concept relates to a variety of initial conditions and scenarios. By this token, a range of long-term trajectories in the change of human society can be conceptualised, instead of the unilinear vision of social evolution as represented by the modernisation template. Such considerations link up with concepts of multiple modernities (Eisenstadt 2002, 2006). However, it remains important to keep in mind that the original version of this important approach did not take aboard issues to be addressed as ‘dark side of modernity’ or indeed, ‘development of underdevelopment’, i.e. experiences that diverge from the success stories commonly associated with modernity. The concept of ‘entangled modernity’ (Wehr 2016; Randeria 2002) proposes to concep-

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tualise these complexities. Unjustly widely overlooked, Eric Wolf (1982) has mapped the interrelationship and connectedness of dramatic changes in different parts of the world form the 15th century onwards with a specific emphasis of the agency of Non-Europeans who confronted the challenges of modernity and expansive capitalism by strategic adaption and change. Not least, this involved taking up opportunities presented by the world market which were not always palatable and in Wolf’s account ranged from the transatlantic slave trade to the North American fur market. By and large, these approaches underscore the importance of regionally differentiated studies of developmental history, as exercised already by Menzel and Senghaas in the 1980s. However, two problems have been left unresolved by these authors: (1) they have not evaded the pitfalls of methodological nationalism which obviously are close to a regional approach; one may even surmise an inevitable tension here. Still, as seen above, an understanding of processes of orthogenetic change (or ‘late development’) would be fatally incomplete and misleading without taking aboard the wider historic conditions that are germane to each case, in terms of world market environment and concrete developmental options that are present at any particular point in time. (2) On account of this, concrete experiences of such ‘late development’ cannot be repeated; above all the claim is deeply misleading that particularly from the writings of the founder of development economics, Friedrich List, can be derived recipes for the eradication of poverty (Senghaas 2001). Such suppositions, while still popular, ignore basic issues which include, besides the global environment, also the fundamental problems of repetition in the social sciences.4 To some of these issues we now turn.

E XIGENCIES

ON

L ATE D EVELOPMENT

Debates on the unevenness of socio-economic development were present in social thinking for a long time, although in ways that differ considerably from present debates. Sticking to the trajectory of Western social thought, one may think of the imagination of the Eastern other as marked by ‘despotism’ 5, or conceptions of world history in classical modern philosophy, above all in Hegel. Here, the world spirit (or the epicentre of history) was seen in one great sweep from

4

Which, in all brevity, would require laboratory situations which are possible at best in some areas of microsociology but certainly not at a macro level.

5

For a superb overview, see Koebner (1951); for a critical perspective Kößler (1993).

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East to West, beginning in China and ending up in the Prussian state of Hegel’s time. This may look strange nowadays, but the important point was that these world historical stages, even though attributed to regions, were seen to relate to the history of humankind at large. With Friedrich List (1841), arguably the founder of serious debate on ‘late development’, this perspective changed decisively. At first sight, List also presented a rough trajectory, based on a differentiation of the societal division of labour along the lines of pastoralism, agriculture, handicraft and industry, cumulatively combined in successive stages. However, List pegged these stages to nation states. In his view, each individual state would have to pass through all these stages. In this way, the perspective was shifted from the level of humankind (or evolution) to that of individual nation states (or development). Such nation states did not necessarily exist at the time but were partly– as in the decisive case of List’s native Germany – more or less evasive projects. However, this did not preclude envisaging a viable nation state along the lines current in the 19th century (cf. Hobsbawm 1992: 23-45). Thus, in relation to the paradigmatic case of Germany, List pleaded for features that are often overlooked when discussing his approach. These include a substantive coastline and in particular, colonies (1841: 270) to complement Germany’s resource endowment. In general, in the course of ’the advancement towards the strength of manufacture of those countries in Europe and North America destined for this‘, these countries were seen as consumers of ‘products of the hot zones’, to which they in turn would ship manufactured commodities (1841: 371). Therefore, the project of late development was predicated on an outer, colonial sphere, besides other requirements such as an adequate level of popular education or a fairly egalitarian land distribution often cited as central components of List’s ideas about the ‘fostering of productive forces’. By purely logical reasoning, not all aspiring late comers could or can hope to acquire such an outer sphere. The problem is not limited to the need of procuring material resources that are not available in the metropole. There are obvious alternatives to colonialism such as informal empire as well as free trade along the lines set out by Ricardo, where an international division of labour functions according to the principle of comparative costs which in the classical example means that England exports cloth, while Portugal trades wine, and of course these goods can be substituted by any other manufactured goods on the one hand and agricultural or raw materials on the other. It has often been argued that this pegs ‘Portugal’ on-to a position of dependency. More systematically, the issue of the outer sphere refers to the innate tendency of industrial capitalism for expan-

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sion. This tendency has been highlighted over a hundred years ago by Rosa Luxemburg (1913) as the relentless quest to incorporate ‘non-capitalist’ spheres around the globe which then are transformed fundamentally according to the needs of capital; more recently, the concept of Landnahme6 addresses a similar issue but in this literature, the complex processes of capitalist contraction and associated de-commodification, and renewed expansion are reflected. This enables the concept to refer also to metropolitan societies and to the transformations these are currently undergoing (cf. Dörre 2013, 2016). In the course of the recent round of capitalist expansion, the rise of China and other East Asian countries as well as the wider range of BRICS has been much debated. Significantly, part and parcel of this process has been the search of China as well as other rising powers for raw material and energy bases particularly in Africa.7 These brief hints should suffice to show that it is hard to conceive of processes of late development which would result in a more or less even, egalitarian distribution of the supposed or real benefits associated with this term. Rather, we see a world nexus structured by crisscrossing social and regional hierarchies, where social inequality has been expanding over the past few decades, both on the global and regional (national) scales. Such conclusions are re-enforced when we consider further constraints, to do with the current ecological crisis. Whereas climate change and associated carbon dioxide emissions have drawn the greatest attention in this respect for some time now, a whole range of further issues also weigh strongly, such as raw materials, in particular energy, or waste associated with mining, industrial production and consumption. It has been pointed out for a long time that all of these constraints indicate material limits to the present form of capitalist economies, which will at least entail fundamental shifts in this type of society (see e.g. Altvater 2005). Still, the quest for non-renewable energy resources is going on relentlessly, in particular affecting indigenous people by consequences amounting to ecocide (Short 2016: ch. 2). While some of these changes, related to energy saving or to the much debated reduction of carbon dioxide emissions are claimed to be underway at least in some quarters, the quest for energy resources, in particular for fossil ones, the hierarchical set-up of the world-societal nexus has not been called into question by such changes. Moreover, in January 2017, the first steps

6

Literally, ‘taking of land‘, this German term is used internationally by now and refers to a wide range of issues, including for instance the capitalist reconstruction of the internet.

7

A good overview is given in Southall/Melber (2009).

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of the Trump Administration in the US include reviving the Keystone XL mammoth pipeline and pushing forward the Dakota Access pipelines against embittered resistance by resident Sioux (The Guardian 2017). Such moves may well be harbingers of a determined shift back to fossil energy in what remains the world’s biggest national economy. The strong bias that links fossil resource extraction from sources such as tar sands as well as uranium and concomitant environmental destruction and risks to regions where indigenous peoples reside, once again re-enforces the principle of global hierarchy. Currently, global migration processes and measures by metropolitan states, but also by regional gravity centres such as South Africa, to forcibly block these moves, are the clearest indicators to underline the secular persistence of this basic pattern of global hierarchy.

‘D EVELOPMENT ’

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P OSITIONAL G OOD

As we have seen, ‘development’, in the sense of socio-economic change towards a given strategic goal is a contradictory concept at best. On account of such considerations, there are good reasons for abandoning the term completely as a conceptual tool (cf. e.g. Ziai 2009). However, not only does such a move entail considerable efforts to avoid a term entrenched in everyday language and semantics; it also risks failing to address the very real and socially powerful hopes and aspirations of a large, most likely majoritarian part of living humankind. By and large, such hopes may well be taken to be informed by images of ‘development’, much in the sense of a vision of a ‘good life’ predicated on current consumer technology and mass consumption. In various ways, such hopes seem to be linked, in certain cases at least, to a quest for ‘democracy’, as has been evidenced since the 1990s in particular by recurrent popular movements for democracy in various parts of Africa (cf. Abrahamsen 2000), most recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo in late 2016. Given the constraints on such a spread of ‘development’ outlined above, such aspirations are unlikely to be fulfilled, if only on account of the pressure they would exert on ever scarcer resources, and the capacity of the biosphere to absorb a once again hugely increased output of emissions. In this sense, ‘development’ along these conventional lines must be considered as a strictly ‘positional’ attainment, available only to a privileged minority of humankind. This does not preclude the changes that have been observed during the last few decades with the spread of consumer culture in parts particularly in China and parts of Southeast Asia, or the rise of an African ‘middle class’, characterised precisely by urban, to some extent ‘Western’ life styles. Again, these changes must be seen as

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shifts in position along the global hierarchy, but not as an abrogation of this hierarchy as such. In a world of increasing global inequality, this hierarchy must appear increasingly hazardous on account of the tensions and conflicts it entails and which have increasingly flared up in violent confrontations in recent years, or been articulated by dramatic and sustained moves of migration into the metropolitan centres. It is hard to imagine that current schemes to stave off this pressure and avoid the associated adjustments – not only, but chiefly – in North America and Western Europe will prove sustainable in the long or medium run, be it the ‘wall’ now seriously projected between the U.S.A. and Mexico, or the projection of repressive power by the European Union using dictatorial regimes South of the Sahara. Citizens of the still vastly privileged metropolitan centres will have to decide for themselves in the very near future whether they are willing to lead lives like those sketched out by J.M. Coetzee in his novel Waiting for the Barbarians, contained in a fortress within a barren land, heavily armed but more or less sure about the final assault, or find fundamentally new models of ‘development’ in the sense of socially and ecologically sustainable strategic change for their societies. Chances for this to happen seem slight at present, given electoral dynamics in practically all Western countries that point towards the direct opposite of such a perspective. However, it is also true that the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in 2015 may be seen as a step into this direction at least at the level of formal political agenda setting, in linking for the first time, such goals for all regions of the world.

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REFERENCES/B IBLIOGRAPHY

Abrahamsen, Rita (2000). Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa. London/New Jersey: Zed Books. Altvater, Elmar (2005). Das Ende des Kapitalismus wie wir ihn kennen. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Cardoso, Fernando Henrique (1980). El desarrollo en el banquillo. Comercio exterior (Méxjco), 30 (8), 846-860 (German version: Entwicklung auf der Anklagebank. Peripherie, (5/6), 1981, 5/6, 6-31). Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000). Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dörre, Klaus (2013). Landnahme. Triebkräfte, Wirkungen und Grenzen kapitalistischer Wachstumsdynamik. In M. Backhouse, O. Gerlach, S. Kalmring &

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A. Nowak (Hrsg.) (2013), Die globale Einhegung – Krise, ursprüngliche Akkumulation und Landnahmen im Kapitalismus (S. 112-141). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Dörre, Klaus (2016). Limits to Landnahme. Growth Dilemma as Challenge. In J. Dellheim & F. O. Wolf (Hrsg.) (2016), Rosa Luxemburg: A Permanent Challenge for Political Economy (pp. 219-261). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Eisenstadt, Samuel N. (Ed.). (2002). Multiple Modernities. New Brunswick: Transaction. Eisenstadt, Samuel N. (2006). Multiple Modernities in the Framework of a Comparative Perspective. In A. Wimmer & R. Kößler (Eds.), Understanding Change: Models, Methodologies, and Metaphors (pp. 199-218). Houndsmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Frank, Andre Gunder (1966). The Development of Underdevelopment in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review. Hauck, Gerhard (1996). Evolution, Entwicklung, Unterentwicklung. Frankfurt a. M.: IKO. Hauck, Gerhard (2014). Die Aktualität der „großen“ entwicklungstheoretischen Debatten der 1970er/80er Jahre. In F. Müller, E. Sondermann, I. Wehr, C. Jakobeit & A. Ziai (Eds.), Entwicklungstheorien. Weltgesellschaftliche Transformationen, entwicklungspolitische Herausforderungen, theoretische Innovationen (pp. 325-80). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Hobsbawm, Eric (1992). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Koebner, Richard (1951). Despot and Despotism. Vicissitudes of a Political Term. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (3/4), 275-302. Kößler, Reinhart (1988). Entwicklungs-Optionen zwischen Weltmarktzusammenhang und Selbstbestimmung. Aspekte eines multifokalen Entwicklungsbegriffs. Peripherie, 29, 228. Kößler, Reinhart (1993). Despotie in der Moderne. Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus. Kößler, Reinhart (1998). Entwicklung. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Kößler, Reinhart (2014a). Umrisse und Probleme einer Theorie globaler Entwicklung. In A. Ziai (Ed.), Im Westen nichts Neues? Stand und Perspektiven der Entwicklungstheorie (pp. 71-96). Baden-Baden: Nomos-Verlag. Kößler, Reinhart (2014b). Entwicklung: Zur Genealogie einer toten Metapher und den Folgen. In F. Müller, E. Sondermann, I. Wehr, C. Jakobeit & A. Ziai (Eds.), Entwicklungstheorien. Weltgesellschaftliche Transformationen, ent-

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wicklungspolitische Herausforderungen, theoretische Innovationen (S. 435463). Baden-Baden: Nomos. Maaß, Citha D. & Ruttig, Thomas (2011). Afghanistan vor neuem Bürgerkrieg? Entwicklungsoptionen und Einflussfaktoren im Transitionsprozess. SWPAktuell 40. Verfügbar unter http://menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/menalib/ content/titleinfo/1309173 (22.1.2017). Menzel, Ulrich (1985). In der Nachfolge Europas. Autozentrierte Entwicklung in den ostasiatischen Schwellenländern Südkorea und Taiwan. München: Simon/Magiera. Menzel, Ulrich (1988). Auswege aus der Abhängigkeit. Die entwicklungspolitische Aktualität Europas. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Parsons, Talcott (1964). Evolutionary Universals in Society. American Sociological Review, 29, (3), 339-357. Parsons, Talcott (1977). The Evolution of Societies. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Rahnema, Majid & Bawtree, Victoria (Eds.). (1997). The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books. Randeria, Shalini (2002). Entangled Histories of Uneven Modernities: Civil Society, CasteSolidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India. In Y. Elkanaa, I. Krastev, E. Macamo & S. Randeria (Eds.), Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness (pp. 284–311). Frankfurt a. M./New York, NY-US: Campus. Rostow, Walt W. (1971). The Stages of Economic Growth. A Non-Communist Manifesto (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sachs, Wolfgang (Ed.). (1992). The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power. London/New Jersey: Zed. Said, Edward W. (1978). Orientalism. London/Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Senghaas, Dieter (1982). Von Europa lernen. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Betrachtungen. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Senghaas, Dieter (2001). Wider den entwicklungstheoretischen Erinnerungsschwund. Die Auswege aus der Armut sind bekannt. In: R. E. Thiel (Hrsg.), Neue Ansätze zur Entwicklungstheorie (pp. 350-354). Bonn: DSE/ZD. Short, Damien (2016). Redefining Genocide. Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide. London: Zed Books. Southall, Roger & Melber, Henning (2009). A New Scramble for Africa? Imperialism, Investment and Development. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu/Natal Press.

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The Guardian (2017). Standing Rock Sioux: ‘we can’t back down now’ on Dakota pipeline fight. Written by Julia Carrie Wong and Sam Levin. Wednesday, 25 January 2017 12:38. Wallerstein, Immanuel (1979). The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wehr, Ingrid (2016). Verwobene Moderne. In K. Fischer, G. Hauck & M. Boatča (Hrsg.), Handbuch Entwicklungsforschung (S. 103-112). Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Wolf, Eric (1982). Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ziai, Aram (2009). “Development”: Projects, Power, and a Poststructuralist Perspective. Alternatives, 34, 183-201.

Local Languages and Their Role in Education for Development in Afghanistan A DELE J ONES

I NTRODUCTION Afghanistan is not alone as a multi-lingual country in the delicate situation of reconstruction after years of war, but it is rare in having the teaching and use of ‘minority’ languages included in its education policies. This paper considers minority languages in Afghanistan’s National Education Strategic Plans, and their role in national cohesion, reconstruction and development, for as was stated in the opening address on behalf of UNESCO for the International Year of Languages, languages in multilingual societies are essential for the identity of groups and individuals and their peaceful coexistence, and “a strategic factor towards a sustainable development and a harmonious relationship between the global and local context” (UNESCO 2008: 1). From one point of view, in Afghanistan government policies on language use and language teaching highlight the tremendous possibilities language has in enabling communication nationally, in promoting basic literacy at all levels, and retaining students in school especially at lower primary level. However, Afghanistan continues to face tremendous challenges in education, especially when it comes to developing a realistic language policy and workable strategies to include first languages as well as national and foreign languages. This paper gives an overview of the minority languages debate, describes language diversity in Afghanistan, surveys language policies under different governments, and examines current policy and implementation in the face of the government’s huge challenge to ensure a full cycle of basic education for all.

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P OLICIES

AND THE

M INORITY L ANGUAGE D EBATE

In 2004, Afghanistan’s new Constitution (Article 16) highlighted the role of national and minority languages, following a theme in the new Curriculum Framework published the previous year (MoE 2003). Then, languages received official recognition in the first National Education Strategic Plan (NESP 2006), and in two subsequent education strategies (2010-14; 2015-2020). The Constitution, Curriculum Framework, and NESPs all highlight two official national languages, Dari and Pashto, each spoken by close to half the Afghan population. Additionally, these documents mention use and teaching of local languages (mother tongue, minority languages), as well as foreign language teaching/learning of Arabic, English, and, in a few schools, French and German. Dilemmas faced in promoting first languages include small populations using specific languages, limited resources and post-literacy reading matter, and limited linguistic and teaching expertise. For several decades, internationally funded education projects in countries neighbouring Afghanistan have supported the development and production of school textbooks in first languages, sometimes amidst controversy and even conflict, (Rahman 1997: 145-154; Rahman 2003: 203-205), often discouraged as too costly and time consuming, with a further concern raised in connection to Afghanistan, that it can work against aims of national unity, opening the way for interference by neighbouring countries (Bahry 2013: 16). In principle, however, while preservation and promotion of local languages can be viewed in social and economic terms, it remains essentially a human rights issue (Schlyter 2001: 127-136; Stroud 2002: 39; Andersen/Kooij 2007: 315; UNESCO 2008: 1; Izsák 2012: 1-21). While there are arguments for and against preservation of minority languages from economic, social, and political positions, (cf. Turin 2005: 1; Rahim 2014: 1; Torwali 2014: 1, 2015: 1) it is beyond the scope of this paper to revisit this extensively debated issue, except to note that there are some who, looking at minority languages in their own countries, and see no danger of languages disappearing if they are passed on inter-generationally within families. Others, however, think minority languages will not be able to survive in the process of economic, political and scientific globalisation in resisting international languages such as English. Nevertheless, as the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities has stressed: “There must be an appreciation of the cultural and linguistic diversity of society […] a means to promote common understandings between groups about how they can live together, respecting and indeed furthering diversity, while at the same time protecting the particular forms of diversity that makes our societies such rich and such rewarding places to live” (Ekéus 2003:

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3). This applies to Afghanistan facing the need for national cohesion, with increasing demands to fit into a global business and educational world, and yet wanting to retain and value its own linguistic and cultural heritage and differences.

L ANGUAGE D IVERSITY

IN

AFGHANISTAN

As a background for this discussion, a snapshot of language use in Afghanistan shows that at village level, there is always a common local language spoken by all, while, depending on migration or travel patterns, some, usually men, are proficient in other local languages, plus one, or both, of the official national languages. It is important also to keep in mind, however, an oral literary heritage in Afghanistan with stories, poems and sagas (some written in Persian and Pashto) not purely a male domain, since storytellers in parts of Badakhshan, for example, are generally old women. In early grades, children learn a national language, while very commonly, being taught in their first language. Where a teacher is unfamiliar with the local language however, s/he teaches early grades in one of the two national languages, which can mean be quite problematic for beginners unfamiliar with Dari or Pashto. Dodykhudoeva (2007: 69-78) writes of the same situation when examining language policy and education in Tajikistan. She reports that the specific feature of educational policy in Gorno-Badakhshan is the absence of a special preliminary course for children who are native speakers of Pamiri languages. In primary school, children who do not know Tajik are disadvantaged when they come to learn the language, because they have had no linguistic preparation, which prejudices their ability to master Tajik, and negatively effects their education in general. While Dodykhudoeva recommends preparatory Tajik teaching, local language teaching might be a better way to help children transition gradually into the national language. A problem for refugees returning to Afghanistan is that children are often not proficient in either of the official languages. Though the local language is used at home and with extended family where it is key to maintaining family identity, a second non-Afghan language may previously have been used in public, e.g., Urdu in Pakistan. In large towns where people are returnees, or where there has been more exposure to other languages, there is language diversity among males, sometimes with children, though to a lesser extent with women due to limited public exposure. In large schools with multilingual composition, the national language most commonly used regionally is the norm, though, it is not a matter

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of language domination in terms of control by certain groups, but rather of using the official language which is most prominent in the region, which, when considering the cost of publication, is logical. Official languages enable communication, cohesiveness, and to some extent, a shared culture on a wider scale which, one could reasonably argue, is essential for full participation in civic life.

L ANGUAGE T EACHING P OLICY Use of two official languages is not new for Afghanistan. The 1977 and 1964 Constitutions both mentioned two official languages, and in 1964 there was specific mention of strengthening Pashto (Singh et al. 2012: 4). Teaching local languages is again alluded to in the new Afghan Constitution which reiterates: “The state adopts and implements effective plans for strengthening, and developing all languages of Afghanistan. Publications and radio and television broadcasting are allowed in all languages spoken in the country” (Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2004: 7). In 2003, haggling over languages delayed the ratification of the new Constitution in Bonn, mainly because different language groups in attendance wanted precedence, or at least official recognition. Debates were particularly strong between the Dari-speaking Northern Alliance, the dominant Pashto-speaking group with its long history of business/educational leadership in the country, and to some extent the Uzbek faction with their own language (Finke 2004: 61). It is also worth noting though, that there was reference to both national and minority languages in the previous Constitution: “The state shall adopt necessary measures for the growth of culture, language and literature of the people of Afghanistan as well as to preserve and develop the worthy cultural, traditional, linguistic, literary and folkloric legacy of all nationalities, clans and tribes” (Republic of Afghanistan 1987: 8), and though there are conflicting reports regarding the use and promotion of minority languages during the Soviet period, it seems that minority languages and dialects began to flourish under the Nationalities Policy. Samady (2001: 592) writes that educational policies adopted in 1980 with the assistance of Soviet advisers, aimed at promoting literacy and basic education, and that the use of languages other than Pashto and Dari as media of instruction for ethnic minorities was emphasized along with foreign-language instruction focusing particularly on Russian. Referring to Kyrgyzstan, Schlyter (2001: 131) argues that in reality Russian was de facto made into the second unofficial language, though during the Taliban period in the 1990s, this was completely reversed as minority language use was forbidden in public.

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UNESCO (2007: 11) estimates thirty languages are spoken in Afghanistan, all of them living languages. Eight of these are spoken widely, i.e., Pashto, Dari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Pashai, Nuristani, Balochi and Shughni (though Ishkashimi and Wakhi, among others spoken in different valleys of Badakhshan, have no script, remain spoken languages only, and like most Pamiri languages could be considered endangered), while Shughni, without its own, was standardised with Latin script in the 1930s, then later banned from public use, when Arabic script was adopted instead.

N ATIONAL L ANGUAGES As national languages, either Dari and Pashto is used as the medium of instruction at all levels of education. This is reiterated in the Curriculum Framework (MoE 2003: 19): “Languages of instruction are the official languages of the country, in compliance with the country’s Constitution.” Official languages must be studied by all pupils, either as the first official regional language (in schools classified by linguistic regions) with the other national language taught as the second language, though in reality, neither Dari nor Pashto may be first language for many, but rather the second or third. Local languages In teaching, with local languages frequently used informally for instruction, problems arise when teachers are posted to areas where they are unfamiliar with regional languages. Similar issues affect Bangladesh and Nepal, where the national language is the medium of instruction, and languages of “some ethnological groups [are] used orally as transitional” (UNESCO 2007: 7), as well as India and Pakistan where there has been more flexibility with regional-language use in teaching. However, in Afghanistan, local languages have been included as one of the eight priority programs1 in the NESP, under curriculum learning-materials strategy (MoE 2006: 66), in line with the government pursuance of “a national curriculum as a means of building unity … [for] the constitution also has a provision for promoting other local languages” (ibid: 68). As well, the strategy fo-

1

Priority programs (2006): General Education, Teacher Education and Working Conditions, Education Infrastructure Development, Curriculum Development and Learning Materials, Islamic Education, Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Literacy and Nonformal Education, Education Administration Reform and Development.

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cuses on reaching “isolated and minority linguistic groups and, where possible, to provide materials in their first languages as well as the two official languages of Afghanistan” (ibid: 84). In the 2003 Curriculum Framework, however, we see a slightly different emphasis. Dari and Pashto are languages of instruction, while local languages may be studied: “The teaching and learning of local languages is provided through a separate subject in the curriculum in all local schools” (MoE 2003: 19) which appears to be a different emphasis from the NESP three years later. In terms of teaching languages, in its study plan for primary and secondary education, the Curriculum Framework outlines first languages for grades 1-12, second languages for grades 4-12, foreign languages in grades 4-12, and Arabic in grades 7-9 (ibid: 33). There is no mention of local languages as such in the schedule, which could suggest that they are to be seen rather, as means to an end, rather than specific subjects. In the 2006 NESP the policy was formulated differently. More than the medium of instruction, local languages could be studied as languages in their own right: In some parts of the country, children in early primary grades study in one of the local languages spoken in the area. Therefore, the Department has begun translating/developing Grade 1 and 2 language textbooks into Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashaei (sic) and Nuristani. (MoE 2006: 36)

This is clear throughout the 2006 NESP: “learning in native languages” (ibid: 68), and “some native language textbooks have been developed for Grade 1 and 2 […] will form the basis for decisions regarding the number of textbooks and teacher guidebooks that still need to be translated” (ibid: 69). At that point, the MoE plan was that 30.000 copies of books per language would be translated, printed and distributed for local languages identified in the Constitution i.e., Pashto, Dari, Uzbeki, Turkmani, Baluchi, Pashai, Nuristani, Pamiri and “other current languages in the country” (ibid: 85). Similar references appear in the second and third NESPs (2010-14; 2015-20) where there is also reference to movement in terms of textbook development and printing, although distribution and use of textbooks are issues, along with teacher training for language teaching and the development of supplementary reading materials. Emphasising the need to foster national unity and social cohesion, the 2003 Curriculum Framework focuses on peace-building through the social sciences, but recognises the importance of minority languages in promoting interest and ownership in the new school curriculum by promoting community awareness

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and readiness for an education relevant to local needs. While regional political interests can influence decisions on local language learning, the discussion is beyond the scope of this chapter, but what is important, is that the inclusion of local language teaching can certainly be viewed as one way to foster reconciliation of people who have been dragged into a war not of their making, and may be one way of retaining children in schools, so that a balanced inclusion of local language teaching is worth the additional cost, time, and technical training. Certainly, as has been discussed in other contexts, use of mother tongue in early grades, can be one way to retain children longer in school. As Sridhar (1996: 327-34) and Rahman (2003: 203-205) conclude, local languages in teaching is proven to be effective in addressing early school dropout. Foreign language policy Having lived with war for a whole generation, Afghanistan faces the dilemma of focusing on regional and national reconstruction on one hand, while making efforts to fit into a “globalised” world on the other. This is stressed on page after page in the new Curriculum Framework with its references to peace-building and social cohesion. Here it acknowledges the importance of “reconnecting people to the outside world” where learning foreign languages will help people take part in international dialogue (MoE 2003:16). Arabic is taught in grades 7–9, often linked to reading the Qur’an, and is particularly important in close to half the country’s schools not officially under the authority of the Ministry of Education. German and French languages are taught in Amani, Esteqlal and Malalai secondary schools in the capital. These have had mall numbers of foreign teachers for many decades, and more recently, private and diplomatic (rather than bilateral) funding from both countries. Otherwise foreign language teaching is limited apart from English (first introduced in the 1970s). Interestingly, the first NESP emphasised English more in relation to madrassas/Islamic schools (MoE 2006: 18, 39, 74) where it is taught by returning teachers who had been exposed to English for many years in Pakistan. However, while English language is referred to in many places through in the Curriculum Framework, by default representing all that is modern and global in the curriculum, introducing it as early as Grade 4 could be seen to drain resources from an education system already limited and stretched too far in terms of offering the basics to all, especially as, overall, teachers still have limited training opportunities and expertise, especially in rural areas. Furthermore, one could ask if the push to introduce English can be successful if, at the same time, pupils are

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unable to learn their own language, or have poor learning experiences, factors aggravating early ‘drop out’. Local languages and adult literacy In terms of non-formal education, strategies noted in the NESP (2006: 84) include use of materials in minority languages and well as official languages and special materials for nomadic Kuchis (generally Pashtun and Baluch). The emphasis in the National Literacy Centre has been on Dari and Pashto, especially with UNESCO support for producing books at three levels in these languages, along with limited and sporadic experimentation with other languages by some NGOs. Building on other MoE language-targeted efforts, the National Literacy Strategy, quoting Article 22 of the Constitution, reiterates that “the state is also required to provide the opportunity to teach native languages in the areas where they are spoken” (MoE 2013: 24), and includes specific outputs including training of native language teachers for ethnic-linguistic groups to ensure success. The 2012-15 Afghanistan National Literacy Action Plan (NLAP) produced by the MoE Literacy Department highlights the importance of adult literacy in contributing to long-term peace and development of Afghanistan (MoE 2012: 2, 4, 8). Addressing the overall goal of producing a productive, peaceful, secure and literate nation (ibid: 8) are life skills education, and vocational skill training for which there is no existing curriculum for supplementary schools and local educational centres (ibid: 24). However, the Action Plan also states that multiple local languages used throughout the country are an obstacle for literacy training, needing local facilitators who read and write the local language, as well as postliteracy materials matching neo-literate levels, presumably, in local languages (ibid: 24). The solution suggested is getting teachers to develop and produce low-cost teaching materials which are locally relevant, presumably in respect to both language and cultural reality. Naturally, this requires better training efforts of teachers which the Action Plan acknowledges. The NALP also discusses the issue of language minority groups remaining outside the scope of literacy programs because of unfamiliarity with either of the two national languages, and shows the disparity in certain provinces such as Faryab, for example, where 54 per cent of the population speaks Uzbek but only 27 per cent speak Dari, and 13 per cent Pashto. It is recommended that literacy targets across language groups should be considered (MoE 2012: 31). Elsewhere, e.g., in the third NESP, there are positive strategies suggested which the NALP taps into, e.g., community libraries, learning kits, and facilitators developing ma-

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terials according to local interests – all fine proposals but more wish-list items than specifically planned strategies. However, the suggestion is that the Literacy Department may go further by providing funds (in appropriate cases and where possible) for self-generated and other materials to be translated, printed and distributed in local languages (ibid: 36), with training arranged to enable district officials and NGO personnel to plan local curriculum. There are several issues which become clear from this plan i.e., inconclusive policy regarding local languages and adult literacy, and challenges in developing books and materials in multiple languages (ibid: 80). One of the first actions to be taken before anything can be realistically achieved in either regard is that “a clear language policy to impart literacy will [have to] be formulated to fulfil the constitutional obligation that the state is required to provide opportunities to teach native languages in areas where they are spoken” (MoE 2012: 72). Whether development and use of books in minority languages is sustainable, whether post-literacy demands can be dealt with, and whether adult literacy in minority languages is what people need, is a wider matter but might go some way towards encouraging people in learning which seems relevant for their daily lives. In the end, however, the question is whether adult literacy provision in minority languages will be beneficial for adults who generally need to be proficient in the official languages. Agriculture and health posters and pamphlets are generally only produced in the two official languages, and to be able to participate in government matters and with most civil society organisations, official national languages are essential. On the other hand, local languages as a medium of instruction could benefit women whose main communication is local, e.g., with linguistically similar health workers, and (hopefully) school teachers. So finally, minority languages for adult literacy might be a question of efficiency as much as a rights issue, especially in the post-literacy phase of progression to higher levels of competence in given languages.

C HALLENGES R EGARDING L OCAL L ANGUAGES The previous section has already identified some of the challenges surrounding minority/local languages. Another facing curriculum developers has been finding language textbook writers familiar with primary school pedagogy. Commonly, linguistics specialists (many university academics) are co-opted to write books but have little experience or relevant skills in writing appropriate for primary school students, though less of a problem with the two national languages. Often methods used in teaching languages do not produce communicative competence

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for practical use, though with the 2013 national assessment for grade 6 students in Pashto and Dari (MoE 2014: 8), the start of systematic monitoring of national language achievements will hopefully provide clearer guidance for language policy. While there have been great inroads into in-service training programs for teachers in government-run schools, teachers still lack basic linguistic and pedagogical knowledge and skills – a massive problem facing Afghanistan as it plans in-service and pre-service teacher-training programs, as well as the incredible lack of teachers, particularly women, in rural areas. It will not only be a problem for current teachers to learn ways to teach and use books in local languages, but pre-service education needs to address the same issue. The 2007 curriculum for pre-service Diploma of Primary Teaching, for example, made no mention of first language teaching, with the focus remaining on Dari, Pashto, and English as a foreign language. Clearly, there is much work in developing curriculum for many levels at the same time, but if policy insists on local languages, and if textbooks in selected local languages have been printed (and distributed), considerable effort will need to go into making first language use and teaching a reality. The fact that many Afghan languages are still unwritten remains a challenge for the Ministry of Education, though some headway has been made through one NGO program where Pashai phonetic system and written language was developed, bringing an unwritten language into the realm of literacy (Grove and Young 2008: 20). This example of local community involvement has provided a model for other developments, since it has been accepted by the MoE to become the foundation upon which to develop the primary school textbook as well as for adult literacy. However, a written language which has been developed informally in this way, raises serious concerns about its future since a dearth of reading materials means post-literacy skills beyond initial and rudimentary levels will be difficult to manage and expensive to maintain, certainly when more than 20 more languages (ibid: 80), remaining. In 2007, for example, the Curriculum Development Department was not sure how to move forward with Turkmeni because of controversy with Turkic alphabet which has daunted other Central Asian countries also confronts Afghanistan – not just modifications of the basic Turkic alphabet but alphabets which differ from each other and on certain fundamental points from the Turkish one (Schlyter 2001: 132). With neighbouring countries using different modified versions of alphabets, attempts at creating a generalised Turkic Latin alphabet were hindered, though in any case in Afghanistan, Latin versus Arabic script remains an issue. The same is true of Shughni language shared in north-eastern Badakhshan and Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, with Cyrillic on one side and Ara-

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bic/Persian on the Afghan side hinders shared teaching methods and materials, though ideas can be exchanged orally but development of teaching materials and books at this stage is limited. What this shows is that policy statements about minority language teaching need to be seen in context, affected by complicating factors. On a positive note, with each new NESP there is evidence of new local language books produced, e.g., the second NESP (2010-14) outlines the Curriculum Development Sub-Program aimed to develop textbooks for what it called “third” languages for grades 1-12 by 2014 (MoE 2010: 76). It aimed also to launch teacher training programs for teaching third languages (an interesting distinction here between the local first language versus the local language relegated to third position – perhaps reflecting the commitment and importance placed on local learning within the overburdened MoE. The third and current NESP (2015-2020) shows further progress with 48 textbook titles developed (again in third) local languages for “children of linguistic minorities in grades 1-6” to be printed and distributed soon (MoE 2015: 8). In this, the government is on track with its plans for eight new local language textbooks developed each year, continuing through to 2020 (ibid: 37). The 2015 Education for All Review Report (EFA) certainly shows that there have been developments in terms of local language textbook development, with teachers’ guides as well as textbooks for eight officially recognised local languages for grades 1-9 in Uzbeki, Nuristani, Pashai, Baluchi, Turkmeni, Shegnani, Gojari, and Wakhani (UNESCO 2015: 28). The EFA report also states that teachers have been deployed to schools based on the language of instruction, and although not verified by the author, indicates serious intent on the part of the MoE. However, development and printing of textbooks is one thing. Delivery is another. As in other countries, Afghanistan has seen textbooks piled in storage centres/facilities for years while schools complain of textbook storage. If local language textbooks are not delivered, teachers will continue as they have done previously, i.e., teach in a mix of local and national languages which falls rather short of what is envisaged with the new language policy. Local language books will be delivered to more central localities where they might be selected by school administrators, just one more factors inhibiting implementation of local language study, even in districts where a language is spoken.

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C ONCLUSION With so many other challenges facing educational planners in Afghanistan, it is difficult to be optimistic about language policy implementation at this stage. Adequate training in local language teaching has not taken place (UNESCO 2014: 4). There has been no precedence for it, and the MoE has been able to provide only a few weeks of general in-service training in the basics of teaching and learning mathematics and language, along with general pedagogical principles in its In-service Teacher Education Program. The MoE still struggles to get books into schools, even in areas which are considered safe enough. Regions affected most by violent conflict cover the whole language spectrum – Pashto speaking south, east and central areas, Dari speaking north-west and western provinces (including Tajik and Hazara areas), Uzbek and Turkmen to the north, and Nuristani in the east. An added complication in terms of regionalised planning is that there are often language islands in a dominating language areas, e.g., Uzbek villages in Pashto speaking districts in Baghlan province. This poses problems for Provincial Education Departments sending books or providing teachers for one minority language in a district where languages are not uniform. Though resistance to language promotion is not an issue, opposition to the new curriculum in parts of the country continues (Jones 2009: 113-120), and understandably, implementation strategies for local languages in education are still at embryo stage. As with other Central Asian countries, Afghanistan struggles with questions of protecting traditional linguistic cultures, promoting sustainable development and the harmonious relationship between local and global contexts. The emphasis on rights, tolerance, and respect in new curricula read well alongside the notion of languages in this multi-lingual society promoting “harmonious relationships” (UNSECO 2008). One might conclude at this point in time, much is being done to promote local languages in Afghanistan, though the dilemma for Afghanistan, as with so many other countries of the South is – to what end and at what cost? There is a clear case to be made for the right of people to speak, use and learn their own language but in the case of a country like Afghanistan challenged on so many fronts in terms of education, there is the issue of quality textbooks and teachers’ development. Teaching and developing materials in local languages can be an excellent means of involving communities in their own development, especially when subject matter is linked to broader issues beyond district and province. One the other hand, sustainability of such initiatives needs to be faced. Finally, the question comes back to what is important in terms of de-

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velopment and education. In the long-term, where is it focused, and on whom? These are the questions for which education for development needs to gear itself.

L IST

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R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Susan/Kooij, C. (2007). Adult literacy education and human rights: a view from Afghanistan. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 5 (3), 315331. Bahry, Stephen (2013). Language in Afghanistan’s Education Reform. Does it play a role in peace and reconciliation? In C. Benson & K. Kosonen (Eds.), Language Issues in Comparative Education: Inclusive Teaching and Learning in Non-dominant Languages and Cultures (pp. 59-76). Rotterdam/Boston/Taipei: Sense Publishers. Dodykhudoeva, Leila (2007). Revitalization of minority languages: comparative dictionary of key cultural terms in languages and dialects of the ShugniRushani group. In P. K. Austin, O. Bond & D. Nathan (Eds.), Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory (pp. 69-79). London: SOAS. Ekéus, Rolf (2003). Laying the foundations for integration: Language and education in a multi-ethnic Kyrgyzstan. Multilingual education and mother-tongue education for national minorities in Kyrgyzstan. Osh Kyrgyzstan: OSCE. Finke, Peter (2004). Central Asian Attitudes towards Afghanistan: Perceptions of the Afghan War in Uzbekistan. In R. Canfield & G. Rasuly-Paleczek (Eds.) (2010), Ethnicity, Authority, and Power in Central Asia: New Games Great and Small (pp. 61-76). Oxford UK: Routledge. Grove, Carl & Young, Catherine (2008). Promoting and Delivering Literacy in Multilingual Environments. Research paper commissioned with the United Nations Literacy Decade. New Delhi: UNESCO/SIL International Asia. Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004). The Constitution of Afghanistan. Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Izsák, Rita (2012). Report of the Independent Expert on Minority Issues. Geneva: UN Human Right Council (OHCHR). Jones, Adele M. E. (2009). Curriculum and civil society in Afghanistan. Harvard Educational Review, 79 (1), 113-122. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2003). Curriculum Framework Afghanistan. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education, Department of Compilation and Translation.

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Ministry of Education (MoE) (2004). National Report on the Development of Education in Afghanistan. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2006). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 1385–1389/2006-2010). Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2007). Pre-service Curriculum Framework. Draft version. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education, Teacher Training Department. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2010). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 11 – 1389-1393/2010-2014. Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Education, Department of Planning and Evaluation. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2012). Afghanistan National Literacy Action Plan (2012-2015) Literacy – Tool for sustainable development and key to lifelong learning. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education/UNESCO. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2013). National Literacy Strategy: Policies, targets and strategies. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education/UNESCO. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2015). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 111 (2015-2020 draft). Kabul: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Ministry of Education. Rahim, Bushra (2014). Will change in medium of instruction improve education in KP? Dawn, September 28th. Retrieved from http://www.dawn.com/news/ 1134809 (01.12.2017). Rahman, Tariq (1997). The medium of instruction controversy in Pakistan. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 18 (2), 145-154. Rahman, Tariq (2003). Language, ideology and power: Language learning among Muslims of Pakistan and North India. Language Policy, 2 (2), 203-205. Republic of Afghanistan (1987). The Constitution of Afghanistan 1987. Kabul: Republic of Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://www.constitution.org/cons/ afghan/const1987.htm (01.12.2017). Torwali, Zubair (2014). Education policy and local languages. The Express Tribune, June 2nd. Retrieved from http://tribune.com.pk/story/716264/educationpolicy-and-local-languages/ (01.12.2017). Torwali, Zubair (2015). Saving local languages. The International News, July 28th, 1-2. Retrieved from https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/53367-saving-locasllanguages (01.12.2017).

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Turin, Mark (2005). Language endangerment and Linguistic Rights in the Himalayas: A Case Study from Nepal. Mountain Research and Development, 25 (1), 4-9 Samady, Saif R. (2001). Modern education in Afghanistan. Prospects, 31 (4), 587602. Schlyter, Birgit N. (2001). Language policies in present day Central Asia. International Journal of Multicultural Societies, 3 (2), 127-136. Sridhar, Kamal K. (1996). Language in education: Minorities and multilingualism in India. International Review of Education, 42 (4), 327–347. Stroud, Christopher (2002). Towards a Policy for Bilingual Education in Developing Countries. Stockholm: Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. UNESCO (2007). Advocacy kit for promoting multilingual education: Including the Excluded. Bangkok: UNESCO. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0015/001521/152198e.pdf (01.12.2017). UNESCO (2008). Promotion and preservation of languages. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/events/iyl/multilingualism.shtml (01.12.2017). UNESCO (2015). Education for All 2015 National Review Report: Afghanistan. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002327/232702e.pdf (01.12.2017).

Highly Motivated, Transnational, Heterogeneous, and Barely Interconnected An Explorative Online Survey among German Organizations Operating in Afghanistan: Characteristic, Commitment and Content S TEFANIE H ARSCH & U WE H. B ITTLINGMAYER

I NTRODUCTION : G ERMAN CIVILIAN COMMITMENT AFGHANISTAN – ITS EXTENT , ORGANIZATIONAL

IN

STRUCTURES AND INTERCONNECTEDNESS Afghanistan’s public image, as presented on Western media, is largely shaped by reports of civil war, foreign rule, occupation and extremely difficult living conditions. Co-existing with this media-portrayed side of Afghanistan, yet far less well known, there are other sides to the country, and, for that matter, to the country’s relationship to the West. There is, for instance, the relatively continuous commitment of government organizations (GOs) in Afghanistan, such as the work of the Deutsch-Afghanische Freundschaft (German-Afghan Friendship), now more than a hundred years old, and very rarely exciting any media attention, despite the numerous large-scale projects in agriculture, social development and security in which it is involved (AA 2016, Press office of the German Federal Government 2015). Almost entirely unknown is the work of German non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Afghanistan, and only very few specialists know about the great number of small independent NGOs and initiatives running humanitarian projects in all fields imaginable in Afghanistan, most of them without any tax money support. At the same time, the role of the about 100.000 people from Afghanistan now living in Germany remains very insufficiently investigated, both with

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respect to the remittances sent by the migrants and to the various ways in which these people are committed to supporting Afghanistan. Only one GIZ study conducted in 2006 measured the significance of the diaspora (GIZ 2007). Going by the theory of transnationalism (Faist 2000; Faist et al. 2014; Pries 2010), increasing commitment in the country of origin would logically ensue from a growing number of people with an Afghan migration background living in Germany. To find out whether or not this is the case, and what the commitment from Germany in Afghanistan, i.e. the part ignored by mainstream media is really like, we conducted an explorative and descriptive study, guided by the following key questions: 1. Is it possible to provide a sound estimate of the extent of civilian commitment of German organisations in Afghanistan? 2. Who is or what groups are involved in supporting Afghanistan? What are the characteristics of those organizations? 3. What are the focuses of the German (non-military) commitment in Afghanistan? 4. What commitment is there in the field of education? 5. Is there an active, or at least a rudimentary network connecting German NGOs operating in Afghanistan? 6. What are the present conditions of commitment in Afghanistan? What are the forecasts like? We approached these issues by way of an online survey amongst organizations operating in Afghanistan. In this, we confined ourselves to explorative research, i.e. inventory initial assessment and gaining first insights into this largely disregarded issue. In the following section, we will briefly outline our methodology, the online questionnaire, and the sample. Next, we will present the results of our online survey along the research topics: organizations’ basic data, contents and implementation, distribution by region, the education sector, and forecasts of future commitment. Finally, we attempt to draw a preliminary résumé.

M ETHODOLOGY ,

QUESTIONNAIRE AND SAMPLE

To identify and characterize instances of German NGOs’ and GOs’ commitment in Afghanistan, we started off conducting a free online research and screened organizations on the portals DevTracker, Venro, and Länderkontakte between May and July 2016. The identified number of just under 200 organizations served as

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the frame of reference (N=199). However, we do not claim to have found all organizations, due to both necessarily limited time and our focus on organizations committed to supporting the Afghan civil society. Considering these limitations, a cautious estimate of the total number of organizations would be 250 to 300. Apart from NGOs, further institutions were also invited to take part in the study: foundations, academic societies running exchange programs for both teachers and students as part of institutionalized twinning arrangements etc. At university level, alongside the German Academic Exchange Service (= Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), there are the Max Planck Foundation, the German-Afghan University-Association (Deutsch-Afghanische Universitäts-Gesellschaft e. V.) or the Academic Working Association Afghanistan (Akademische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Afghanistan), the umbrella organization of the Afghan Specialized Medical Staff (Dachverband des Afghanischen Medizinischen Fachpersonals e. V.), and there are the Universities of Freiburg (involved in training medical staff), Bonn and Giessen (among others developed the Afghan plant atlas and the Afghan national atlas) and the University of Education Freiburg (discussing with the Afghan Ministry of Education the implementation of modern classroom practices). 1 After identifying these institutions, we analyzed their websites and annual reports. Based on this analysis, and our key questions, we developed and discussed an online questionnaire, ran pre-tests, and adapted the questionnaire accordingly. 2 The following table provides an overview of the number of organizations identified and participating in our study.

1

For the online survey, rather than contact the universities directly, we wrote to the specialized societies and centers, such as the German-Afghan University-Association (Deutsch-Afghanische Universitäts-Gesellschaft e. V.) or the Academic Working association Afghanistan (Akademische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Afghanistan), the umbrella organization of the Afghan Specialized Medical Staff (Dachverband des Afghanischen Medizinischen Fachpersonals e. V.) as well as the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy of the Ruhr-University Bochum. Furthermore, a great variety of foundations operating in Afghanistan, both private and political, were invited to take part in the survey, but only the private ones such as the Rezai, Ayas, and GeorgKraus-foundation responded. Owing to this kind of “self selection”, the special focus of our survey is on the work of NGOs.

2

The questionnaire was uploaded to the web and tested by several people with diverse professional backgrounds (pre-test 1). Next we ran a second pre-test on a person who had worked in Afghanistan for many years, drawing on the speaking aloud method, thus further straightening out inaccuracy and lack of definition.

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Table 1: Sample identified Number of 199 organizations Reasons for exclusion/not participating

contacted

responded

answered all

156

72

35

N=43 lack of N=10 information defective

lack of time

e-mail address N=18 other reasons such as termination of commitment

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

Out of the 199 organizations identified in preliminary research, 156 were contacted by e-mail in late July and again in early September and, by means of an integrated link, invited to the online survey on research tool ‘SosciSurvey’. The other 43 organizations were excluded from the survey for either lack of a website, or lack of contact details, or because they failed to describe their activities in Afghanistan on their websites. In ten cases the e-mails could not be delivered. Another eight replied they had terminated their commitment in Afghanistan, due to which they would not take part in the survey. Five organizations expressed their regret that they could not find the time to complete the questionnaire. Three (international) organizations were unable to complete the questionnaire because none of their staff spoke German. Another two organizations preferred a telephone conversation to completing the online questionnaire. 49 percent of the organizations successfully contacted (N=72) took part in the survey, with just under half of them abandoning the questionnaire at some point and 35 filling it in completely without any missings. The online collected data were analyzed quantitatively by using the statistic software SPSS Statistics 21 and qualitatively by using content analysis (Mayring 2015). So, despite our efforts to identify as many German-Afghan actors as possible, our study cannot claim to provide a complete representative picture of organizations operating in Afghanistan. However, the majority of organizations which present their ongoing projects in Afghanistan on an often updated website did take part, so we can at least assume to have provided an approximately close picture of the GermanAfghan commitment in Afghanistan in 2016.

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ORGANIZATIONS

Organizational structures, foundation, staff, projects, and cooperation of actors operating in Afghanistan The majority of participants of our online-questionnaire are non-profit organizations, identifying as registered (non-commercial) societies (N=24 out of 40) or international non-government organizations (N=6). This points to the fact that most initiatives originate in the commitment of individuals or small groups of people. Yet, there is also a commitment by foundations (N=4), universities (N=2) and gGmbHs (non-profit limited corporations). In regard to the establishment of the organizations, an overview shows a very wide range as to the organizations’ year of foundation (1913 to 2016). One of our initial conjectures, namely that most organizations started their commitment in Afghanistan after the end of the Taliban rule, was not confirmed by our data since more than half of the organizations (23 out of 40) worked in Afghanistan already prior to 2002. Most new foundations per year, however, did take place just after 2001, in the years 2002 to 2004, at 4 out of 40 per year. This ‘surge’ we take to be a reflection of the optimism and fresh start atmosphere at that time. The Petersberg conference, and the start of the Petersberg process, putting Germany in the center of international Afghanistan policies, almost certainly contributed to optimistic assessments as to the chances of reconstructing the country, just after the fall of the Taliban rule (cf., among others, Schetter 2010: Ch. 13). On the other hand, most organizations started their commitment long before the end of the Taliban rule, which can be interpreted as an expression of a long history of German-Afghan relations. To what extent the NATO allies’ war contributed to the significant boost in founding of NGOs remains a matter of conjecture and cannot be verified with any certainty by an online survey. The nationalities of founding members reflect the great significance of exiled Afghans in the German-based commitment in Afghanistan. Only 38 percent of organizations stated that no Afghans were involved in the establishment of the organization. Another 38 percent stated that Afghans were involved, and 26 percent said that the organization was founded predominantly, or even exclusively by Afghans. This underscores the great importance of exiled Afghans in running initiatives in Afghanistan and tallies well with the theories and expectations of the transnationalism approach.

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It becomes apparent that the German NGOs’ commitment in Afghanistan is predominantly the commitment of and by Afghans living in Germany. After giving an overview of the legal status and foundation of the organization, we turn now to describe the organizations and projects in 2015. The size of the organizations varies widely, yet with a tendency towards small organizations with not more than 25 members (N=20). This is consistent with the non-commercial nature of the majority of organizations. On the other hand, one in five organizations has more than 100 members. There is also substantial variety in the composition of staff in (N=33): numbers range from 0 to 2000! Predominantly, Afghan staff is employed in the following departments: administration/technology (19 mentions), management (14), education (16), health care (8) and construction (3 mentions). 20 organizations stated they had no foreign staff in Afghanistan. The other organizations have up to four non-Afghan staff on the spot, with the exception of one organization which has 50 international staff working in Afghanistan. International staff are employed above all in management (15 mentions), but also in education (7), medical care (3), and other departments (5). In the majority of cases, on-site work is not done on one’s own but is dependent on the co-operation with local actors (see chart 1). Most important among those are ministries, above all the Ministries of Education and Higher Education (N=7), the Ministry of Public Health, as well as Afghan NGOs (N=12/31), plus the GIZ/BMZ (N=7/31). Furthermore, there are close connections between NGOs and universities. However, as a rule, these are based on personal contact/persons rather than institutionalized.

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Chart 1: Cooperation partners

Cooperation partners (N=31) 10

6

others

NGOs

7

Shuras

12 7

GIZ/BMZ

other ministries

Ministry of Education & Mo Higher E

3

7

further actors

13

UNHCR/UNESCO /UNICEF

14 11 7 4 0

10

10

absolute numbers

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

Chart 2: Way of cooperation

25 20

Way of cooperation (N=38) 20

20

15 10

17

15

13

12

5

0

absolute numbers

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

The manners of co-operation differ widely, often varying within single organizations (see chart 2). One-third of the co-operations are project-based and temporary. The most common forms of co-operation are on-site financial support by donation (N=20 out of 38) as well as education and training (N=20/38). Those are implemented by more than half of the organizations. Next in the ranking are

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technical/professional advice (N=17/38), co-ordination (N=15/38), and support by donations in kind (N=13/38). The total number of projects supported by each organizations in 2015 (the last completed calendar year prior to our survey) ranges from 1 to often more than 10 projects (N=11/41), with most respondents supporting in absolute numbers a relatively small, manageable number of up to four projects. Whether this tendency towards small numbers of projects is due to the political situation, financial restrictions, difficult project monitoring caused by instability, or the systematic focusing of resources on a few activities, cannot be determined with any certainty on the basis of our survey. Last, in this section, we want to focus on financial issues. There is substantial heterogeneity as to the available annual budgets, ranging from small 3000 Euro projects to projects on the order of 8 million Euros for 2016 alone (GIZ 2016). Overall, three out of five organizations have available annual budgets of up to 150.000 Euros. Project-related commitment in Afghanistan ranges from donation-funded single projects by non-profit organizations to large-scale projects aiming at restructuring entire regions. The most common methods of funding are by donation (7 out of 10 organizations), subsidies by Germany’s federal government, and membership fees (almost one out of two each). In most cases, projects are funded from a mix of two or more sources, both private and public. From our data, we cannot tell whether organizations pursue common goals for Afghanistan or whether there is competition for funds among them. Commitment in Afghanistan: “highly motivated and consistent” When asked: “What is the motivation behind your commitment in Afghanistan?”, most of the 41 respondent organizations stated a desire to help with the reconstruction – a desire often pre-dating (the downfall of) the Taliban regime. The second most common motivation was to help people in distress. More than one-third of the organizations stated that being personally affected, i.e. having family ties or coming from an Afghan background originally, played an important role in motivating their commitment. The answers are presented in the following chart.

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Chart 3: Motivation

Motivation (N=41, approval multiple options) Desire to contribute to the rebuilding of Afghanistan

58,5

Desire to support people in despair

53,7

Personally affected (origin, family…)

39,0

Desire to support with own expertise

36,6

Desire to inform other people of the situation

36,6

Request by Afghan people to support

34,1

Desire to contribute to a mutual understanding

24,4

Attention due to increased medial reporting

12,2

Others

14,6

Approval in % 0

15

30

45

60

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

The majority of the organizations do not confine their activity to just one field, with education (86 percent of a total of 42) and health (71 percent) clearly prevailing. About one-third of the respondents are involved in humanitarian aid and transition assistance, and just under 30 percent in energy and water supply. The fact that education so clearly prevails in our study is hardly accidental, as it is very much in line with the idea, much preached by OECD, UNESCO, the World Bank, and other big players, that “development by education” is the best and the most sustainable strategy (cf. OECD 2016; World Bank 2017; Ministry of Education 2007, 2012, 2016; Naumann 2011, 2012; Sahrai/Bittlingmayer 2015). There is also much heterogeneity as to the target groups and their sizes, the number of people immediately benefitting ranging from 3 to 130.000. There are about equal shares of ‘small organizations’ (N=11/35) helping up to 500 people, ‘medium-sized’ organizations (N=11/35) supporting 1000 to 5000 people, as well as eight ‘large’ organizations with beneficiary numbers between 10.000 and

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65.000 and three ‘very large’ organizations supporting 100.000 to 130.000 people. Furthermore, we asked not only about the people benefitting immediately but also the number of communities addressed and the people benefitting indirectly. The shares are very similar to the ones presented above. Chart 4: Target group

Target groups (N=37, in %) Women Children

76 51

Youth

38

Men medical professionals

35 32

whole community

27

other village council

27 19

specific areas (e.g. water, school ...)

16

internally displaced people Managers

14 14 0

20

40

60

80

mentioned by % of all organizations © Harsch, Bittlingmayer

Asked for their target group (a question with multiple answer options), the respondent reported on, 76 percent of organizations who work in Afghanistan focus their activities on women as their target group. This is in line with Western international policies to strengthen women in Afghanistan. Yet, it must be said that the underlying clear-cut contrast between German or Western women enjoying full liberties, and suppressed Burka-clad Afghan women, is very much an expression of ‘Orientalism’ (Said 1995 [1978]), and does not bear close scrutiny. Although there is no denying the severe violations of Afghan women’s human rights, and these violations must not be ignored or downplayed (cf. for instance Samar 2010; Samar 2011; and the contribution by Noor in this volume). The second most frequently mentioned target group is children of up to 12 years of age, with about one in two organizations (51 percent) being concerned with their welfare. Childhood in Afghanistan is generally considered to be among the most brutal and hard: Afghan children “suffer from poverty, social inequality, invasion, civil war, occupation, expulsion and indescribable atrocities”

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(Heath 2015: 1). Hence many organizations’ desire to help women and children through projects and to address them as their primary target group is more than understandable. In addition, the target groups “teenagers”, “men” and “medical staff” are in each case addressed by every third organization. Among “other” target groups, respondents said they worked together with people in the field of education (university teachers, jurists etc.), in health care (patients and “orthopedic workshops”) as well as “in civil society” and mentioned the general goal to strengthen families. Contrary to our initial hypothesis, the replies to our questions regarding geographical location showed no prevalence of or preference for urban over rural areas. Out of 37 organizations, 12 worked mainly in urban areas, 17 in rural areas, and 8 in both rural and urban areas in equal measure. Taking the transnational approach seriously, i.e. assuming that Afghans living in Germany come from rural as well as urban backgrounds and that both groups participate in transnational work to a similar extent, this fairly even distribution between cities and the country appears plausible. On the other hand, organizations’ replies to the question, which Afghan provinces their activities were based in, showed a distinct concentration on the capital or the province of Kabul. Kabul’s outstanding position as the location of most organizations’ activities (in most cases, it is one of several locations) is clearly confirmed by the replies. 24 out of the 35 respondents operate in Kabul, followed by Herat (N=10), Balch (N=9) and Nangarhar (N=7). The activity of one organization spans the Hazarajat, and two replied they operated in all provinces. It is remarkable that there is – albeit small – activity in provinces where the Taliban are strong, for example in the highly contested areas in the South-West that are usually barely accessible for foreign organizations. Commitment in the education sector As it has been pointed out as a field of special relevance, the following section will be devoted to a somewhat deeper analysis of education. It covers the relevance of education, the ways of involvement, numbers, role of academic and vocational training. According to our data at least, organizations based in Germany and operating in Afghanistan attach great importance to education, which is reflected by the fact that two-third of the respondent organizations are involved in several areas within the education sector, ranging from pre-school to school and university education, vocational training, and other pedagogical offerings (see chart 5). From our perspective, it is of special interest and, in fact, surprising that more than half of the respondents are involved in vocational education. Beyond that, two out of

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five organizations work in the primary school sector, more than a quarter in nonformal education, and a fifth in university education. In contrast to other lowincome countries, the German actors seem to assume that vocational training is of more significance to Afghanistan than tertiary education. What vocational training can achieve if no sustainable sources of income are created, remains highly doubtful. Exporting Germany’s dual vocational training system has often met with implementation issues because local labor markets have been unable to absorb skilled workers in an adequate way. Chart 5: Involvement in the educational sector

Involvement in the educational sector (N=35) 54,3%

60% 40,0%

45%

22,9%

30% 15%

8,6%

8,6%

14,3% 14,3%

20,0%

28,6%

20,0%

0%

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

There is a substantial variation in the ways in which organizations get involved in school education. While a large share of respondents (four out of five) stated they focused on improving school management and the transportation of teaching staff/female students (7 out of 10), just less than two-thirds said they supported female students financially (cf. Kässer in this book) and aimed at improving curricula. Regarding facilities, 14 of 16 responding organizations primarily stated they supply schools with classrooms and equipment, just less than half offer water, sanitation and hygiene measures, and health measures, by installing sanitary facilities. Just over one-third build libraries, laboratories and staff rooms. Two organizations reported they built sentinel shelters. To support classroom teaching, the organizations provide various equipment. 17 out of the 18 respondent organizations provide teaching material such as pencils and exercise books (three out of five) or even sets of books for entire forms (every second), and also books for teachers (8 out of 18). Compared to teaching material, class-

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room equipment is of secondary significance (8 out of 18). Two in five organizations supplied desks and benches, every third supplied blackboards, desks and benches for the teachers as well. One in five respondents stated they supplied computers. 13 of the 18 responding organizations explicitly offer further education for teachers, for instance instruction in how to use the equipment (5 out of 13), classes by foreign specialized subject teachers (about one-third), attending one of the national further education centers (one-fourth) and further education in the afternoon or during internships/study visits. A high heterogeneity in the responses can also be seen in the absolute number of supported school classes, students, and teachers, percentage of female students, percentage of female teachers, gender-mixed education, and school dropouts. There are basically two types of commitment: (a) the small-scale type, supporting one school with up to ten school classes up to year six, and (b) the ‘expansive’ type, supporting a great number of schools (>29) with up to 600 school classes and seeing their students through high school. There is also substantial variation regarding the percentage of supported female students and female teachers: 20 to 100 percent females among students, and 0 to 100 percent females among teachers. Only two organizations implement co-ed classes. Compared to the great number of organizations involved at the school level, only very few respondents (six) are active at the university level, and only three of them specified their activities in our survey. This may largely be due to the fact that we did not contact universities directly but turned to academic study/working groups, centers, and liaison offices instead. By the responses we received, the focus is very much on administration, i.e. study courses on law, public administration and economics. Another organization works on setting up study courses in the science and linguistics departments and supports research. Within vocational training, the focus on girls and women is especially striking, as the courses implemented are predominantly on embroidery (two out of five), tailoring (two out of five), and carpet/blanket weaving (>one out of five) (cf. Goldenberg in this book). Some organizations offer courses on the extracurricular matter, like health education (two-thirds), followed by computer courses and languages (>one out of five), mostly English, and occasionally Pashto, Dari, and German. A few respondent organizations also offer courses on sports and life skills.

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Quality management, evaluation, and the future direction of the commitment This section deals with organizations’ inside processes and tries to reconstruct organizations’ view of their basis – as far as this can be done by way of a standardized explorative survey. Hence, it is fairly technical and primarily of interest to practitioners and researchers in organizational theory. The following sections are covered: monitoring and evaluation, chances and reasons for success, completed and terminated projects, reasons for continuation, challenges, and problems. Monitoring and evaluation play a decisive role in all organizations. It is mostly done through compulsory regular reports by partners (4 out of 5) and onsite visits (3 out of 4), in two out of five cases this is done by the local partner organization, in every fifth organization by external evaluation. Respondents reported that monitoring/evaluation is increasingly done in a narrative, project and demand-related way. Questioned on the chances and conditions for success, respondents (N=26) replied they depended on the close cooperation with qualified and trustworthy local people as the (main) actors (N=17/26), technical knowledge and familiarity with conditions in Afghanistan (N=6/26), persistence (N=6/26), reliability (N=4/26) and flexibility in administration (also regarding funding). The following statement highlights the conditions for success: “we are politically neutral, we have a lot of experience working on site, have reliable local partners, what we do is a success with the local population”; other vital factors are “having a brain, a heart, a sense of humor, and being tough”. According to the respondents, Germany has an important role to play, due to both its good reputation in Afghanistan and the current migration to Germany. 3 There is substantial variation in the number of projects completed. 15 of 40 respondents said they had not completed any projects, while other respondents reported 80 or even 130 completed projects. One reason among other things for this variance is the diverse nature of the projects (infrastructure, such as well construction, or long-term competency development in students). The most frequently stated reason for terminating a project was scheduled completion (about two-thirds of cases). Contrary to expectations based on the country’s instability,

3

In addition, practitioners point out the necessity to improve the German commitment’s PR and to reconsider the basic conditions. These are extremely difficult, because Germany’s ‘official’ aid assistance achieves very little, while local initiatives get smothered in red tape and are therefore less effective.

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only ten organizations were unable to complete their projects and a mere four had to temporarily interrupt projects. Other reasons mentioned for terminating projects were the security situation, lack of funding, and the hand-over to Afghans. Reasons for temporarily interrupting their commitment to Afghanistan, mentioned by three respondents, were the Gulf War, the general political situation, and doubts as to a scholarship candidate’s worthiness. Chart 6: Reasons for further commitment

Reasons for further commitment (N=34) Good contacts on-site Visible success of the initatives Availability to understand the local needs and to implement solutions Request by Afghans to continue/expand the commitment High level of commitment by the project staff and partners Establishment of networks and partnerships Flexibility and adaptation

0 mentioned in absolute numbers

7

14

21

28

35

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

On the other hand, most organizations gave several reasons in favor of continued commitment. Chief among these were great local contacts (N=28/34) and tangible achievements (N=25/34). Other similar reasons were the willingness to understand the local people’s needs, requests by the Afghans, the high level of commitment among project staff, and an interest in building networks and cooperations. In an open question, the respondents described challenges and difficulties. The most frequently mentioned were those at the macro level, above all failing security (27 mentioned), followed by corruption (11), increasing hopelessness (5), the poor economic situation (4) and funding (4). Furthermore, they name political issues such as bad governance (e.g., authoritarian structures) (N=9), and government red tape in both Germany and Afghanistan. Charitable societies reported difficulties recruiting volunteers and reliable staff and stated an increasing lack of interest. Some respondents specified their responses and named “the role

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of women is becoming ever more difficult”, “extremely poor economic and educational conditions”, and there was “still very little on-site implementation by foreigners”. Despite all of these challenges, however, the respondent organizations show prodigious resilience and most of them will very likely continue their long-term commitment to Afghanistan. In view of these challenges, respondents were finally asked to assess following areas in terms of their relevance and whether Afghanistan should be given support from Germany. Chart 7: Future area of commitment

Areas for future commitment (N=34) Provide vocational training

22

Strengthen civil society

21

Build up of the education sector

22

Expand the water system

19

Improve safety and security

19

Pacification

17

Build up a health system

21

Employement

19

Expand the power provision

17

Priortise mother-child-health

18

Train managers

11

0 no/low priority

5

10

15

20

25

very high priority

© Harsch, Bittlingmayer

Again, the replies reflect the great significance of schooling/vocational training and strengthening civil society, although addressing basic needs such as water supply and improving the security situation also play important roles.

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SUMMARY

Summed up briefly, the German (civilian) commitment in Afghanistan is highly motivated, transnational, heterogeneous, actors are hardly interconnected but – from the respondents’ point of view – it can provide valuable aid to the target groups in the face of the most difficult situation. This explorative survey intended to provide an overview of the German commitment, with a focus on civil society commitment.4 We do not claim to provide a complete picture of the German commitment, our sample of about 40 respondent organizations being too small for that. Some interesting aspects with regard to our key research questions, however, can be drawn from the survey. Until they are refuted, these can be regarded as provisional results. (Civilian) commitment in Afghanistan – and certainly not only in Afghanistan – is marked by its utter heterogeneity, with regard to the sizes and structures of the organizations involved, as well as to their modes and fields of operation, forms of commitment, target groups, and experiences. (1) A sound estimate of the extent of German civilian commitment is next to impossible, due to its heterogeneity and the fact that German actors often choose to act only in the background. (2) The survey has shown that more than half of the NGOs operating in Afghanistan were founded before 2002. Their activities are funded by donations and by money from the German Foreign Office or the Ministry of international cooperation. People of Afghan background play significant roles in the organizations. Heterogeneity is also reflected in the descriptions of the single actors. There is no characteristic type, but among the 72 organizations involved several types can be distinguished, ranging from the “big players” through “specialists”, “expanders” and “committed constant supporters” to “occasional or selective supporters”. While the “big players”, like the GIZ, get involved in a great number of fields with great resources (funds and staff), “specialists” focus on individual sectors, as for instance the DAAD, who support individual university students, or Afghanic e. V. who develop textbooks for medical students. “Expanders” are organizations vigorously represented by individuals who enjoy great reputation in certain geographic regions and who implement various school projects, mostly building schools, such as the Kinderhilfe Afghanistan e. V. “Com-

4

In the present article, the perspective of civil society actors operating in Afghanistan has been reconstructed. A different approach, for instance including political foundations or economic co-operations, would have produced a different picture.

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mitted constant supporters” are distinguished by their long-standing commitment to individual schools or villages and by taking care of multifarious concerns, like Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V., Afghan e. V. or the Rezai Foundation. Lastly, our initial desk research identified a number of “occasional/selective supporters”, involved in small temporary projects like a one-off medicine shipment, food donations during Ramadan or in times of crisis. Organizations working in this way, for the most part, did not take part in the survey, some of them explained in a short e-mail that they were “no longer active in Afghanistan”. (3) Despite huge variations, the following fields of operation stand out: most of the commitment centers on education and health with women and children as the primary target groups and a special focus on vocational training for women. The latter was astonishing but more easily understandable, as it is almost completely absent from the media coverage on Afghanistan. Significantly, commitment largely takes the form of providing funds and training, on-site presence in person serving only to occasionally check the results. (4) Typical features of commitments in the education sector are the building of schools all across Afghanistan, support in primary schooling and (women’s) vocational training, and in building and improving the quality of tertiary (university-level) education. Commitment in the education sector is completely plausible, as it combines very well with aspects like self-determination, empowerment, and promising/useful investment in the future of the country. In addition, it does not require huge funds to start doing something, like German-Afghan initiatives paying the salary of teachers in Afghan villages. The importance of vocational training/schooling came as a surprise, but it makes perfect sense, as it relates for example to traditional crafts and draws on traditional knowledge. The university sector played only a small role in our survey. This might be due to our selection of organizations contacted. In the university sector especially, there is an increasing number of cooperation, most of them negotiated and implemented directly between single German and Afghan universities (cf. Jawid in this book). Commitment in adult education was surprisingly small. Even though Afghanistan has one of the youngest populations of all countries, which makes the focus on children so obviously plausible, those over 18 years of age having low literacy and educational attainment should not be left behind. Our explorative survey also showed that in the future the focus will continue to be more on vocational training, schooling, and supporting civil society, rather than creating sustainable jobs. The results presented here, when compared to the overview provided by the GIZ, show a different focus. Purely in terms of money, the largest sums of taxpayer’s money go into good governance, the promotion of economic development and employ-

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ment, energy and water supply, and sewage processing. Education/training and health are only on the fifth and seventh rank (143 million and a supplementary 128 million having been contributed in the education sector to the program “Education Quality Improvement Program (EQUIP), and 105 million was spent on health) (cf. overall spending 2009-2016). The financial effort, however, is just one indicator, as investments in education are cheap, compared to the building of a power plant or a dam. In this respect, our survey paints a different picture of the focuses of the humanitarian commitment than the one presented by the official, state-subsidized development aid. In the low-threshold areas of transnational relationships, health and education are the two sectors where at the civil society level sustainable projects can be realistically implemented. (5) No clearly discernible, a functioning network connecting German NGOs operating in Afghanistan could be found. Only individual connections exist, based on personal contacts, as well as relationships among the members with the same professional background, such as the umbrella organization of the Afghan Specialized Medical Staff (Dachverband des Afghanischen Medizinischen Fachpersonals e. V.). No indication of any closer network could be detected.5 (6) The conditions in Afghanistan offer numerous challenges. These challenges, and the projections by the participants provide a number of guidelines to areas of humanitarian commitment. These are: Commitment is possible: Considering the multiple challenges posed by corruption, security, politics, and administration, it is surprising that the organizations participating in the survey had to interrupt or stop unfinished projects in only a few exceptional cases. This small number is not in line with preliminary research and might be due to a previous selection, i.e. non-participation or low reporting levels on the part of organizations who were unable to finish projects. Relativization aside, many actors show that – if attention is paid to relevant behavior guidelines – commitment is possible in Afghanistan and welcomed by the Afghan people.

5

In view of the great heterogeneity and the many overlaps in the education sector, more interconnection would certainly be an advantage. The more so, due to ever scarcer resources and deteriorating security, a reduction of commitment will often be inevitable. Exchange of information, and cooperation with other NGOs, wherever possible, could lead to mutual benefit and the continuation of the commitment, even in the face of those challenges.

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Behavior guidelines: Respondents explained that reliability, co-operation, flexibility, persistence and monitoring are indispensable. Of great importance is the close cooperation with local partners and a high level of flexibility in view of multiple challenges. While large organizations have their flexibility limited by stipulations and schedules attached to the subsidies they receive, smaller organizations emphasize the advantages of their independence from sponsoring of external institutions which gives them the opportunity to react flexibly to local conditions. However, in exchange for their flexibility, they can only act on a much smaller scale (one or two projects). The role of exiled Afghans: The survey shows that people of Afghan extraction especially, owing to their background, are often very well qualified to get themselves involved long-term in Afghanistan, including the rural regions, and to make excellent use of their access to funds and expertise from abroad. This potential could be further promoted. Germany’s reputation: Can Germany’s good reputation in Afghanistan, controversially discussed within Germany (Kornelius 2009; Krüger 2014; Möller 2008; Thielicke 2014), yet still intact on the whole, be upheld and made good use of in the implementation of projects for Afghanistan? From our point of view, the answer to that question depends on how far Germany’s development policy will be genuinely and consistently guided by human rights principles, and how far Germany will be perceived as the refugee-friendly country of Angela Merkel’s (now already historical) We can do it! policy. Hence, recent developments in German domestic politics do not look too promising. The present survey/essay is meant to offer some initial insights into German NGOs and GOs commitment in Afghanistan. Multifarious questions remain to be answered, providing inspiration for future research. One issue to be further explored might be the ways in which the German commitment changes Afghanistan or even vice versa. Another interesting research topic would be how the above-mentioned opportunities and challenges have an impact on future commitment, and how financial dependencies could be reduced. Still awaiting analysis is the take of Afghans in Afghanistan on the German commitment: how do they appreciate it, what are the fields where German commitment generates little interest, and what contributions would be especially welcomed.

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R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Auswärtiges Amt (AA) (2016). Beziehungen zwischen Afghanistan und Deutschland. Verfügbar unter http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/DE/Aussenpolitik/ Laender/Laenderinfos/Afghanistan/Bilateral_node.html#doc343222bodyText6 (02.06.2017). Faist, Thomas (2000). Transstaatliche Räume. Bielefeld: transcript. Faist, Thomas, Fauser, Margit & Reisenauer, Eveline (2014). Das Transnationale in der Migration. Weinheim, München: Beltz Juventa. Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GIZ (2007). Remittances aus Deutschland und ihre Wege in die Herkunftsländer der Migranten. Eine Studie zu fünf ausgewählten Ländern, Eschborn: GTZ. Verfügbar unter https://www.giz.de/fachexpertise/downloads/giz2007-de-Remittances-ausDeutschland-und-ihre-Wege.pdf (02.05.2017). Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2015). Bessere Schulbildung durch neue Standards für Lehrkräfte und Lehrpläne. Verfügbar unter https://www.giz.de/de/weltweit/14677.html (02.06.2017). Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2017). Afghanistan. Verfügbar unter https://www.giz.de/de/weltweit/358.html (02.06.2017). Heath, Jennifer (2015). Introduction. In J. Heath & A. Zahedi (Eds.), Children of Afghanistan: The Path to Peace (pp. 1-33). Austin: University of Texas Press. Kornelius, Stefan (2009). Der unerklärte Krieg. Deutschlands Selbstbetrug in Afghanistan. Hamburg: Edition Körber-Stiftung. Krüger, Uwe (2014). Schadensfall Afghanistan. Ein Krieg und seine Folgen. Bonn: Bouvier. Mayring, Philipp (2015). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken (12. Aufl.). Weinheim, Basel: Beltz. Ministry of Education (MOE) (2007). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 1385-1389. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://datatopics.worldbank.org/hnp/files/edstats/ AFGpla07.pdf (02.06.2017). Ministry of Education (MOE) (2012). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan II 2012-2016). Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education (MOE) (2016). National Education Strategic Plan III. 2017 – 2021. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Möller, Reinhard (2008). Deutschlands Engagement in Afghanistan. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Hrsg.). Verfügbar unter http://www.bpb.de/

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internationales/asien/afghanistan/48614/deutschlands-engagement?p=all (02.06.2017). Naumann, Craig C. (2011). Modernizing Education in Afghanistan: Cycles of Expansion and Contraction in Historical Perspective. Lisbon: Periploi. Naumann, Craig C. (2012). Books, Bullets, and Burqas: Anatomy of a Crisis – Educational Development, Society, and the State in Afghanistan. Wien/ Berlin: Lit. OECD (2016). Education at a Glance 2016: OECS Indicators. Paris: OECD Publishing. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.187/eag-2016-en (02.06.2017). Press office of the German Federal Government (Pressestelle der Bundesregierung) (2015). Das deutsche Engagement in Afghanistan [Germany’s Contribution for Afghanistan], Bonn: Die Bundesregierung. Pries, Ludger (2010). Transnationalisierung. Theorie und Empirie grenzüberschreitender Vergesellschaftung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS. Sahrai, Diana & Bittlingmayer, Uwe H. (2015). Entwicklung durch Bildung? Anmerkungen zur Idee, Afghanistan durch Bildungsexpansion nachholend zu entwickeln [Development through Education? Remarks on the Idea for a Catch-up-Development through Education in Afghanistan]. In: Hauck, G., Lenz, I. & Wienold, H. (Hrsg.), Entwicklung, Gewalt, Gedächtnis (S. 215233). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot. Said, Edward W. (1995 [1978]). Orientalism. Western Conceptions of the Orient. With a new Afterword, London: Penguin. Samar, Sima (2010). „Unsere Rechte sind nicht verhandelbar.“ Interview mit Sima Samar zu Frauenrechten in Afghanistan. Verfügbar unter https://www. amnesty.ch/de/laender/asien-pazifik/afghanistan/dok/2010/interviewfrauenrechte-sima-samar (28.12.2016). Samar, Sima (2011). TERRE DES FEMMES Interview mit Dr. Sima Samar. Verfügbar unter https://www.frauenrechte.de/online/images/downloads/einewelt/TDF-Interview-mit-Sima-Samar.pdf (28.12.2016). Schetter, Conrad (2010). Kleine Geschichte Afghanistans [Little History of Afghanistan]. München: Becksche Reihe. Thielicke, Hubert (Ed.) (2014). Am Ende nichts? Krieg in Afghanistan – Bilanz und Ausblick [Nothing at the End? War in Afghanistan – Balance and Forecast]. Potsdam: WeltTrends. World Bank (2017). World Development Report 2018. Realizing the Promise of Education for Development. Concept Note. Retrieved from http://pubdocs. worldbank.org/en/580361486043888162/WDR2018-Concept-Paper.pdf (20.05.2017).

Schools on the Frontline The Struggle over Education in the Afghan Wars T HOMAS R UTTIG

I NTRODUCTION The Taleban have become known in the West for their strong anti-education stance, particularly against girls’ education. Reports about them burning down girls’ and other schools were abundant over a period of time. This continues to echo in current descriptions of this – despite the recent emergence of local Islamic State franchises – still by far strongest insurgent movement in Afghanistan. Two problems have been widely overlooked in this context. First, a portion of the early school burnings was not committed by the Taleban – but it was easy to blame them. Second, for a number of years the Taleban have changed their policy on education. One important reason for this was popular pressure on them which forced them to understand that, if they wanted to return to rule in Afghanistan in any form, they could not do this against a population that widely values educating their sons and daughters. This chapter looks at the evolution of the Taleban’s education policies and approaches since they came into being as an organisation in the mid-1990s and particularly after 2001, set into the broader context of Afghanistan’s at least 100-years old conflict between modernisers and their opponents, which has led to often violent fighting over the education system.

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E DUCATION IN AFGHANISTAN : H ISTORICAL AREAS OF C ONFLICTS Afghanistan’s education system – and its most important infrastructure: the schools – were, from the very beginning, a key arena of contest in the modernisation conflicts that shaped the country’s history throughout the 20th century. Periodically, modernising governments and armed insurgent movements fought over control over – or even the existence of – schools and, later on, over influence on curricula, funding and teachers’ appointments. This conflict continues to be acted out to this very day. It started under reformer king Amanullah, who reigned from 1919 to 1929. Inspired by an elite reformist group, the Jawanan-e Afghan (Young Afghans), including his father-in-law and mentor Mahmud Tarzi, who became foreign minister in 1919, he embarked on implementing a wide-ranging reform programme. This reached from proclaiming civil rights for all Afghans and first elements of parliamentarianism (in the 1923 constitution, the nezamname) to expanding taxation, including to the landed elites (which triggered resistance), modernising the army and the administration. Core of this reform programme was a modern education system that started to be expanded. During Amanullah’s reign, government expenses for education rose by 1000 per cent compared to under his predecessor, his father Amir Habibullah. Compulsory elementary education was enshrined in the constitution. The new Ministry for Education planned to establish at least one primary school in each district and one secondary school in each province. In 1928, some 40.000 pupils were enrolled in these schools all over the country. (This would be 100 on average per district, in today’s administrative boundaries.) In Kabul, three new elite schools were established, teaching German, French and English. University-grade students were sent abroad, mainly to Turkey and Europe. In the field of vocational training, an agriculture and a medicine school were opened (from the latter, Kabul University emerged later), as well as one for governors and another for clerks and accountants. The first formal school for girls was opened in Kabul in 1921 (Karlsson/Mansory 1979: 14). In 1924, the first secondary school and in 1928, the first lyceum for girls was opened. In 1928, 800 girls attended school; there was also a home economics school for women. Adult classes – for literacy but also on civic and religious subjects – were held. The King himself occasionally taught some of them. All schooling was free of charge (Rubin 1995: 310; Gregorian 1969: 239-244; Zuri 1986: 459). Amanullah was overthrown by a reactionary coalition of conservative Pashtun tribes, non-Pashtun minority groups and the Islamic clergy – with British

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support, the latter an act of revenge for Amanullah’s declaration of full independence in 1919. Amanullah’s successor – a former brigand who called himself Habibullah II (also known as Habibullah Kalakani, for his area of origin, Kalakan, or, derogatively, as Bacha-ye Saqao, ‘the Water Carrier’s Son’) – revoked all of the Young Afghans’ reforms. Education was his particular target: Among his first steps were the closure of all modern schools and the abolishment of the education ministry, which he saw as an infringement on the realm of the Islamic clergy. He also closed the medical and the vocational schools, the home economics school for women and stopped co-education, which had been introduced for the 6 to 11-year olds. His fighters sacked laboratories and libraries; school books were either destroyed or auctioned off. He also banned the teaching of the ‘unbelievers’ foreign languages. The first 28 young women sent to Turkey in 1928 for higher education were recalled (Gregorian 1969: 275). Despite Amanullah’s overthrow, and his reform programme being labelled as ‘failed’ (e.g. see Gregorian 1969: 274; Poullada 1973: XV), he succeeded, as Poullada added, “in laying the foundations for later, more successful efforts to modernize Afghanistan”. The expanded education system, in particularly, contributed to breaking open the country’s traditional social structures. The numbers of schools and students grew exponentially, although unevenly – in the western city of Herat, there was reportedly only one school (Gammell 2016: 260) –, also attracting sons of the rural elites whose education would reflect back into their original communities, lowering the urban-rural divide. It also created the social forces that became the drivers of political modernisation in the years after World War II, a modern educated class. Its members referred to themselves as roshanfekran (“enlightened thinkers”). Teachers were a large portion of them; by 1959, the system for teachers training established under Amanullah had produced some 2500 alumni. This secularly educated group took over from the mullahs who so far had dominated the school system. The leftist political forces that emerged in the early/mid-1960s, had a strong basis among the teachers, both in urban and rural areas. The Khalq (“People”) faction of the Soviet-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)1 that became part of the government in 1973 after then President Muhammad Daud’s coup d’état in 1973 and took over power completely by what it called the “April revolution” in 1978, was publicly dubbed the “teacher’s party.” Its 1979 short-term leader, Hafizullah Amin, had had a US degree in pedagogics and

1

The PDPA was renamed Hezb-e Watan (Fatherland Party) in 1990. Its leader Dr. Najibullah was in power up to 1992 when, after a short interim period, the mujahedin took over.

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headed the Kabul Dar-ul-Mualemin (teachers training college) in the early 1960s (Rudersdorf 1981: 29). The same was true for some of the Maoist leftists that were part of the armed opposition to the PDPA; in the western province of Farah, famously a “teachers front” participated in the armed struggle. A number of teachers of other persuasions became local commanders of the Islamist tanzims, the mujahedin ‘parties’ that became the strongest force in the armed antiSoviet/PDPA opposition. Figures about the literacy rate and school enrolment at that point of time differ widely in the sources. The official overall figure for 1976 had been 12 per cent (Zuri 1986: 465; Muradow 1981: 192). By 1978, the overall literacy rate was estimated at 18 per cent for men and 5 per cent for women (quoted in AIR 2006: 3) – but might in fact have been around one per cent among women. According to a contemporary Soviet source, only 14 per cent of all children attended school at the time of the 1978 PDPA takeover (quoted in Robinson/Dixon 2013: 111). Another source gave approximately 54 per cent for boys and 12 per cent for girls at the primary level and approximately 16 per cent and 4 per cent, respectively, at the secondary level. The completion rate was at approximately 0.3 per cent. Approximately 1.2 million students (18 per cent of them girls) were enrolled in all levels of the education system (quoted in AIR 2006: 3). The PDPA regime, with Soviet support, again embarked on a top-down modernisation programme that included expanding the education system and lowering the scope of illiteracy. But early radicalism – the new regime, for example, pushed for co-education even in the conservative countryside and used the teachers’ corps as a ‘transmission belt’ for the PDPA’s policies – led to violent counter-action. That it was soon revoked did not help things anymore. A competition ensued between the Soviet-backed and -funded PDPA authorities and the mujahedin about building and destroying schools. While the government ambitiously planned to increase the number of schools to 2795 by 1982 (Zuri 1986: 467), its mujahedin opponents made educational institutions and their personnel their target. Of the 4185 schools countrywide, the figure the Afghan press gave for 1978, 2 around 2000 were destroyed after the ‘revolution’ (Robinson/Dixon 2013: 111), according to one Soviet source 1000 of them in summer/autumn 1980 alone, after the Soviet invasion of December 1979, (Muradow 1981: 207). By 1983, only 860 schools were still open; by 1986, some 2000 teachers had been killed (Robinson/Dixon 2013: 111) and by the end of the war an estimated 80 per cent of all

2

According to Zuri (1986: 467-478), there were 1.812 villages, 546 primary and 197 secondary schools all over Afghanistan in 1976.

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school buildings were damaged or destroyed (AIR 2006: 3). While girls’ enrolment rose from 8 to 14 per cent between 1975 and 1985, overall enrolment dropped (Robinson/Dixon 2013: 111). Zuri (1986: 465) added that also in the non-occupied regions of Afghanistan – i.e. those under mujahedin control – and in refugee camps in Pakistan “contours of new schooling structures emerged”, but that on both sides of the (figurative) frontline, “the primacy of politics was evident in the education system”. The most glaring example were US financed “anti-Soviet textbooks for Afghan schoolchildren [that] encouraged a jihadist outlook” printed during the Soviet occupation – that continued to be used by the Taleban, both when they were in power and currently in schools controlled by them (Tharoor 2014). Nevertheless, NGO representatives frequently reported how the years in refugee camps changed the attitude of at least large parts of the originally conservative, antinon-madrassa education rural population towards realising how important education was for their children, including girls. The Los Angeles Times quoted a long-term Afghanistan activist, not only on education, Nancy Dupree: 3 “When the refugees first came to Pakistan after the 1979-80 Soviet invasion, education was anathema,” said Nancy Dupree, a U.S. expert on Afghanistan who directs a research center in Peshawar. “The refugees were mainly a rural population. They looked upon education as the road on which communism came to Afghanistan. […]” But the refugee attitude toward the education of women and girls appears to have softened. […] “Enthusiasm for girls’ education has never been higher here,” Dupree said. “The refugees have been exposed to the benefits. […]” (Tempest 1997: 2)

When the mujahedin took over power in April 1992, international support for the education system resumed. In 1993, approximately 1000 of the 2200 schools in the country were supported with international assistance channelled through NGOs. These schools served about 25 per cent of the estimated one million children enrolled in primary schools in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, NGOs supported the primary education of 90.000 Afghan children in refugee camps (AIR 2006: 4). But not after long, the mujahedin plunged the country into a new, violent cycle of ‘civil’, or rather factional war that inflicted further damage on the education system. Their infighting destroyed much of what had remained intact in the

3

The author has heard similar assessments from many sources during the 12 years he lived in Afghanistan, in the period between 1983 and the present; some information in this article derives from the large number of meetings and interviews over that time and cannot be directly attributed anymore.

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cities that had been under PDPA control to the end. Mujahedin militias, for example, used the books in the Kabul University library for keeping themselves warm during a particularly harsh winter during that period. By 1996, Kabul had 158 public schools left with 148.000 boys and 103.000 girls attending and 11.208 teachers, of which 7793 were women. With the factional war on-going and Afghanistan dropping from the international agenda, external education funding plummeted from 22 per cent of all Official Development Assistance (ODA) for the country in 1993 to 0.3 per cent in 1997. This was somewhat compensated by increased funding for emergency programmes that were made available in the education sector but were almost exclusively on a short-term basis (AIR 2006: 4).

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T ALIBAN R EIGN

This was the situation in which the Taleban took over Kabul in that year and in most of the rest of the country by 1998. This new movement had emerged from earlier mujahedin fronts that, starting in the late 1970s, sprang up around religious schools (madrassa – as opposed to maktab, officially used for state-run schools).4 The madrassa head or a teacher would become the commanders and the pupils their foot-soldiers (Roy 1995; Zabulwal 2009: 181); the local term for madrassa students is taleb (plural: taleban). Often they would only join the fight during the school holidays, and return to their books as soon as school season reopened. During the 1980s, these fronts were still part of various mujahedin tanzim, but they re-emerged and coalesced into a new military-political movement in the mid-1990, De Talebano Islami Ghurdzang (Islamic Movement of the Taleban), as a reaction to the factional war which the Taleban saw as un-Islamic. In effect a second-generation mujahedin movement (it continues to call it fighters mujahedin), it turned against the mother movement and, by 2001, had ended most of the factional fighting. It can be argued that, if it had not been for the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, they might have taken over the country entirely. It was their uneasy alliance with the 9/11 perpetrators of Usama ben Laden’s al-Qaeda (the Taleban were not a direct part of the 9/11 attacks) and the refusal, afterwards, to hand them over for trial, that caused their downfall later that year.

4

In popular language, these terms interchange.

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When the Taleban swept to power in an area, their commanders often used to replicate Bacha-ye Saqao’s approach from 1929: they almost automatically closed down schools, particularly girls’ schools. After they captured Kabul in 1996, they shut down 63 schools within three months there alone, “affecting 103,000 girls, 148,000 boys and 11,200 teachers, of whom 7,800 were women”; they also temporarily shut down Kabul University. In some areas, girl schools were altered into boy schools (Najimi 1997: 6). Even if they did not close the schools, the ban for women teachers to work also affected them, as they had also taught at boy schools. “By December 1998, UNICEF reported that the country’s educational system was in a state of total collapse with nine in ten girls and two in three boys not enrolled in school” (Rashid 2000: 108). It further estimated that at that point “only 4 to 5 per cent of primary aged children g[o]t a broad based schooling, and for secondary and higher education the picture is even bleaker” (Clark 2000). This was part of the Taleban’s policy of pushing women and girls out of public life, part of what they understood as a ‘pure Islamic society’. Officially, the Taleban leaders maintained that they were not against education, even of girls, in principle, referring to the Quranic saying that one should “even go as far as China” in order to obtain knowledge. They claimed that the bad security situation, with the on-going war with the remnants of the mujahedin’s Northern Alliance, and the lack of funds forced them to this approach; when security was reinstated, they promised, schools would reopen. This argument was formalised in a 1999 decree by Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taleban’s founder-leader. The Taleban never officially said that they were against girls’ education in general, although many in their ranks believed exactly that – reflecting more widespread beliefs in the conservative sectors of the rural population from which the leadership of their movement sprang. The decree was not lifted until the end of the Taleban rule, but it also was never fully enforced; there was what one UN official at the time called “implementation fatigue” – the Taleban had simply issued too many decrees to enforce all of them. That left space for pragmatism. Taleban officials, up to government level, discussed with, listened and sometimes even reacted positively to arguments of those UN agencies and non-governmental organisations that were instrumental in keeping up some semblance of an education system. Or to local communities, for that matter, who wanted to keep up schooling. In some areas of the country, Taleban officials tolerated and even protected schools, including girls’ schools, against those superiors who were on the Taleban ‘party line’. (For example, they warned teachers and pupils of unofficial schools to stay home when inspections were announced.) There also were those who, in personal conversations, openly

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disagreed with other key elements of the official Taleban policy, ranging from its exclusion of women from professional life to the Taleban alliance with al-Qaeda. Michael Keating, a later deputy UN special envoy to Afghanistan, wrote in 1998 (139) “Where female education is locally valued, it is permitted”. The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan (SCA) was one, if not the largest NGO active during that period. It successfully negotiated a protocol with the Taleban Ministry of Education to run village and home schools in various provinces (Siddique 2012). A 1997 survey counted “422 boys’ schools, 125 girls’ schools and 87 co-education [mixed schools] in form of primary schools and home-schools” in at least ten provinces (Najimi 1997: 3, 5). SCA regional director Ulla Asberg told the author in 2000 that the SCA-supported schools had around 200.000 pupils, 37.000 of them girls (Heller 2000). The NGOs also paid the teachers and provided the textbooks. In the girls’ schools, the female teachers who had officially been laid off by the Taleban were the staff in most cases. The curriculum consisted of a mixture of the Taleban guidelines, with extended religious instruction, and additional elements provided by the NGOs, including ‘modern’ subjects. Girls in the villages used to “wear their pens in their shirt pockets, to show off the fact they go to school” (Clark 2000). Former SCA head Anders Fange told a media outlet later on: “Most of the Taliban, even the ministers we dealt with in Kabul, had a pretty pragmatic view,” he says. “Somehow it was understood that they needed this humanitarian assistance of which we were one of the providers.” […] “When we finalized these negotiations, [Minister Amir Khan Mutaqi] told me, ‘We know you have these girls’ schools. We know it, but don’t tell us,’ he said.” (Siddique 2012)

This continued on the local level, as the SCA’s regional director Ulla Asberg explained in December 2000, showing the practical authority the subnational administration enjoyed: Everything depends on the director for education in the particular district. If he is very conservative, this can become a problem. For example, three girls’ schools were just closed in Laghman province. In such cases I visit the provincial governor and threaten to close the boys’ schools in the district, too. They don’t want, so this approach helps most of the time to keep the girls’ schools open. (Heller 2000: 12)

The German NGO COFAA – supported by an alliance of various national Caritas chapters – also ran a school programme under the Taleban, in madrassas mainly in Kabul and in agreement with the Taleban’s Ministry of Religious Af-

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fairs. (Teaching in those mosque-related schools did not fall under the responsibility of the education ministry.) It expanded to 15 madrassas with around 10.000 pupils, half of them girls. Over the time, a teachers’ training programme was added (Schwittek 2011: 25-26, 32-33). These schools, however, ended after grade six.5 By the fall of the Taleban regime in December 2001, an estimated 500.000 boys and girls were in schools receiving educational assistance from NGOs (AIR 2006: 2, 6). Less officially, a number of Afghan women – among them teachers who were banned by the Taleban from working – ran so-called home schools, some for girls, some mixed. One of them, Soraya Parlika, a former PDPA official who had chosen not to flee the country, was one of Time magazine’s 2001 women of the year for that activity (Lafferty 2001). Some of those schools received some NGO support, others did not. These arrangements were rather volatile, though. As most local Taleban officials were exchanged after six months under those days’ rotational system, the NGOs’ struggle started anew with each newly appointed official. Even the minister’s green light was sometimes not sufficient. Both Fange and Schwittek reported how individual mullahs tried to interfere, or how disagreement in or between Taleban ministries or the Taleban cabinet in Kabul and the movement’s leadership in Kandahar surfaced frequently. Schwittek mentioned how the minister told him not to hand out pencils and exercise books to girls anymore as it was not necessary for them to learn how to write. An investigation commission was sent to the schools, but after a girl had written a religious text on the blackboard in its presence, the report to Taleban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar resulted in him recommending to expand the programme countrywide – “but no one had money for that” (Schwittek 2011: 28). All schools went on with an unaltered curriculum, and continued to operate after the Taleban regime fell in 2001. In 2000, towards the end of the Taleban regime, after al-Qaida’s first terrorist attacks in East Africa and amidst mounting pressure on them for human rights abuses, the Taleban cracked down on the strong role of NGOs in Afghan schools (but not in the mosque schools). Mullah Omar issued another decree to stop their

5

Other NGOs involved in school programmes during the Taleban regime were the USAID-funded Education Center of Afghanistan at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (ECA/UNO) that supported approximately 630 schools, Muslim Aid that supported 271 schools as well as the Afghan Development Agency (ADA), FrancoAfghan Friendship Association (AFRANE), Médecins Sans Frontières (54 schools), the Norwegian Committee for Afghanistan (42 schools), and the Islamic Relief Agency (18 schools) (AIR 2006: 2, 6).

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involvement but the Taleban were unable to fully implement it. Also the schools under government control and higher education were subjected to tighter regulation. Religious studies were extended. In primary schools, the Arabic language was introduced starting from grade four (leading to much desperation among pupils) while ‘un-Islamic’ subjects such as Arts and Music were abolished and history and geography were only taught starting in grade seven. Pupils had to wear white turbans, university students black ones. At universities, students had to attend religious lectures four times a week between 7 and 8 am. The mullahs hired as teachers for that received double the pay the best-paid university professors did. In the first days after the decree was issued, a lot of students were visible in the streets, excluded from their lectures. University degrees obtained at foreign universities were no longer recognised (Heller 2001).

T HE R APID E XPANSION OF E DUCATION AFTER THE T ALEBAN R EGIME The period after the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001 by an US-ledintervention, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks committed by al-Qaeda sheltered by Taleban protection in Afghanistan, saw a renewal of the competition for control over the education system. The new Afghan government – a coalition of parts of the former monarchy’s elite, including head of state Hamed Karzai, and anti-Taleban warlords – tried to reconstruct the Afghan education system with the help of the international community. This conformed to the wishes of large parts of the population. For the government, showing that it ran a functioning and expanding education system became a matter of prestige and legitimacy as well as a main factor in attracting additional funding, for all the downside effects the latter would involve. The government capacity and capability to make this effort a success, however, was insufficient. There was over-administration, political infighting, haggling over access to jobs and resources and growing large-scale corruption. A large number of teachers, dismissed by the Taleban who wanted to return to their previous jobs and had offered themselves to the UN in 2001/02 but had not been linked to the mujahedin, were blocked by the former anti-Taleban forces who brought in their own personnel. The Minister of Education in the 20022004 Afghan Transitional Administration, Yunos Qanuni, was not an education specialist either. Initially he was not interested in the job, as he felt he had been ‘demoted’ from his previous post as head of the interior ministry, with its control over the police; he was known for his high absence rates from his office (Schwit-

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tek 2011: 50). This changed with the campaigns for the 2004 presidential and 2005 parliamentary elections in which both Qanuni, a key leader of the mujahedin party Jamiat-e Islami ran himself. He used the teachers’ corps that was largely loyal to him by then as a mobilisation force; most of the polling stations were in schools, and teachers were manning them as a key part of the election personnel. Qanuni was defeated by Karzai in 2004, but he was elected into parliament one year later and became the speaker of the Wolesi Jirga, “House of the People”, its lower house. Karzai quickly understood the political importance of schools and teachers and put his own loyalists at the top of the ministry. Nur Muhammad Qarqin (2004-2006), who had been Karzai’s 2004 election campaign manager, succeeded Qanuni as the education minister. He was followed by Muhammad Hanif Atmar (2006-2008) and Muhammad Faruq Wardak (2008-2015) who had both made a name for themselves as NGO managers during the Taleban regime and became key figures in the Karzai government. Atmar continues to serve as current president Ashraf Ghani’s National Security Advisor as of early 2017. Particularly during Karzai’s second presidential term, from 2009 to 2014, corruption became endemic in the education system. USAID alone, as the biggest donor, spent 883 million US dollars from 2001 until December 2016 (SIGAR 2017a: 178)6 with additional millions going into teachers’ salaries. According to UNESCO, the Afghan education system had expanded to 14.600 government-run general education schools by 2013 – 41 per cent of them (6056) primary schools only, 27 per cent (3918) lower secondary schools including all primary grades and 32 per cent (4625) upper secondary schools containing all three levels. In May 2016, the MoE reported this had further grown to 15.249 general education schools with 184.024 teachers and almost 8.7 million students enrolled (SIGAR 2017b: 5). The Independent Joint Anti-Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC), a joint Afghan-international body, however, found in 2015 that in the government’s main education programme – the World Bank supervised EQUIP programme, which was worth 750 million US dollars at that time – “30-40 per cent of program funds” were misused, schools “often poorly constructed” and students “inadequately educated” (MEC 2015: 3, 9). One of the most common ways to skim off education money are the so-called ‘ghost schools’ and ‘ghost teachers’ – schools and teachers that do not exist but are on the ministry’s payroll and receive budgets and salaries. This money is pocketed by corrupt provincial and local officials who – according to how the

6

Of course, the total sum does not say how much of this money stayed in Afghanistan, as there must have been a lot of fees for surveys, consultancies and foreign experts.

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Afghan government’s parallel systems works, with its official institutions and unofficial, but more powerful networks – often share it with their political protectors on the national level. Although this is difficult to prove, the practice is widely known to donors, also from other ministries – there are also ‘ghost’ policemen, soldiers and even vaccinators. This practice is exacerbated by the deteriorating security situation that made checking the proper operation not only of educational institutions more difficult for both the government and donors. In early June 2013, research by the Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN) found only five teachers and about 20 students in a school not far outside the provincial capital of Ghor in the west of the country where 13 teachers and 767 students – 494 boys and 273 girls – were supposed to be. Ghor officials proved generally unable to say how many schools in their lawless province (with an annual education budget of approximately 5.8 million US dollars in 2012) were closed at that time – their estimates were as high as 50 per cent, blaming security issues. According to government data, Ghor’s literacy rate was just under half of the official national average of 33 per cent. Girls and young women suffered particularly: In the district of Dolina, the authorities were unable to find three women that met the educational requirements for a two-year midwifery training course (Ali 2013). Other forms of corruption include teachers taking unofficial school fees (although schooling is officially free of charge from grade 1 to grade 9), money for making pupils pass exams, or appropriating occasional UN or NGO aid for children intended to be incentives for attending school, such as wheat, cooking oil or high nutrition cookies. Local power holders or pro-government illegal armed groups establish control over existing local schools by force, or over new ones, indirectly by providing the land on which they are built. Teachers’ positions are ‘sold’ by ministerial staff (Afghanistan is very centralised and appointments are decided on by the central authorities). Meanwhile, Afghan teachers’ salaries remain among the lowest of civil servants in the country, ranging from 6500 Afghani (around 110 US dollars) to 13.500 Afghani (around 225 US dollars) (Roehrs/Suroush 2015). On top of this, salaries are chronically paid late. This, among other problems, has led to recurrent teachers strikes, both on the local and the national level. In summer 2015, a strike that started in Kabul spread across 18 other provinces with teachers in Kabul demanding the implementation of campaign pledges by the Ghani/Abdullah

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government on salary rises and support for the improvement of housing (Roehrs/Suroush 2015).7 As a consequence of this situation, the Ministry of Education ended up among the top-three corrupt institutions in the country in the last two biannual National Corruption Surveys conducted by Kabul-based Integrity Watch Afghanistan in 2014 and 2016 – in an environment that was generally described, in the 2016 report, as characterised by a “devastating [and] increasing […] level of corruption”, with the estimated nation-wide amount paid in bribes doubling since 2014 (IWA 2012: 39; IWA 2014: 23; IWA 2016; introduction, 30). Corruption expands into the higher education system, particularly through the bribes and heavy political and personal interference in the annual centralised university entry exams, locally known as the kankur (from French: concours) (Ali 2015). Data insecurity During that time, the government also started to spread apparently inflated figures on students and schools. This is not too difficult in a situation where there are contradictory figures about almost all basic facts related to education. In March 2014 (Pajhwok 2014), Karzai said at the start of the new academic year, in the presence of minister Wardak, that 11.5 million Afghan children were enrolled in schools and only 1.5 million remained out of school. Wardak added that 4.7 million of the school students were girls. The Economist (2017) quoted President Ghani as saying that when his government took over that “[t]here were three databases in the Ministry of Education: one for teachers, one for salaries, one for schools…they weren’t talking to each other”. But even under his tenure, the Ministry of Education (MoE) continued to publish highly inconsistent figures. For example, AAN (Roehrs/Suroush 2015) found in 2015 that [a]ccording to the Ministry of Education’s website, in 2014 Afghanistan had 201,726 teachers – 137,822 men and 63,904 women (such figures, as always, have to be taken with

7

In a speech on National Teacher's Day in Kabul on 15 October 2014, President Ashraf Ghani had promised, among other things, the establishment of a special commission that would remove provisions in the Civil Servant Law that treat teachers differently from other civil servants and ordered “each provincial governor” to give a plot of land “to every teacher within six months”.

114 | THOMAS R UTTIG a pinch of salt with, for example, the 2014 ministry Report on the Achievements of the Past 12 Years stating that Afghanistan currently employed 217,000 teachers. Other, internal, donor reports AAN has seen are doubting the ballpark altogether).

In contrast, the MoE’s annual report for 2014 stated a total number of teachers of 203.148, “including 31 per cent females” (quoted in Adili 2017). The MoE’s Education for All (EFA) report published in 2015 – but with ‘latest’ data from 2013 – has even two different total figures for the number of teachers in the country: 187.000 in the minister’s foreword and 131.000 in the text (MoE 2015: 2, 85). An investigation into allegations of corruption within the MoE ordered by President Ashraf Ghani in summer 2015 found, according to reports leaked to Afghan media, „hundreds of ‘ghost’ schools […], thousands of ‘ghost‘ teachers on official rolls, ‘ghost‘ training seminars, and discrepancies in student enrollment and attendance records” (SIGAR 2016: 5). Donor countries, too, were not particularly interested in questioning the obviously inflated Afghan figures. On the contrary, these ever-growing figures regularly made it into government progress reports and politicians speeches. When the acting Minister of Education8 Assadullah Hanif Balkhi accused the previous Karzai government of having “fabricated” the number of 11 million children attending school December 2016, this created some attention. He stated that a total of nine million children were registered at the country’s 17.000 schools, but that only up to six million children were regularly attending school. Former deputy minister Sadiq Patman confirmed manipulations by the ministry’s leadership (Shaheed 2016), and deputy education minister Assadullah Mohaqiq told the upper house of parliament on 1 January 2017 that more than 1000 schools across the country were closed because of security issues (SIGAR 2017a: 178). But other officials continued to defend the inflated figures of the Karzai era. On 3 January 2017, Kabir Haqmal, the head of the MoE information department told AAN (Adili 2017) that “[c]urrently, we have 9.2 million pupils enrolled. Out of these, between 22 and 24 per cent are permanently absent. But according to the regulations, we cannot remove them from the enrolment for up to three years.” Karzai’s and Wardak’s figures, he added, were not incorrect; there were indeed 11.5 million children attending schools because this included one million in Pakistan and Iran, between 1.0 to 1.2 “in informal classes” – a reference to the community-based education programmes – and 500.000 in literacy courses. The Afghan government has started new investigations.

8

Acting because he had lost a vote of confidence in parliament but the president kept him in the cabinet.

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Problems of teacher’s qualifications, gender inequality and the revival of NGOs Apart from these debates, the Afghan education system remains plagued by a number of further serious problems. This includes a lack of effective use of resources available, while international support for the Afghan education system is dropping in general, demographic issues, a still glaring gender imbalance and a growing teacher-student ratio – plus the deteriorating security situation that impacts on access and attendance. A fact sheet compiled by ACBAR, a coordinating body of many Afghan and international NGOs working in the country for the international Afghanistan conference held in Brussels in October 2016, summarised: Afghanistan has the highest illiteracy rate in the region and worldwide, yet currently in Afghanistan, only 3.7 % of GDP is being spent on education. [...] Although the expenditure in the education sector has increased from 32.8 billion Afs ($492 million) to 44.4 billion Afs ($666 million) over the period of 2011-2015, the Ministry of Education is still struggling to provide basic educational needs for children [...]. In 2015, 14.1 % of total government expenditure (excluding debt service), 15.5 % of government recurrent expenditure, 10.3 % of development expenditure and 3.7 % of GDP was spent on the education sector. [...] UNESCO recommends that at least 6 % of Afghanistan’s GDP should be spent on education. […] According to UNAMA’s recent report, increasing violence, threats and intimidation in 2015 left 103,940 Afghan children without access to education and there is a rising trend in violence against education [leading to] low attendance of primary school age children in rural areas. According to the latest Education Sector Analysis, in urban areas 78 percent of children go to school, while in rural areas only 50 percent of primary school-age children go to school. […] The majority of the dropouts are female students. Overall one million students are considered permanently absent. [...] Over the past three years, overall expenditure in the education sector in Afghanistan has increased, but spending has significantly decreased in adult literacy programs. According to the National Literacy Department there was a 35 % decrease in spending on literacy programs in 2015. [...] The current teacher-student ratio in Afghanistan is 45:1 [...]. The current percentage of female teachers is 33 % and very few of those are in rural areas […].9 (ACBAR 2016)

9

As is the case with most of Afghan statistics, there are other figures in other official sources. Afghanistan’s national student-teacher ratio, for example, has also been given as up to 64:1 in 2013.

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This puts the country at 16th from the bottom of 190 countries listed by UNESCO in 2011. And according to the Ministry of Education’s new Strategic Plan for 2014-2018, this ratio is projected to become even more unfavourable, dropping to 1:54 students by 2020. In any case, the teacher-student ratio indicates that there is a serious lack of qualified teachers. In 2011, the Ministry of Education reported that countrywide “68 per cent of general education teachers” did “not meet standard qualifications for trained professional teachers” (Roehrs/Suroush 2015). By October 2016, according to the World Bank, this had improved to 55 per cent (SIGAR 2017a: 177).10 The galloping deterioration in the teacher-student ratio is mostly due to the rapid growth of the basic education sector in a country with a very young population and where first grade classes tend to be large and are growing. The number of school graduates rose by 36 per cent in 2012, by 59 per cent in 2013 and by 36 per cent in 2014. Almost all of them attempt to get enrolled in the universities, further increasing the pressure on the kankur examinations. Between 2002 and 2013, the number of students at all Afghan universities quadrupled, from 31.203 to 123.524 – not only burdening the existing capacity but also the quality of the teaching. The pressure on primary and secondary education leads to the system “cannibalising” itself (Roehrs/Suroush 2015) – and it can be assumed that the same is the case in higher education: An international expert told AAN […]: “The demand for education is growing much faster than the budget, and the pressure is so high to get new teachers that the ministry stops spending money on other things, such as maintenance of school buildings or teaching materials. Salaries today already make up more than 91 per cent of the ministry’s operational budget. This is very unusual, compared to other ministries, and the number is likely to grow further.”

The lack of teachers, and particularly female ones, particularly affects girls’ education. There were no qualified female teachers in 230 districts (of around 400)11

10 Afghanistan’s vocational education system is facing the same problem. According to an international expert working in the field, from a sample of 298 teachers from the country’s 297 vocational training schools 85 per cent failed a test in 2016 that consisted of subjects supposed to be taught by them in the first grade. 11 Even the number of Afghanistan’s districts is unclear: figures given by official Afghan sources are 398 (Afghanistan Central Statistics Office 2013 and the UN mapping service AIMS 2010), 399 (2010 Afghan electoral data), 407 (US SIGAR 2016), 412

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in 2014 (Roehrs/Suroush 2015). As a result, fewer girls are allowed to attend school due to a shortage of female teachers (ACBAR 2016). After grade six, according to different sources again, between 70 and 82 per cent of all girls that start attending school drop-out – the total drop-out figure for all children is 68 per cent. Only 17 per cent of the girls reach grade nine (total: 31 per cent, while 18 per cent of all pupils reach grade 12. A 2011 government report gave more positive figures about the general gender parity, with 0.74 (74 girls per every 100 boys) for the primary schools, dropping to 0.49 on the secondary level (Ali 2013; Roehrs/Suroush 2015).12 In almost half of all districts, there was no secondary school for girls; in 166 districts, there was not a single female teacher. As another consequence of Afghanistan’s ineffective education system – and in a revival of pre-2001 practices –, NGO-supported schools continue to play an important role, as they fill gaps in areas of the country where the government is incapable or unwilling to run schools. In 2012, SCA again supported 467 schools in rural areas, attended by approximately 120.000 students, 56 per cent of whom were girls (Fange, quoted in Rubin/Rudeforth 2016: 10). Also Ofarin – a successor to COFAA – continues to work in this field, offering “elementary schooling” in mosques and private houses “for children, women and young girls” as well as pre-school education in three provinces. This covered 8.500 pupils in the former and 500 pupils in the latter programme by early 2017 (Trofimov 2012; Schwittek 2017). At the same time, they continue to face bureaucratic hurdles like nonpayment of teachers by the government. Last but not least, by 2016 half of all Afghan schools did not have a building (SIGAR 2017a: 177). Children were taught instead in tents or in the open, under trees or in some other shadow.

(Ministry of Education/UNESCO 2010) or 416 (Ministry of Education 2013). The current official figures cannot be verified as most of the Afghan government related websites were hacked in early 2017 and continue to be inaccessible, including those of the Central Statistics Office and the Independent Directorate of Local Governance. One reason for the differences between the figures is that different governments created new districts but successor governments did not recognise these measures. As a result, there is a number of “inofficial” districts. 12 The imbalance is even stronger in Southern Afghanistan (0.47 for primary and 0.16 for secondary education), as among children living in the poorest households (0.62 for primary and 0.23 for secondary education) and in rural areas (0.69 for primary and 0.39 for secondary education).

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T HE T ALEBAN ’ S C HANGING ATTITUDES T OWARDS E DUCATION Immediately after the overthrow of the Taleban regime in 2001, the education sector – as all other sectors – grew relatively uninhibited, as the Taleban were in disarray and only present or active in a few parts of Afghanistan. Starting in 2005/06, they reorganised in ever expanding parts of the country, stepped up their military activities and expanded their areas of operation. Between 2008 and 2010, they also expanded into the Afghan north and northeast, areas where they had had difficulties consolidating their influence even when in power up to 2001 (Ruttig 2010b: 6-7; Giustozzi/Reuter 2011: 1). The Taleban’s policy on education and vis-à-vis government-run schools changed relatively drastically over the period between 2001 and 2016 – and also compared with the time they were in power between 1996 and 2001. The phase of their reorganisation and expansion was followed by one in which the Taleban specifically targeted schools as a symbol of the influence in the government they were fighting; as the International Crisis Group wrote in 2006, schools were “often the only sign of government presence in rural areas”. This was official Taleban policy, as laid out in their first layha (code of conduct) published in May 2006 and handed out “patchily” in pocket book format to commanders and fighters. The layha was probably the first printed policy document of the post-2001 Taleban (Clark 2011: 26). In its clauses 24-26, it stipulated: (24) It is forbidden to work as a teacher under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels. True Muslims should apply to study with a religiously trained teacher and study in a mosque or similar institution. Textbooks must come from the period of the jihad or the Taleban [regime]. (25) Anyone who works as a teacher for the current puppet regime must receive a warning. If he nevertheless refuses to give up his job, he must be beaten. If the teacher still continues to instruct contrary to the principles of Islam, the district commander or a group leader must kill him. (26) Those NGOs that come to the country under the rule of the infidels must be treated as the government is treated. They have come under the guise of helping people but in fact are part of the regime. Thus, we tolerate none of their activities, whether it be building of streets, bridges, clinics, schools, madrasas (schools for Koran study) or other works. If a school fails to heed a warning to close, it must be burned. But all religious books must be secured beforehand.

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(Not all NGOs were targets, though. Local Taleban commanders who wanted to cooperate with one were allowed to do so, but needed a permission by the Taleban’s Rahbari Shura, the “Leadership Council”, so the layha’s Art. 8.) First reports about teachers and students being intimidated not to attend staterun schools emerged in 2002 (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 4) and of schools being burned down in 2004. Gopal (2010: 37) reported from Kandahar that attacks in this province began to intensify by 2005 and that, by 2009, “most of the schools operating outside firmly-held government territory had been shuttered”. But, as Giustozzi/Franco (2011: 1) found, “[v]iolence against schools started with a variety of conservative actors”, and the Taleban adopting it as one of the main manifestations of their campaign against the new regime. In such an environment, it was easy to blame attacks on schools on the Taleban, even if other actors were responsible. (The same was the case with assassinations of political leaders.) Over the period from 2006 (when the first layha was published) to 2008 such reports became abundant – despite rural communities showing “little support for the violent campaign” and the Taleban facing “a backlash from villagers who wanted their children to be given the opportunity to attend school” (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 1). According to Ministry of Education figures, attacks on schools rose country-wide from 47 in 2004 to 123 (in 15 provinces) in 2005 and 202 attacks in 27 provinces, with 41 students, teachers and support staff killed between January and July 2006. “208 schools were closed in Zabul, Helmand, Kandahar, Ghazni, Khost and Paktika between April and July 2006“ – i.e. mainly in the insurgency strongholds in southern and south-eastern Afghanistan (ICG 2006: 6-7). A CARE report published in 2010 for UNESCO described how this “alarming” trend continued to 2008 (UNESCO/CARE 2010: 173-177): Between January 2006 and December 2008, 1,153 attacks on education targets were reported, including the damaging or destruction of schools by arson, grenades, mines and rockets; threats to teachers and officials delivered by “night letters” [printed or handwritten leaflets distributed by the Taleban] or verbally; the killing of students, teachers and other education staff; and looting. The number of incidents stayed stable at 241 and 242 respectively in 2006 and 2007, but then almost tripled to 670 in 2008. (p. 173) In 2006 and 2007, 230 people died from attacks on schools, students and education personnel, according to Ministry of Education (MoE) figures. […] From 1 January 2009 to 30 June 2009, 123 schools were targeted by insurgents and 51 received threats, according to [...] UNICEF. At least 60 students and teachers were killed and 204 wounded in security incidents in the same period [...] In July 2009, more than 400 schools, mostly in the volatile south, remained closed due to insecurity, the MoE said. (UNESCO/CARE 2010: 173174)

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Another CARE report concluded that girls’ schools were more often targeted than boys’ schools: Of all attacked schools, girls’ schools account for 40 per cent, while mixed schools (32 per cent) and boys’ schools (28 per cent) make up for the rest (Glad 2009: 3). But it also acknowledged that both the Taleban and “internal community members“ were “the main perpetrators against the education of girls” (Glad 2009: 2). By October 2009, the Ministry of Education acknowledged that altogether 800 schools were closed in the areas most affected by the insurgency, “and even that might have been an underestimat[ion] of the extent of the problem” (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 4). After the Taleban’s countrywide reorganisation phase (2006-2009), they further consolidated their control over an increasing part of the country and broadened their parallel government structures. The war spread to all of Afghanistan again, although in different intensities. Since the withdrawal of most of the international forces – of up to 140.000 in 2011 – some areas saw a transition from guerrilla warfare to more fixed front lines, with the Taleban increasingly operating in larger formations and simultaneously carrying out offensive operation in several provinces. In the early fall of 2015 the Taleban took over the city of Kunduz for two weeks, the first provincial capital they captured since they fell from power in 2001. Almost simultaneously, they stormed the headquarters of the Afghan intelligence service in the city of Ghazni and got hold of its complete archive (Muzhary 2016). They almost captured Kunduz again in October 2016 (Ali 2016) and advanced significantly in both years, particularly in the provinces of Helmand, Faryab, Badakhshan, Takhar, Baghlan, Ghazni, Farah and Sarepul. Obama’s 2016 switch back to more close air support for Afghan forces, drone attacks and special forces involvement has reversed this trend only in parts. Neither the government’s claim that it continues to hold all 34 provincial centres and all of about 400 districts – except eight, according to its own statements –, nor the latest percentages provided by several institutions about government versus Taleban control sufficiently describe the situation of the widespread Taleban control and influence. The Special Inspector of the [US] Government on Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR 2017a: 89-91) warned that by November 2016 the government only controlled only “57.2 per cent of the districts […], 6.2 per cent less then in late August that year” and 15 per cent less then a year earlier. 233 were in the hands of the government, 41 in those of the Taleban and 133 “contested”, with almost one third of the Afghan population. Control over “districts”, though, statistically means who controls the district centre. It can be assumed that the Taleban even control a significant, if not the largest part of the territory of those districts labelled as ‘government-held’. This is shown, for example, in the preamble to the Corruption Survey 2016, published in

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December that year by the Afghan NGO Integrity Watch Afghanistan where it explained its researchers’ access to the districts: IWA conducted a security assessment, and determined that, out of 398 districts in Afghanistan, 98 were too dangerous to allow for enumerators to travel. In another 100, enumerators were limited to the district center. In 109, enumerators were able to travel within a two-hour radius of the district center, but not to more remote areas. It was only in 91 districts — less than 23% of the country — that IWA-trained enumerators had a free rein. (IWA 2016: 1)

As a result, Afghanistan roughly divides into the three ‘zones’: governmentcontrolled areas, Taleban-controlled areas and contested areas. These ‘zones’ are not compact territories – on the contrary, the many ‘front lines’ are extremely fluid. In the scattered areas of the contested ‘zone’, schools remain targets in the military confrontation. The Taleban’s parallel government structures also cover those wider areas not fully under government control and even extend into those. (For example, businesses, landowners and government officials are often taxed by them.) In this environment that emerged after the Taleban’s reorganisation phase, its attitude towards the education system changed again. Operating now from a consolidated territorial base inside Afghanistan (apart from its safe havens in Pakistan), the Taleban dropped their attitude, getting away from a full-scale onslaught on state-run education and instead trying to achieve partial control over it. This could be done in two ways: taking control over government-run (and also, to a smaller extent, private) schools; or building up Taleban-run schools. Over the years, and up until this paper was finished, the first way had gained precedence by far. By 2012, the Taleban had drafted a new pro-education policy. In the preamble to the 6-page document,13 it says that “understanding the sacred Islamic disciplines and modern educational concepts are greatly needed”. It speaks about six forms of institutions that are to compose the Emirate’s educational system: “schools, village day madrassas, boarding madrassas, dar ul-hafez (schools to learn the Quran), university and specialised religious institution [singulars in the original]”, with a “priority” on the village day madrassas. The day madrassas are intended for girls and will teach “some history and geography”. It is not spelled out whether “schools” refers to Taleban-created ones or those co-opted from the

13 An English translation of the document is in the author’s archive. It is titled: Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, “Purposed Law for Education and Training”, not dated.

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government. In themselves, however, they consist of three stages: elementary, intermediate and secondary. Nor is it explicitly said whether they will include boys and girls, the term used is “children”. Furthermore, the document sets up an “academic council” under the “High Commission for Education and Training” (similar to a ministry, under the Taleban Leadership Council) to work out curricula. For the schools, it is to include, among others, natural sciences, English and Arabic language, besides the two national languages Dari and Pashto, and “knowledge on computers”. “Improper subjects” such as “anti-Jihad subjects [and] about Muslim women’s improper liberation […] will not have a chance to be taught”. Private initiative to establish educational institutions is encouraged, but they need to obtain a permission from the High Commission. The Taleban explicitly do not strive to set up their own universities but state that they want to gain control over the existing ones. This policy document is a mixture of openness and conservatism, reflected both by content and wording. But it reflects the slow but steady progress in the Taleban leadership’s thinking about access to education. Taleban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada – who is widely portrayed as an ultra-conservative – is believed to have had a key role in drafting this document. As a result, schools often continue to run in the Taleban ‘control zone’, – but there also seem to be areas were this is not the case, particularly in very conservative areas in the south and southeast, for example in northern Helmand and parts of Kandahar, Zabul and Paktika. This reflects their self-projection as the still legitimate government that, in their view, had been illegally replaced by an outside intervention in 2001; this coincided with them calling themselves officially not the Islamic Movement of the Taleban anymore, but the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the title use when they were in power from 1996 to 2001. It also makes them more accessible for communities that are interested in continuing education for their children. In January of the same year, the Taleban announced that they would open their own schools providing “Islamic education” for boys and ‘later’ for girls in areas under their control. Funding of one million US dollars was allocated for this purpose, including to reprint textbooks from the Taleban Emirate period in the 1990s. Ten schools were initially planned in ten districts in six provinces in the south of the country, the Taleban’s stronghold: Kandahar, Zabul, Uruzgan, Helmand, Nimroz and Farah. On the one hand, this demonstrated not only the Taleban’s increased strength and consistent hold of some territory but their willingness to carry out state functions. On the other hand, the low numbers of schools initially planned also demonstrated that the Taleban were not capable of

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setting up their own education system. It is not clear either whether this plan was ever implemented. This lack of capacity apparently made the Taleban choose the other option: capturing state schools. (The Taleban also started co-opting private schools in some areas. Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 21) As the government was also interested to keep at least a foothold in Taleban-controlled or contested areas, according to Giustozzi/Franco (2011: 2, 8), the Ministry of Education (MoE) established first contacts with the Taleban leadership in order to come to an agreement over the practicalities of keeping schools open in such areas in 2007. They were, however, quickly “cut off, allegedly because of American hostility to them”. As a way around this problem and in order to not fully lose control, the government entered into unwritten agreements with the Taleban about keeping schools running through local elders or religious figures acting on its behalf. (Some did so independently of the government.) In 2007, the MoE started funding NGOs to provide education in private homes and other community settings in areas influenced or controlled by the armed insurgents, based on an official MoE curriculum. This so-called community-based education (CBE) became “a feature of the education landscape in Afghanistan, […] widely accepted by the Taliban” and “has led to higher enrolment […] through dialogue with the Taliban and other armed groups” (Rubin/Rudeworth 2016: 7). In order to prevent the Taleban from taking full control over the schools, the Ministry of Education set up local school protection or management shuras (traditional councils) to protect the schools, ostensibly establishing community control. By early 2007, it was already claiming that shuras existed in half of the country’s 9000 schools and, by 2011, that there were 8000 such shuras countrywide (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 9). But a 2009 field study in eight provinces suggested that there was “no difference in the rate of attacks between those schools where mechanisms for community involvement are in place and where they are not” (Glad 2009: 46). The Ministry of Education also says it recruited 3000 mullahs to teach literacy classes and claims that, by appointing mullahs for this purpose, as a result they do not oppose female education (Reid 2012). Nor the education sector is the only sector where both sides do cooperate. The author observed, for example in Gardez in south-eastern Afghanistan in 2010, that local Taleban also keep contact to local hospitals, health workers and midwifes – to treat their own family members. As one local doctor said: “Taleban have wives, too.” This also demonstrates that, similar to the education sector, the Taleban are unable to run their own health system. (This is unlike earlier guerrilla movements in other parts in the world.)

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T HE S URGE AND THE (U NPRECEDENTED ) C ONSEQUENCES The presidential election year of 2009 turned out to become crucial for the Afghan education system, as it led to a drastic change in Taleban education policy. They still continued to attack schools in the run-up to the election. At least 26 schools were attacked and partially damaged by the Taleban on election day, 20 August 2009, according to the MoE, because they were being used as polling stations (UNESCO/CARE 2010: 173-177). But a change in international politics led to the Afghan government reaching out to the Taleban again. In the US, President Barack Obama had made the withdrawal of his country’s troops by the end of his second tenure (in early 2017) one of his central campaign issues. At the same time, his campaign teams increased the criticism of the systemic corruption under the Karzai government and started looking for an alternative candidate to support instead of Karzai. This idea was finally dropped, but the damage was done in the Afghan-US relations and led Karzai to start a new outreach to the Taleban, while insisting that no other party – including the US or the UN – should do so. At the same time, the Obama administration started what became known as the “surge”, a heavy increase of US troops in order to destroy or at least weaken the Taleban – in US counter-insurgency language, to “decapitate” and “degrade” them. The surge was announced in December 2009 and started in 2010. The Taleban answered with an escalation, too, described as asymmetrical warfare, increasing the use of terrorist means – suicide attacks, car bombs, IEDs and targeted assassinations of government personnel, both in the centres and the rural areas, and expanding the guerrilla war in the countryside. UNAMA, in its annual civilian casualties report for 2011, attributed 77 per cent of all killed civilians to the Taleban. In more detail, it reported “The civilian death toll from suicide attacks in Afghanistan rose dramatically in 2011 to 450 […], an increase of 80 percent over 2010 […], the nature of these attacks changed, becoming more complex, sometimes involving multiple bombers, and designed to yield greater numbers of dead and injured civilians. […] Targeted killings of civilians by Anti-Government Elements also increased in 2011, with UNAMA documenting 495 such killings across the country” (UANAMA 2012: 2). It also accused the Taleban of the “indiscriminate use” of so-called Improvised Explosive Devices, basically home-made mines, responsible for one third of all civilian casualties (UNAMA 2012: 1, 3-4). Despite heavy losses, the Taleban not only survived the surge; they did not lose the capacity to recruit new fighters and appoint new

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commanders but further increased territorial control and their parallel government institutions (Ruttig 2010b: 16-8). Imitating then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s concept of “fight, talk, build” (US DoS 2011), the Taleban reached out to the Afghan government at the same time. One way to do so was to distinguish between what they considered ‘legitimate targets’ – government officials and officers in the security forces continued to be targeted while teachers and schools were exempted. In a new version of their layha published in 2010, all provisions declaring the education system a target were dropped. A new Taleban quasi-state body was introduced, an Education Commission (as were commissions for health affairs and for dealing with NGOs). It was drafted by the Taleban’s Cultural Commission, and there are indications that the Taleban education minister during the Emirate period, Amir Khan Mutaqi, “one of the[ir] more educated and political commanders”, had a key role in it (Clark 2011: 5-6, 14). Mutaqi was also the Taleban’s chief negotiator with the UN in 2000 (Ruttig 2015) and has been again since at least since 2011 (Clark 2013). The Taleban reduced their direct attacks against schools, teachers and students. Local deals between the Taleban and the MoE led to a number of schools being re-opened (Giustozzi/Franco 2013: 16). At around the same time, aid groups were also reported entering into safe passage agreements or even registering with the Taleban, reflecting a changed policy of the insurgents vis-à-vis NGOs (Trofimov/Totakhil 2011). This crystallised into a full-fledged Taleban-government pact in 2011 (Rubin 2016: 9/10), and the level of violence dropped very substantially starting in the second half of 2010 and even more so in 2011. Giustozzi/Franco (2011: 1-3) say it might have been mediated by former Taleban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmad Mutawakkel (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 2-3) who had reconciled with the government in 2003. More than 600 schools were re-opened between 2009 and 2012 (Trofimov 2012). The government never made this fully official but had reports leaked to the media about a deal on girls’ education. In January that year, education minister Faruq Wardak told the Times Education Supplement: “What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls’ education” (Boone 2011) – avowing the term ‘agreement’. President Karzai followed up in April that year, telling university graduates that “if it is proved that [Taleban chief] Mullah Omar has really ordered the Taleban not to prevent children from accessing education, I will thank him” (Daneshju 2011). In 2012, deputy education minister Muhammad Sediq Patman denied any deal was concluded but maintained that in order to keep the schools open in

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Taleban-controlled areas “the Education Ministry had shown flexibility to this issue” (Walsh 2012). Taleban commanders in the field openly talked about such an agreement (Giustozzi/Franco 2011: 2-3). That there was a change in the Taleban attitude towards education was also immediately confirmed by reports from various provinces: The British Guardian found “large numbers of girls’ schools open for business in the largely Talibancontrolled district of Cha[h]rdara in Kunduz province” as well as “that some local insurgent leaders have struck deals with [local representatives of] Wardak’s education ministry to keep schools open” in general. The governor of Kapisa northeast of Kabul told an Afghan media outlet that the Taleban in his province were no longer interfering in projects there (Daneshju 2011). The Afghanistan Analysts Network found the same in Ghazni province – but also that the Taleban set their conditions. The conditions, more or less, remain unchanged to this day in their education policy: According to local sources, the Taleban have abandoned their ‘very hard stance against schools’ they had in general in 2008/09 for a more flexible approach under the pressure of the local population [my emphasis]. It had started in Andar and Waghaz districts where the people pushed for the reopening of the schools that were closed for many years. Now, schools are said to be operating in all Pashtun (i.e. mainly Taleban-controlled) districts of Ghazni; in Andar, even girls’ schools are also said to be working. But the curriculum is not the government’s – it is developed by the Taleban. (They probably have teachers amongst their supporters.) At least one teacher at every school is named by the Taleban, or, if already there, is made their representative. He must clear all other teachers employed at his school. This resembles the days of the Emirate when the village mullahs were made ‘the eyes and ears’ of the Taleban. (Ruttig 2011)

The government had reasons not to talk too openly about the agreement as it had to make a number of concessions to the Taleban. There were “minor changes to the core curriculum […] to increase the time spent on religious education […], textbook passages considered controversial” were “modified”. By the agreement the government also “ceded to the Taleban some influence over recruitment of teachers and monitoring their attendance and performance, including using laptop computers provided by the MoE. The Taliban may even collect some payments from MoE officials for these services” (Rubin 2016: 9/10). According to Giustozzi/Franco (2013: 1) it was also agreed that certain “subjects (such as English language for girls)” were excluded from curriculum, co-education remained banned (this would not have found a majority on the government’s side either, with its strong Islamist components) and the Taleban were allowed to

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“proselytise”. An official confirmation about an agreement with the Taleban including such concessions would also have created protest. But the strategy was clear: the government was hoping to turn the deal with the Taleban on education into a broader political agreement. As Wardak said in his January 2011 interview: I hope, Inshallah, soon there will be a peaceful negotiation, a meaningful negotiation with our own opposition and that will not compromise at all the basic human rights and basic principles which have been guiding us to provide quality and balanced education to our people. (News24 archives 2011)

Giustozzi/Franco (2011: 2-3) called education the Taleban “first confidencebuilding measure in moving towards political negotiations” with the Afghan government. With President Barack Obama replacing his predecessor George W. Bush in early 2009, the American veto finally fell in the context of the US troop surge; searching for entry points into talks with the Taleban became part of the double strategy of “fighting and talking” at the same time. A wave of talks started – or rather: talks about talks as they all were exploratory meetings with the aim to start meaningful negotiations for a political settlement in Afghanistan. In 2009, Karzai sent a small delegation including former Taleban members to Saudi Arabia to seek the kingdom’s help in kick-starting talks with the Taleban. Meetings on the Maldives and in Abu Dhabi happened in the same year, bringing together interlocutors from different insurgent groups, the government and independent Afghan politicians and civil society actors. But they were often uncoordinated, and it remained unclear whether participants really represented ‘their’ groups, or whether they were authorised to speak on their behalf. In September 2010, President Karzai created the High Peace Council (HPC), officially as a means to open talks with the Taleban. But the Taleban did not consider the body impartial. It was also heavily funded but not supervised by the West, became a corruption generator and remained ineffective. Even the negotiations that led to the widely celebrated September 2016 peace agreement with the second largest (but much smaller than the Taleban) insurgent group, the Islamic Party of Afghanistan (Hezb-e Islami), were mainly conducted through the National Security Council. In October 2010 a meeting in Kabul followed, organised by a US-based think tank, featuring among others former Taleban and education minister Wardak; it might well have served as a conduit for talks about education (Ruttig 2010a). CIA officials reportedly held clandestine meetings with “top Taliban leaders, some at the level of the Taliban’s shadow Cabinet ministers” (Gannon 2010). The UN representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, met Taleban envoys in

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Dubai in the spring of 2009 and in early 2010 who – according to some inside sources – had indeed been authorized by Mullah Omar (Ruttig 2012). Less well known was a direct channel established between the US government and the Taleban leadership with the help of Germany and Qatar. Based in the latter country, a dialogue ensued for mutual confidence-building measures, such as the exchange of prisoners. Indeed, the only known US soldier held by the Taleban was exchanged against five high-ranking Taleban members held in Guantanamo in June 2014 (Clark 2013). But the talks broke down in March 2012, after mutual misunderstandings; and the Taleban’s semi-official liaison office in Qatar had to be closed in June 2013 after an intervention by Karzai who, at that point, insisted that all peace talks be conducted through Kabul. (The Taleban were officially not ready for such direct contacts.) Also Norway pursued channels of “peace diplomacy“, between 2007 and 2010 and between 2012 and 2013, sometimes openly (including a meeting between Afghan women politicians and Taleban representatives in Oslo in mid-2015), but they also faltered (Wilkens 2016). New attempts to set up peace negotiation through Pakistan in 2013 and the Quadrilateral Coordination Group consisting of Afghanistan, Pakistan, China and the US in 2015/16 – already under the new president Ghani – met the same fate (Osman 2015; Ruttig 2016). As a result, also the discussions between the Taleban and the Ministry of Education stalled. The trend of re-opening schools was partially reversed but the number of closed schools sank further, from 1.247 in September 2012 to 471 in March 2013, according to MoE figures (Giustozzi/Franco 2013: 1, 16). 14 According to the UN, in 2015 there were still 82 verified incidents of “attacks on schools and protected personnel […] attributed to the Taleban […] including the killing, injury and abduction of education personnel” (IAGCI 2016: 44), despite the Talebans’ policy change. There were also 13 such cases attributed to groups affiliated to the Afghan chapter of the Islamic State (Daesh), 11 to undetermined armed groups, one to the Pakistani Taleban (who also operate in Afghanistan) and 23 to the Afghan government forces and pro-government militias. In 2016, this number dropped to 94 such documented incidents, including 13 of targeted killings aimed at education professionals, resulting in the deaths of 11 civilians and injury to 10 others. All those incidents resulted in 91 civilian casualties (24 deaths and 67 injured) (UNAMA 2017: 22-23). In the case of the Taleban, this

14 This report describes a rift within the Taleban, between their Leadership Council (‘Quetta shura’) and the so-called Peshawar Shura, including over the Taleban education policy. In hindsight, this rift seems to have been overstated, as the ‘Quetta shura’ remained the sole decision-making body of the Taleban movement.

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indicates the degree of autonomy their field commanders continue to possess, the gap between political statements and their practical implementation and the “strategic dilemma“ they face between their need to “intimidate the population enough to deter ‘collaboration’ with the Afghan government and foreign forces, but neither be so unforgiving as to deter ‘collaborators’ from switching sides” (Clark 2011: 5) and projecting themselves as those who serve the population better. Both sides in the war – the Taleban as well as government forces and their western allies – also continue, in an increasing number of cases, to frequently occupy schools and turn them into temporary military bases or command structures. (In many districts, the school continues to be one of the few larger and reinforced buildings.) For 2015, the UN (2016: 19) reported “35 schools (compared to 12 schools in 2014 and ten schools in 2013) were used for military purposes for a cumulative total of 1,311 days, the majority (24) by Pro-Government Forces.” More widely, it also reported for the same year 132 “conflict incidents against schools” in 27 provinces – “an 86 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2014 and a 110 per cent increase compared to 2013” –, 369 schools were closed, 139.000 pupils and 600 teachers out of school due to conflict as well as 75 education staff either killed, injured or abducted (UN 2016: 1, 6). For the first half of 2016, it documented the military use of 18 schools “for periods variedly ranging between days and months – 15 schools used by Afghan security forces and three by Anti-Government Elements” (UNAMA 2016: 21). The figures are probably too low, as the UN and other bodies face increasing limitations in accessing wide areas of the country due to the deteriorating security situation. On 7 December 2016, education minister Balkhi said that 1006 schools remained closed in the whole of Afghanistan due to ongoing war and insecurity (Ariana News 2016).

S OME C ONCLUDING R EMARKS Since the end of 2014, the original but not implemented pull-out date for the western troop deployments according to Obama’s 2009 election campaign pledge, the character of the war has changed. Afghans dominate on the military battlefield; with Western troops in supportive roles, although very often still tipping the balance to one or the other side – by providing certain support like air strikes, transportation and intelligence to the government side or withholding it (mainly because sharply diminished troop numbers make it impossible to assist in every battle).

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In a more ‘Afghan’ environment, the battle about education and the schools in Afghanistan remains on the agenda. With Afghanistan divided into the three ‘zones’ of control – government-controlled, Taleban-controlled and contested – schools remain targets mainly in the contested zone. In the other schools, a new competition for the ‘hearts and minds’ of the population has set in. The question to be answered is: which side will be able to provide better education ‘services’ to the population? With no significant changes in the strategic military balance imminent (although things in Afghanistan always can change out of the blue) and no meaningful peace talks ongoing, however, there also seems to be a stalemate in the field of education. The conflict between modernising and conservative forces continues to rage. An end is not in sight. Frontlines are perhaps less clear than ever – and there are two ‘frontlines’: physical control over the schools and their personnel as an expression of the militarily confrontation, and the battle over political-ideological dominance, expressed by conflicts over the content of education. Surprisingly enough, differences between the government and the Taleban over content have diminished. The Taleban in their declared policy, have taken on board the idea that the young population, including the girls, need schooling, including in modern subjects, provided there is strong, religiously motivated oversight. In August 2013, a proclamation on the occasion of an Islamic holiday attributed to Mullah Omar (who had died four months before)15 stated, “To protect ourselves from scarcity and hardships, our young generations should arm themselves with religious and modern education, because modern education is a fundamental need in every society in the present time” (quoted from Rubin 2016: 11). Remarkably, the new Taleban leader Hibatullah Akhundzada – who is widely portrayed as an ultraconservative – is reported to have had a role in drafting the Taleban proeducation policy published in 2012. But while they probably physically control a majority of the teachers, students and schools, at the same time, they do not seem to be able – both financially and conceptionally – to roll out an education system of their own. Also, resistance against modern and particularly girls’ education continues to exist in their ranks, finding its expression in reduced, but continuing attacks on schools. This resistance, though, rather springs from the context of a still or – as a backlash to the 1980s communist reforms – even more conservative society, reflected

15 This fact, however, only transpired in 2015 in the middle of the Murree talks organised through the Quadrilateral Coordination Group.

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in the practical behaviour of local Taleban fighters and commanders. It also finds counterparts in the government’s ranks. The government, meanwhile, with its international support seems to be better placed to provide funding, teachers’ training and general infrastructure. But it continues to struggle with the deeply rooted corruption, low effectiveness and inflated figures that undermine the claimed post-2011 success stories in the education sector. Furthermore, Islamist and conservative-religious elements are extremely strong on the government’s side, too. They have consolidated their dominance in many spheres of the public discourse; anti-Western sentiments are deeply rooted and have taken root in wide sections and possibly even in a majority of the young generation (Ruttig 2014; Osman 2015: 30-31). Widespread Taleban control forces the government to compromise. The Taleban education policy – seeing it as a “basic human need,” including for girls, “within the scope of Sharia and Afghan traditions” (Rubin 2016: 6) – is not a contradiction to the government’s approach although the latter is more progressive. But the government cannot be seen as doing anything against the sharia and the Afghan traditions. Giustozzi/Franco (2013: 14) quote an MoE advisor expressing “sympathy” for the insurgents’ (in that case Hezb-e Islami’s)16 position that “education should be Islamic and not influenced by non-Muslims, but education opportunities for girls should be guaranteed.” The cooperation between the Afghan government and the Taleban and their compromises over education indicate there might be space for more compromise. It also signals that the gap between both – despite both sides’ commitment to continue to fight each other and the Taleban – at least public – rejection of any direct political talks is not insurmountable. Even more so, as in the education sector, with pragmatic cooperation. But in the end, Afghanistan does not only need a functioning education system and modern educated new generations, but a political resolution to the current conflicts and an end to the war. Only this will ensure that the current situation, and much of what has been built after 2001 – although often agonisingly slowly – can be protected and built on.

16 The Afghan government concluded a peace agreement with Hezb-e Islami Afghanistan (Islamic Party of Afghanistan) in September 2016 that, if implemented, will end the party’s role as one of the armed anti-government organisations (Ruttig 2017).

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Ruttig, Thomas (2010a). Talk about Talks Again (updated). AAN October 7th. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/talk-about-talks-againupdated/ (01.12.2017). Ruttig, Thomas (2010b). How Tribal Are the Taleban? Afghanistan’s largest insurgent movement between its tribal roots and Islamist ideology. AAN Thematic Report 04/2010. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/ publication/aan-papers/how-tribal-are-the-taleban-afghanistans-largestinsurgent-movement-between-its-tribal-roots-and-islamist-ideology/ (01.12.2017). Ruttig, Thomas (2011). Tactical or genuine? The Taleban’s ‘new education policy’. AAN, January 15th. Retrieved from https://www.afghanistananalysts.org/tactical-or-genuine-the-talebans-new-education-policy/ (01.12.2017). Ruttig, Thomas (2012). Talks on Two Channels? The Qatar office and Karzai’s Saudi option. AAN, January 29th. https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/ talks-on-two-channels-the-qatar-office-and-karzais-saudi-option/ (01.12.2017). Ruttig, Thomas (2014). Situation Report: Religion in Afghanistan. Centre on Religion & Geopolitics. Tony Blair Faith Foundation, London. Ruttig, Thomas (2015). Verhandeln mit den Taleban oder: Bei Mulla Mutaqi auf der Bettkante. Afghanistan Zhaghdablai (blog), 23 August 23 rd. Retrieved from https://thruttig.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/verhandeln-mit-den-talebanoder-bei-mulla-mutaqi-auf-der-bettkante-erlebnisbericht-nov-2000/ (01.12.2017). Ruttig, Thomas (2016). In Search of a Peace Process: A ‘new’ HPC and an ultimatum for the Taleban. AAN, February 26th. Retrieved from https:// www.afghanistan-analysts.org/in-search-of-a-peace-process-a-new-hpc-andan-ultimatum-for-the-taleban/ (01.12.2017). Schwittek, Peter (2011). In Afghanistan. Zürich: Hochschulverlag AG. Schwittek, Peter (2017). Personal E-mail Conversation, 04.02.2017. Siddique, Abubakar (2012). The Swede Who Convinced Taliban To Allow Girls Schools. RadioFreeEurope, Monday 26 January 2012 6:55. Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/swede_who_convinced_taliban_to_allow_girls_scho ols/24454456.html (01.12.2017). SIGAR [Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction] (2016). Schools in Herat Province: Observations from Site Visits at 25 Schools. SIGAR-17-12-SP. November 2016. Retrieved from https://www.sigar.mil/ pdf/special%20projects/SIGAR-17-12-SP.pdf (01.12.2017).

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SIGAR (2017a). Quarterly Report to the United States Congress. 30 January 2017. Retrieved from https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2017-0130qr.pdf (01.12.2017). SIGAR (2017b). Schools in Balkh Province: Observations from Site Visits at 26 Schools. SIGAR-17-32-SP. March 2017. Retrieved from https://www.sigar. mil/pdf/special%20projects/SIGAR-17-32-SP.pdf (01.12.2017). Tempest, Rone (1997). Afghan Girls Hunger for Denied Education. Los Angeles Times, 18 August 1997, 1-2. Retrieved from http://articles.latimes.com/1997/ aug/18/news/mn-23605/2 (01.12.2017). The Economist (2017). Why states fail and how to rebuild them: Fixing fragile nations: lessons from Afghanistan and South Sudan. The Economist, 07 January 2017. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/international/2017/ 01/07/why-states-fail-and-how-to-rebuild-them (01.12.2017). Tharoor, Ishaan (2014). The Taliban indoctrinates kids with jihadist textbooks paid for by the U.S. Washington Post blog, January 8th. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/08/thetaliban-indoctrinates-kids-with-jihadist-textbooks-paid-for-by-the-us/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.e01ded6f0c94 (01.12.2017). Trofimov, Yaroslav (2012). Emboldened Taliban Try to Sell Softer Image. The Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2012. Retrieved from http://online. wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203806504577177074111336352.html (01.12.2017). Trofimov, Yaroslav & Totakhil, Habib Khan (2010). Aid Groups Seek Safety Pacts With Taliban. The Wall Street Journal. Updated 22 November 2010 12:01. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487047 56804575608440626421822.html (01.12.2017). United Nations (UN) (2016). Education and Healthcare at Risk: Key Trends and Incidents Affecting Children’s Access to Healthcare and Education in Afghanistan. Retrieved from https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/ files/education_and_healthcare_at_risk.pdf (01.12.2017). United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) (2012). Civilian Casual Ties Rise for Fifth Consecutive Year in Afghan Conflict. Press Release, Kabul, 04 February 2013. Retrieved from https://unama.unmissions. org/sites/default/files/unama_2011_poc_annual_report_press_release_eng.pd f (01.12.2017). United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) (2016). Afghanistan Midyear Report 2016: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. Kabul, July 2016. Retrieved from https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/

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files/protection_of_civilians_in_armed_conflict_midyear_report_2016_final. pdf (01.12.2017). United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) (2017). Report on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Annual Report 2016, Kabul February 2017. Retrieved from https://unama.unmissions.org/sites/default/ files/protection_of_civilians_in_armed_conflict_annual_report_2016_final28 0317.pdf (01.12.2017). UNESCO/CARE (2010). Education under Attack 2010. Paris, 2010. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001868/186809e.pdf (01.12. 2017). U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesperson (2011). Remarks With Afghan President Hamid Karzai. 20 October 2011. Retrieved from https:// 2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/10/175893.htm (01.12.2017). Walsh, Nick Paton (2012). Taleban Tightens Grip on Afghan Schools. CNN, Tuesday 22 May 2012 1055 GMT. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn. com/2012/05/22/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-schools/index.html (01.12.2017). Wilkens, Ann (2016). To Say It Like It Is: Norway’s evaluation of its part in the international intervention. AAN, August 23rd. Retrieved from https://www. afghanistan-analysts.org/to-say-it-like-it-is-norways-evaluation-of-its-partin-the-international-intervention/ (01.12.2017). Zabulwal, Abdul Awwal (2009). Taliban in Zabul: A Witness’ Account. In A. Giustozzi (Ed.), Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field (pp. 179-190). London: Hurst. Zuri, Armin Barin (1986). Das Erziehungswesen. In P. Bucherer-Dietschi & C. Jentsch (Hrsg.), Afghanistan. Ländermonographie (S. 455-473). Liestal: Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica.

II. Teacher Education and Higher Education in Afghanistan

Crisis and Reconstruction in Teacher Education in Afghanistan 2002 – 2016 From Emergency to Stability S USAN W ARDAK

R ECRUITING AND R E - TRAINING T EACHERS FOR E XPANDING E NROLLMENTS IN AFGHAN S CHOOLS In 2002, following the defeat of the Taliban and the establishment of a new government, one of the most pressing issues was to provide schools, classrooms, and teachers for the children and youth of the nation. Adult literacy was also a concern, including providing basic education for women whose illiteracy rate was among the highest in the world. However, the challenge facing the government and the Ministry of Education was that of making primary education (grades 1 through 6) a priority. The new Constitution called for free, universal education through the university level for all children and youth. Even before the year 2000 (as indicated in chapters 4 and 5), schools were not available in all communities and were especially missing in remote and rural areas. The new government promised education for all, raising the hopes and expectations of Afghan families across the nation whose schools had been non-existent or disrupted by the years of conflict and insecurity. In 2002, the new Government of Afghanistan (GoA) faced an overwhelming challenge to provide teachers for the swelling post-conflict enrollment demands as well as to develop the infrastructure to prepare future teachers beyond the needs of existing emergency. Without a willingness to use existing teachers who were even grossly unqualified from the start, it would not have been possible to respond to the demands. Children could not wait for several years for new teachers to come on-board with the required qualifications. Therefore, conditions re-

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quired emergency strategies for immediate hiring of persons to teach in the rapidly expanding schools. As documented in the semi-annual report for EQUIP II (TED 2014), The Teacher Education General Directorate (TED) of the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of Afghanistan (GoA) is responsible for setting up infrastructure for pre- and in-service teacher education and for planning, delivering and monitoring teacher education throughout the country. TED’s record of achievement includes an enormous growth in the number of teachers now teaching in classrooms throughout the nation. In 2001, the schools were decimated, few students were enrolled, and few teachers were available. However, beginning in 2002, under the new government the numbers of students needing education multiplied and the demand for teachers created an emergency priority for the Ministry of Education to be urgently addressed. Not only were thousands of new teachers needed, but the quality and education of teachers was high on the agenda. TED first developed in-service training programs for teachers whose numbers grew from almost 20.000 mostly unqualified (in 2002) to over 180.000 teachers (32 percent female) in 2014. At the same time the MoE anticipated an increasing need for newly trained teachers as TED moved from having only 4 colleges or institutes for teacher education in 2002, with 450 students all males, to 48 Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) in 2014 (one or more in each of the 34 provinces). Additionally, 195 district based teacher development centers (TDCs) with a total enrollment of 80.891 students (54 percent female) were added. (By 2016, the number of TTCs was 49.) The TTC enrollment includes pre-service students as well as in-service teachers who need to upgrade their education in order to meet the minimum requirement of grade 14 to be a qualified Tashkil teacher (officially registered with the government pay-and-grade civil service system) with an opportunity for an improved salary (TED 2014: 1). The New Start for Afghan Education report summarized the situation in this way: By any measure, the education system in Afghanistan has collapsed. The most informed estimates (based on a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] Education for All 2000 report) indicate that Afghanistan’s education indicators are among the worst in the world; girls and rural populations are especially disadvantaged. The gross enrollment rate (GER) estimate in the PNA of 38 % for boys’ primary education and 3 % for girls’ seems high, given that the highest GER achieved in 1980, before the wars, was only 54 % for boys and 12 % for girls. In the following years, the GER for boys plummeted, while the GER for girls gradually increased under the communist government to an estimated high of 35 % in 1995. In secondary education, the estimated current GER for boys is 5–11 % and for girls as low as 1–2 %. Indeed, the numbers of

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children in school declined dramatically in the 1990s because of the civil war, the destruction of education infrastructure, and the hostility of the Taliban to secular education – particularly the education of girls and female teachers. An estimated 80 % of school buildings at all levels have been damaged or destroyed, as well as all but two teacher-training colleges, which are still partially functioning. Most of the vocational-technical facilities have been damaged or destroyed. A large number of qualified teachers fled the country, took jobs outside of education, worked in refugee camps, or have been killed. The curriculum has not been revised for 30 years, and virtually no modern educational practices have been introduced for decades. Regional education authorities have operated autonomously for years in the absence of a central authority. Most teachers and administrators have not been paid for more than 6 months, and salary levels are set well below a living wage. In summary, the education system has very limited capacity to supply basic inputs: buildings, teachers, materials, and textbooks. In fact, virtually no “system” exists, even at the level of basic operations, policies, or procedures. (Sarvi 2003: 1-2)

The high unmet demand for education after Taliban rule is seen in the throngs of parents and children seeking to register for school, sometimes at schools that were little more than rubble. The girls’ schools that opened for informal winter sessions in all parts of the country after the defeat of the Taliban were overflowing, even in heavily traditional Pashtun areas like Griskh in the Helmand province, where 500 girls showed up the first day (ibid: 21-23). In addition to families who had stayed in Afghanistan and had not been part of the diaspora, families who had left were returning from refugee camps in Pakistan, Iran and other nations where education and schools had been available. The returning families added large numbers of students to the school enrollments thus making an even greater demand for teachers – especially for educated and skilled teachers. The education of girls was a major concern, especially for the international community of donors focusing on aid to education. Most communities wanted single sex classes, where boys and girls did not sit together in the same classroom or even attend the same sessions at the same time of day. In general, families did not want their daughters, especially pre-pubescent and adolescent girls, to be taught by male teachers. In Afghanistan at the turn of the 21st century, under these crisis conditions, finding educated women who could accept positions as teachers and who could function successfully in that role, was difficult in all parts of the country except for the largest cities. Two major routes to addressing the problem were taken simultaneously by the MoE. One was to immediately upgrade the knowledge and skills of the in-

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service teachers hired to fill the gaps; the other was to take steps to strategically educate prospective teachers for the near future.

P OLICY P RIORITIES In May 2002, The Afghanistan Government identified the professional development of teachers as a critical part of re-establishing the country’s human capital and economy. Teacher training was to be a key component of all education programs for the Afghan Government. In 2004 the Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TEP), supported in part by Creative Associates through USAID, was the initial collaborative effort on behalf of international donors in the teacher training sector to develop an integrated response to assist the MoE in achieving its goals for teacher development. The program was to produce a long-term plan for teacher education in Afghanistan that would identify and initiate immediate term activities focusing on rapid, country-wide in-service teacher training programs. Although in the early stages of TEP progress was made, the burden of trying to design and implement a national teacher training program that involved many divergent donors resulted in power struggles over ownership of the program as well as control of the multi-national budget contributions. One of the territorial tensions became clear in the separate approaches to teacher training recommended by the Ministry of Education in contrast to the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE). The responsibilities of these two ministries overlap, but equity was not a reality and cooperation between the two was resisted. Similarly, the donor agencies also struggled for power and influence but the USAID contractor (Creative Associates) assumed leadership. Cooperation was complicated by internal differences within the new government as well as by external differences between members of the international consortium. By 2006, the partnership was revised and placed under the Ministry of Education. The TEP program laid a foundation for a new phase of national teacher training based on many of the TEP strategies, but with program funding and execution located in the Ministry of Education, and most specifically in the Teacher Education Department newly named the Teacher Education General Directorate (TED).

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According to Spink (2004) information about the numbers of teachers in Afghanistan, their qualification, and capabilities was not available in any accurate data base. In 2002 UNICEF conducted a national Rapid Assessment of Learning Spaces (RALS). This assessment showed a total number of approximately 70.000 teachers and approximately 3.2 million students: an average of 46:1 student/teacher ratio. At that time to achieve a ratio of 30:1 an additional 35.000 to 40.000 teachers were required. The RALS assessment also highlighted the gender inequities in enrollment showing critical deficits in numbers of females enrolled at all levels. Numerous documents have quoted varying numbers of teachers. The MoE National Development Plan (2004) gives a figure of 80.811. The World Bank (2004) records a total of 106.450 teachers for 2003. Kabul has by the far the highest number of teachers employed, with provinces in the south and southeast having the lowest. A critical reality during all of these years is the estimate of the ratio of students to teachers. The enormous numbers enrolled in a single class are often overwhelming and even hard to believe. The class enrollments are particularly severe in the primary schools and in the more remote and less advantaged areas. In Kandahar Province, for example, student/teacher ratios were reported at more than 100 students per teacher. Smaller ratios were reported for Kabul and for classes at the intermediate and secondary levels. When all data on all levels for student/teacher ratios was averaged, the national number was reported at 41 to one. It was estimated that to achieve a ratio of 30 students to one teacher an additional 38.000 primary school teachers would be required. However, the geographical placement of those teachers presented another element of concern. Finally, the gender imbalance, the shortage of female teachers outside of the major cities, was (and continues to be) a major challenge and a high priority.

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As part of the effort to train and educate teachers to address the government priority for high quality, competent, professional teachers, the impetus was to develop a statement of standards for teachers followed by a complex framework of competency statements for teachers. The framework document outlined purposes, philosophy, and principles behind the competency document. The competencies were identified in four do-

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mains starting with subject content competence, followed by focus on knowledge of student growth and development, then delivery and assessment of learning content, and finally in Domain 4 continuous professional improvement on the part of the teacher. The original 2007 framework was modified in 2012 by another group of international consultants (WUSC) working on a plan for teacher credentialing that started fresh with a new set of standards and competencies. In addition to a competency framework for teachers, soon a comparable one for school administrators was developed. The initial framework for teachers, however, was the foundation and the touchstone for the development of the National Teacher Examination that was created to test teacher knowledge of academic subject content and of relevant pedagogy. The purpose of the National Teacher Examination was to ensure the public that teachers were competent, and to provide documentation on teacher knowledge that would enable those qualified to be paid through the Civil Service Commission in charge of government employee salaries.

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Because teachers cannot develop and display the required behaviors without the support of enlightened school leadership through their administrators, it became evident that school administrators also needed a new vision of leadership and their own competency framework compatible with new concepts of schools as learning communities. A competency document, mapping responsibilities and expectations for school administrators in domains parallel to those in the teachers’ framework was created by TED staff and consultants in 2009. Along with the administrators’ competency statement, a rationale for a new approach to school leadership was articulated and administrator in-service school management training (SMT 1 – VI) was developed along with the in-service teacher training packages (INSET I – VI). Education Quality Improvement Program (EQUIP) The Education Quality Improvement Program (EQUIP) is one of the National Priority Programs of the Ministry of Education. EQUIP is part of the National Education Strategic Plan (NESP). The MoE is the leading execution body of the program. The project is nationally executed with the support of the World Bank. It is financially-supported mainly by the World Bank. A number of foreign do-

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nors support the program through the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF), which is managed by the World Bank. EQUIP II, beginning in 2008, was to focus on rapid development of teacher competence through both in-service and pre-service teacher training initiatives to cover the entire country by organizing provinces into regional areas. The inservice plan was entitled the District Teacher Training Teams (DT3) program. The nation was divided into three (later four) manageable clusters of provinces, contracts for each region were awarded to different NGO consortia. The framework for this massive teacher training project was established by expert teacher educators who assisted TED in developing the competencies and standards for qualified teachers, and who also assisted in the development of the first training packages to be delivered under the contracts awarded to the NGOs. TED was (and is) responsible for the training of trainers, of teachers and administrators in all DT3 contracted programs as well as for the monitoring, evaluation, and oversight of the projects. The training structure follows a cascade model, training of trainers for the NGO contractors, who then train educators who are leaders in the provinces, who then train teachers and administrators in all provincial and district schools. TED was responsible for ensuring the quality of the trainings including scheduling and verifying trainings, monitoring the numbers of teachers trained and the qualifications of trainers, collecting and analyzing participant evaluations of trainings and follow-on activities through the professional learning circles. Inservice training packages (INSET-I through INSET-VI over several years) were developed to give untrained teachers information about pedagogy with knowledge of concepts and methods for successful teaching and assessment of student learning. INSET packages were also developed to focus on subject area content and specific teaching strategies appropriate for the academic area and grade level taught by the participants in the training. The teaching force throughout the nation for grades 1 through 9 is approximately 180.000 with approximately 33 percent female. The percentage of unqualified (less than grade 14) has decreased over the decade but is still about 48 percent. The number of school administrators trained is over 21.000 with 14 percent female. The numbers vary from province to province, and are based on the enrollment as well as on local subject area and grade level needs. Teacher improvement was the first priority, but school administrators were also a target of EQUIP II and training materials were developed specifically for them within the initial year. Basics of School Management (SMT-I) was followed by subsequent training materials including practical issues for Afghan school administrators as well as materials that are current in international admin-

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istration and leadership trainings. The SMT information and training content gradually changed in tone and topics to be aligned with that of the teacher training in the INSET packages in order to harmonize and synthesize the professional standards common to both teachers and administrators. For example, administrators have the responsibility to monitor, supervise, and support teachers in order to improve learning outcomes in their school. In the most recent package (SMTVI) administrators and teachers share similar materials about expectations, standards, ethics, professional development, mentoring, collegial assessment techniques, formative and summative evaluations of teaching.

DT3 ASSESSMENTS OF T EACHER P ERFORMANCE THROUGH C LASSROOM O BSERVATIONS Thousands of observations of teachers in classrooms, as well as student achievements, were recorded using uniform observation forms and academic tests throughout the DT3 trainings. The cumulative results of these classroom observation assessments pointed to common weaknesses that resulted from a combination of cultural traditions and embedded school practices as well as to the lack of professional education and skills of the teachers. The resistance of school cultures to change or to adopting more progressive modern teaching methods was, and continues to be, a formidable force. The DT3 program monitors consistently commented on the lack of text books and teaching materials even in the classes where teachers were evaluated highly. Students in some classes had to purchase their own books; in other classes there were hardly enough materials for students to share; in other classes there were no textbooks available. Another problem frequently mentioned, even when the teacher taught an outstanding lesson, was the absence of a lesson plan. Many teachers did not check attendance or homework, and many did not assign homework. Student assessment of progress was generally found to be inadequate or inconsistent. There was very little student interaction or initiative in any of the classes observed. However, the comment was made uniformly by the observers monitoring teacher competence, that the teacher should have opportunity for training in modern methods of pedagogy (TED Report 2011: 17-18). In 2014, concerns by donors and critical members of the MoE persuaded the World Bank education program directors in Kabul to invite proposals for an external review of the TED and EQUIP in-service teacher training programs, DT3. The evaluation contract was awarded to Institute of Social and Policy Sciences

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(I-SAPS), a firm based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Their lengthy, detailed assessment was presented in a May, 2015 Report on Third Party Review of the PreService and In-Service Teacher Training Programs (NPITT, DT3, TTCs) of the Teacher Education General Directorate. The report was generally favorable, even laudatory, to the TED project management as stated in these statements: As indicated in reports reviewed by us, DT3 has been successful in meeting its quantitative targets for training teachers and principals. Over 80 % (n=569) of the teachers surveyed for this study believed that INSET trainings had helped them improve their instruction, classroom management, and assessment practices. We found that the INSET courses provide adequate coverage of the competencies mentioned in the TCF. Teachers have received the INSET supplementary materials very well. As the survey indicates, nearly 90 % teachers thought the materials were easy to understand and useful. Over 60 % said they were using them regularly in their teaching practice. Supplementary materials for the INSET trainings usually included the national textbooks based on the curriculum that were used in courses where lesson planning or subject content was central to the training, which is the case in nearly all the trainings. The principals value the training and over 96 % of them (n=122) found the training to be of good quality and useful to them in as far as improving their management and administrative roles and practices. The principals also appreciate the quality of the learning materials and its usefulness in their daily work. In-service teacher education, training and professional development was the first priority of the new government in its first few years, but of nearly equal importance was the education of a new generation of teachers. The development of teacher training colleges (TTCs), their administration, faculty, enrollments, and curriculum emerged as a crucial and controversial priority. The necessity to provide comparable, consistent, and compatible training in methods, philosophy, and educational content led to actions to make preservice and in-service education parallel and integrated programs with feedback flowing in both directions. (General Directorate of Teacher Education 2015)

T HE D EVELOPMENT OF T EACHER T RAINING C OLLEGES (TTC S ) E DUCATING THE N EXT G ENERATION OF T EACHERS The first teacher training program was established in 1912 in Kabul, and by the 1950s there were sixteen located throughout the country. In 2001, four TTCs were reportedly in operation with a total of 139 students of which 25 were female (Nicholson 2013: 34). Looking beyond the immediate emergency situation,

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the government and international advisors saw the importance of a dependable infrastructure and reliable system of teacher recruitment, training, and professional employment. The MoE, through the TED, moved from having only 4 colleges or institutes for teacher education in 2002, with 450 students all males, to 49 TTCs in 2016 (one or more in each of the 34 provinces) and 195 district based teacher development center (TDCs) with an total enrollment of 80.891 with 54 percent female. The TTCs offer a two-year post-secondary education and have as their mission the preparation of qualified teachers for grades one through grade nine, although many graduates will also teach in the secondary schools for students in grades 10-12. The 49 TTCs are under the authority of the Ministry of Education (MoE) and are the direct responsibility of its Teacher Education General Directorate (TED). The TTCs are part of the free education system of the government, therefore enrolled students do not pay tuition, but there are many other expenses and deterrents to student admission and program completion. The enrollment numbers, the qualifications of faculty, the curriculum offered, and the facilities available vary among the TTCs reflecting the diverse conditions of location and population. A dramatic increase in enrollment in the TTCs occurred from 2001-2016. From 400 only male students at the turn of the century, by 2016 the TTC enrollment was over 80.000 students with over half female. The TTCs were desperately needed in order to meet the targets for expansion of general education. Greater efforts were needed to increase the educational capacity and develop the facilities of TTCs as aligned to their national mission. This increase in enrollment created numerous challenges not only related to quality and access, but also involving competition for resources within the Ministry of Education and across other ministries, especially rivalry and opposition from the Ministry of Higher Education. Although the numbers of students enrolled in the lower schools has increased exponentially, a continuing critical weak link is the dramatic gender inequity, female absence, at every level of education and at the tables where educational policy is made. The gender gap is a serious problem since, for the education of girls, women teachers are needed at all levels in every district. This issue presents many challenges to the TTCs. In addition to organizing and delivering a two-year college education with integrity, they must also focus on recruiting and admitting young women into the colleges, supporting them through program completion, and helping with appropriate job placement in classrooms accessible from their homes. This has led to the introduction of special programs supporting

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female students as well as proposals to support girls in secondary school through bridging to the TTCs. Addressing the issue of increasing the number and availability of qualified female teachers, several new initiatives were introduced through donor funding. One was the TTC Girls’ Scholarship Program, another was institutional Gender Grants; another, marginally related, was the provision of incentives to instructors to teach in remote areas where the TTCs were unable to find qualified instructors, especially female, for many parts of their curricula. The international advisors to TED and the MoE worked hard to introduce a new philosophy with new methods of teaching, seeing the Teacher Training Colleges as the most fertile ground for achieving this goal. The obstacles to their success, however, were not merely long held and trusted traditions, but were also subtle differences in what should be the focus of the TTCs – pedagogy or disciplinary (subject matter) content. This discussion was deeply complicated by the ways in which the nation’s schools were organized with subject centered teaching from grade 4 forward. This meant that a school schedule was broken into separate subjects, taught by subject specialists each day. This national plan required teachers to have a subject specialty (a major field) in order to be qualified to teach. In creating the TTC standard curriculum, the largest proportion of a student’s course work must be in a subject field, and minimal attention was given to interdisciplinary connections across or within fields. Attention to pedagogy was also limited to a few courses taught with little or no relationship to one another, and barely associated with the realities of a school classroom. The TTC instructors wanted to teach in the manner of university professors, and they also needed to rely on what they knew from their university experiences. They were not educated to be educators of teachers. The cultures of the TTCs were not really tuned to teaching, but were focused on traditional ways of learning in higher education. TTC faculty in the pedagogy curriculum had low status and minimal power in the view of other faculties and of students. Efforts by the TED leadership, and that of other NGO stakeholders, to break through the barriers to tradition were difficult to implement and coordinate. Nevertheless, changes in TTC curriculum and culture were steadily promoted and implanted. In the 2014 report to the World Bank, TED stated: The curricula at the TTCs has dramatically changed in these past couple of years as new concepts of pedagogy have been introduced through courses such as a newly structured Student Teaching practicum, Action Research, a Portfolio Assessment requirement, and cross-cutting issues in course introduced for Gender Equity, as well as Peace and Conflict

154 | S USAN W ARDAK Resolution. The introduction of a Primary Teaching Specialty is nearly ready to be launched in the TTC curriculum. For the first time in history, TTCs and TDCs students will have standardized resource books and instructional materials. Up to now around 247 titles of students resource books and instructional guide for both pre-service and in-service program have been developed and the development of 50 more titles are in the pipeline. Out of the 247 titles developed, the printing of 195 titles over 2 million copies already printed and the printing of the remaining is under process (TED 2014).

T EACHERS OF T EACHERS : T HE TTC F ACULTY I MPROVEMENT I NITIATIVES The implementation of new and reformed curricula is in the hands of TTC faculty and administrators whose support and understanding are essential. Given the status of faculty preparation at the TTCs largely at the BA or MA level, it was obvious that TTC faculty also needed professional development. The need was both for upgrading their subject matter knowledge but also for introducing them to modern knowledge and skills in pedagogy. As teachers of teachers it was important for them to understand this mission, to understand the research on teaching and learning and the methodologies that their own TTC students also needed to master. In order to upgrade knowledge and motivate faculty quickly, several certificate and graduate study programs were offered to provide incentives in the form of medium term training and Master’s Degrees. Among these programs were a Malaysia and Australia Program for Afghanistan with coursed offered in Malaysia, Swedish Committee program through Karlstad University with courses offered. Another was a cooperative program between TED and the American University of Afghanistan funded by the World Bank specifically for TTC instructors with priority for those from remote areas where TTCs were weakest, and a target enrollment aiming to recruit 50 percent female instructors. In addition, USAID funded a program for educational administrative leadership through the Ministry of Higher Education and Kabul University. A variety of initiatives have been introduced to improve the teacher education programs of the TTCs to advance professional skills for both pre-service and in-service teachers and the instructors of these prospective or already employed teachers. The structure and administration of the TTCs has been a focal point of intense planning through the teacher credentialing and the institutional TTC accreditation projects funded by Canadian aid (CIDA). This paper concludes with a

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brief description of that complex effort to develop a systematic, well grounded, structure for institutional assessment and quality improvement.

TTC S TEPS

TOWARD

ACCREDITATION

A major strategy for pulling together the many diverse threads designed to create a cadre of educated professional teachers is being implemented through the plan to prepare the TTCs for institutional self-assessment and improvement according to standards established by international accreditation policies. Documents have been written, guidelines prepared, standards developed for the TTCs that all have included involvement and consensus of relevant persons in the TTCs, the MoE, TED, and the MoHE. A pilot project with three TTCs is underway to identify the key difficulties in the process. The goal toward full implementation is approximately a five year time-line after the pilot project is analyzed and structure for implementation is revised. This paper provides a brief but broad overview of the diverse, multiple, and on-going approaches taken in the past 15 years to construct a new corps of professionally trained educators to teach the children and youth of Afghanistan. Issues and challenges in developing veteran teachers already employed but minimally trained as well as prospective teachers enrolled in the newly established teacher training colleges have been revealed against a background hinting of complex social and political issues. The shortness of this paper does not permit a full examination or explanation of complexity of these topics and the non-linear path that has emerged since 2002. The way is never straightforward without obstacles; but in looking back the progress traced is astonishing, the international support unprecedented, and the road forward clear and promising.

L IST

OF

R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Afghanistan Interim Administration (AIA) (2002). Comprehensive Needs Assessment for the Education Sector in Afghanistan. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Interim Administration (AIA) (2004a). Education as a Catalyst for the Rebuilding of Afghanistan: Education Priorities and Project Profiles. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Interim Administration (AIA) (2004b). National Development Plan and Budget 1383-1385, Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TED) (2011). Psycho-Social Project for Afghan Teachers (Project Assessment). Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TED) (2011). Report. March 11th. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TED) (2013a). Comments about Baghch-E-SimSim (Sesame Street). Internal Memo. Education Outreach Pilot Project. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TED) (2013b). Mapping INSET I, II, III, IV and V with the TTC Pedagogy Curriculum. Internal. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Teacher Education Program (TED) (2014). Report to the World Bank. Internal. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. General Directorate of Teacher Education (2015). Report on Third Party Review of the Pre-Service and In-Service Teacher Training Programs. Internal. May, 2015. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. International Medical Corps (2005). Afghan Family Health Book: Final Report. Los Angeles. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2004). Education as Catalyst. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Nicholson, Sue (2013). A Study of Teacher and School Personnel Training Programmes Afghanistan. War Child Canada and JICA. Retrieved from https://www.alseproject.com/uploads/4/7/7/3/47739169/130224_wcc_ study_teacher___sch_admin_training_afghanistan.pdf (15.05.2017). Sarvi, Jouko (2003). A New Start for Afghanistan’s Education Sector. Manila, Philippines: Asia Development Bank. Spink, Jeaniene (2003). Teacher education situation analysis. Kabul, Afghanistan: Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit. Wirak, Anders (2010). Education Sector Analysis: Afghanistan. USAID contract. Kabul, Afghanistan: Adam Smith International. World Bank (2004). Securing Afghanistan’s Future: Technical Annex on Education. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Macro-Trends and Dynamics of Change in the Afghan Public Education Sector A Concise Compilation and Contextualization of Key Data Variables and Progress Indicators C RAIG C. N AUMANN

C ONTINGENCIES , I RREGULARITIES E DUCATION D ATA P RODUCTION

AND

B IAS

IN

AFGHAN

Before even having a closer look at any of the key variables such as enrollment figures and standard progress rates including gross and net enrollment, one needs to remember a few basic tenets of Afghan data production, which in many regards might be typical for developing, post-conflict or, perhaps nowadays a more adequate term, conflict states. In the realm of hands-on logistical administrative planning (number of textbooks to be printed, number and location of schools, etc.) and related budgeting, planners need to know the number of students enrolled. In peaceful contexts, planners can resort to reasonably accurate statistical data for the past, the present status and the projected or extrapolated future cohort sizes. Nowadays, or to be more precise arguably ever since the 1960s, Afghan planners haven’t enjoyed that kind of luxury. For they have to deal with multiple contingencies, the three most important of which are explained in the following: 1. Historical lack of exact macro-demographical figures: There has never ever been a modern age population census in the country. All population figures that circulate in the sphere of international development statistics cross-reference one another. This includes such “gold standard” references

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as the OECD, the UN, ABD, the World Bank and the CIA. The fact is that without exception all these figures are based on estimates, if not to say, best guesstimates. The hitherto only attempt to count Afghanistan's population was initiated by the Soviet-backed Communist regime in the late 1970s. The data collection exercise needed to be abandoned following the initial testing of census instruments in and around Kabul, due to growing insecurity gradually culminating in country-wide insurrection against Communist rule. All total population statistics ever since have been extrapolations. What makes it worse is that the reference, the 1979 reference figure itself, was nothing but a more or less fabricated extrapolation. Hence, national demographical figures are extrapolations of an extrapolation. However, this important contextual information is seldom mentioned and, if so, only in the fine print. In general, however, it is not known, and the body of estimated figures leads to the wrong assumption that exact population data actually exists or at least existed, at some point. The result is that any key national statistical indicator involving the population figure as referential denominator is based on the assumed country-wide population. This affects such key education indicators as gross and net enrollment rates, but also the calculation of systemic needs based on the school-age population which, again, is inherently flawed since always based on the guessed total population figure. In the absence of exact total demographical figures, national sample surveys have no other choice but to resort to potentially flawed sample frames and thus inherently erroneous assumptions of degrees of variance, potentially undermining the very alleged representativeness of sample findings. In the worst case, effective absolute enrollment is deduced in circulatory fashion from identified household sample recent school attendance patterns, in applying the identified percentage to the assumed total of the school age cohort among the assumed total population. Such questionable figures end up in official reports of development institutions which are then again cross-referenced in other official publications, until a body of cooked-up figures solidifies and is elevated to the status of hard empirical evidence.1

1

A random example for the commonplace ignorance about Afghan demographical information would be the following quote: “Credible and up to date numbers about the demographics in Afghanistan are hard to find. The last national census was conducted in the 1970s” (ISW 2017).

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2. Lack of stable micro-demographical data due to high frequencies and volumes of migration: In any given society, there is a perpetual intra- and inter-systemic flux in settlement patterns, with high mobility of the flexible work force one of the hallmarks of a vibrant society. In Afghanistan, however, in and across many provinces, considerable migration is taking place. The decision-making is also, just like in peaceful societies, grounded in economic decisions. Alas, in Afghanistan, the decision to leave one's home is often more driven by fear for one's life than the chance to earn a better living in a different location. Other than recurrent seasonal migration patterns, there are those motivated by wanting to escape from violence or insecurity. One can distinguish between rural-urban migration within a given province, inter-provincial migration (e.g., from a peripheral province to the Capital), and international migration, typically from Southern provinces such as Kandahar or Uruzgan to Peshawar in Pakistan or from Western Provinces such as Herat or Farah, to Iran. Especially the latter route has increasingly grown in importance over the past three years. In order to calculate systemic education needs, the most important parameter is the (school-age) population figure. For example, the number of school age children among a given population pool in a circumscribed area can seldom be pinned down due to population movements. Hence, in most provinces, there is an overall absence of reliable population statistics. In addition, enrollment statistics are often inaccurate due to a host of reasons including lack of proper statistical procedures or, quite simply, outright manipulation. Other than purely technical causes, inaccuracies of measurements also stem from data manipulations of (potentially accurate) data at hand. 3. In addition to the above uncertainties, in Afghanistan, typical official administrative data sources for developmental indicators such as gross or net enrollment are fraught with technical issues: Provincial data sets and, even more so, national aggregates often show substantial gaps and/or inaccuracies. This might be due to technical flaws in the data management chain, or intentional data manipulation. In terms of data reliability, qualitative data sources (about “soft”, subjective indicators linked to perceptions, attitudes, practices and hopes) are not seldom influenced by heavy respondent bias caused by vested political and/or economic interests of local and central level stakeholders. Information volunteered by respondents thus stands a chance of either being skewed by respondents in line with their own interest(s) or their per-

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ception of the interests of the interviewing party, or in the interest of local power brokers. In short, to a much greater extent than in non-conflict survey settings, fear of reprisal or the desire to please the interviewer and thus avoid any potential hassles that might result from telling the actual truth, can affect the answer. To conclude this section, related statistics compiled in hand-written ledgers by school clerks that in the most remote areas have only basic literacy levels themselves, might actually be spot-on and perfectly accurate. The end product of compiled aggregate statistics will always quite inevitably be a reflection of the many voluntary or involuntary inaccuracies in the respective contributing data sub-sets. A summary categorization of typical statistical data flaws along the data production chain would certainly have to comprise the following recurring elements: a) spotty, incomplete basic collection and/or reporting of key variables including the number of students; b) willful data manipulation or involuntary data management inaccuracies resulting in either too small or too large numbers, with the odd statistic simply being invented, resulting in statistics haunted by ghost students, ghost teachers, ghost schools, and, until recently, related very real transfers and disbursements of salaries to corrupt powerful individuals in the administrative hierarchy; and deliveries of matching quantities of commodities including school books, starter school kits, school feeding rations etc. which would end up in the black market; c) inbuilt inaccuracies of key indicators referencing the national population in the denominator, e.g., number of students (as numerator) over total schoolage population (as denominator). All the above is not meant to somehow denigrate the competency or degree of professionalism of Afghan educationists or statisticians. It simply reflects the complexities of high-stakes data management in a highly politicized and unstable environment. Under the given circumstances, Afghan national statistics are what they are and could probably not be any better. In essence, by now it probably is quite clear that educational statistics are by no means an exact science; and that the following absolute figures and percentages are not to be understood as hard facts, but as an attempt to make the best use of existing data, to the extent possible.

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R ECENT T RENDS ACROSS THE P RIMARY AND S ECONDARY L EVELS OF THE P UBLIC S CHOOL S YSTEM SINCE 2001 In taking into account the above-mentioned reservations about, if not the impossibility of, calculating accurate enrollment rates at the aggregate level, it is nevertheless clear that overall, absolute enrollment figures have steadily increased since 2001/2002 (cf. Wardak in this book). However, the relative net growth after adjusting for, and hence deducting, increases due to demographic growth (still standing well above 3 percent per year in most areas) especially in the years from 2002 up to 2014, is minimal, if not actually negative. Again, nobody can really tell since the population number is not exactly known. This entails that the gap between the overall figure for the (estimated) school-age pool and the (more or less accurate) figure of enrolled students has likely stagnated or even widened since 2010, as shown in figure 1. Unless specifically mentioned otherwise all graphs were prepared by the author. Figure 1: Population vs. Eligible School-Age Population vs. Student Numbers2

© Naumann

2

Data sources; Population: World Bank Calculation; Total number students: 20052007, reports to Ministry of Education (MoE) (N.B. CN: official figures inflated by up to 20 %); 2008-2014 MoE, EMIS; Estimated # of eligible Pop. 12 k: based on data of NRVA 2011

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To all intents and purposes the following statistical trends can be observed in education data for the so-called “post-Taleban” period, i.e. since 2001: 1. In all likelihood the absolute number of school children effectively enrolled and attending school at the national aggregate level has steadily increased from 2001 to 2016, with yearly proportional increases markedly leveling off since 2007-2008 following the post-Taleban bulge of over-age students that had missed out on regular schooling during the Taleban years and lined up as of 2002 to benefit from education following the ouster of the Taleban regime. 2. While net enrollment rates can still only be estimated due to the ghost student and population data inaccuracies affecting both the numerator and the denominator of the indicator, they have probably steadily been growing pretty much in all areas until such a time were, in many areas, resurgent fighting or increasing levels of insecurity took their toll. Especially in areas afflicted by explicit targeting of (especially mixed or girls’) schools, staff and student attendance and enrollment levels suffered. In the worst case, this led to schools been shut down for safety reasons or simply because they had been destroyed or damaged beyond repair. 3. Gross enrollment rates (i.e., absolute student figures including over-age students and repeaters against the school catchment population of school-age children) which in many districts stood well above 100 percent as of late 2002 due to the accumulated cohorts forming the student bulge, declined after the cohort of over-age students had all been absorbed and processed by the system, around 2006/2007. Ever since, gross and net enrollment rates have continued to converge over time with gross rates not being much different from net rates, nowadays. 4. The number of female students steadily increased over the years. However, in the Pashtun south they have most likely been decreasing since approximately 2007/2008; if not overall then with dead certainty in all conflictaffected rural areas. 5. The gender ratios pointed to increased equality but reached a plateau around 2012 at almost perfect gender balance with the latest tendency likely again moving towards an increased widening of the gender gap over the years. 6. The relative proportion of urban students vis-à-vis the rural school population is steadily growing. Over recent years, due to security induced urbanization compounded by “standard”, regular livelihood-driven migration to seek employment, the relative proportion as well as relative growth of urban student numbers vis-à-vis rural students has been on the rise.

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7. The quality of education, while a challenge everywhere, suffered most in rural areas. While the number of qualified teachers in those areas likely did not advance much but rather, stagnated or even decreased, this loss was probably at least slightly offset by stagnating or decreasing numbers of students. Thus, the student-to-teacher ratio likely did not change that much. Overall, the sheer number of schools and teachers across the entire country grew consistently, at least until recently (2014). 8. Especially in the urban centers (Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, Herat, etc.) gender equality both in the secondary and tertiary segments of the education system has been, or is about to be achieved. 9. In conclusion, rural and Southern areas are at risk of becoming detached from the bandwagon. In a few conflict hot spots, unfortunately, the school system is at risk of derailment having fallen back to pre-2001 levels due to unprecedented presence of violence, threats and related risks, such as the infiltration of ISIL/Daesh etc. 10. Public schooling was increasingly targeted by radical forces opposing modernization as of 2005 until approximately 2010, when a tactical or strategic shift among the Taleban leadership’s public stance regarding public education took place. The influx of nihilist ISIL-elements over the past few years worsened the situation. 11. While quality of education increased in leaps and bounds as of 2004/2005, it remains a major issue in rural areas all over the country and especially so in the insecure areas of the rural south. The migration influx urban centers chief amongst which Kabul are having to cope with has put increasing pressure on the system to expand existing infrastructure and train additional teachers through pre-service teacher training. Simultaneously, the burden of having to constantly upgrade teacher skills through in-service training has to be shouldered (cf. Wardak in this book). 12. The proportion of ghost students and ghost teachers has significantly decreased as of 2007 (some provinces had up to 50 percent ghost students) thanks to the introduction of reformed, decentralized administrative reporting processes (EMIS). To conclude, the trend of the pendulum swinging back towards a less equitable and increasingly (yet again) not particularly girls-friendly school environment is quite evident over the past half decade. Overall, gender imbalance is on the rise once again. Over a long-term perspective, the country-wide systemic massive gains in terms of gender balance and overall educational enrollment and attendance levels following the early post-Taleban momentum are slowly dissipating.

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The risk is that protracted conflict will not only nibble at the fringes of those achievements but basically wipe them out. National averages might not be affected that much. Mass migration to the provincial capitals will soak up a lot of the students who otherwise, under normal conditions, would continue going to school in the vicinity of wherever they were born. Kabul has always occupied a role of overall magnet even drawing in migration from regional centers during peaceful times. But the conflict and pressure on schooling over the past years with the resurgent Taleban movement has exacerbated the urbanization and especially in Kabul, classroom sizes are fast approaching unsustainable levels. Hence, the finer the granularity of the analysis, inequities appear. Within regions, in zooming down to the grassroots level, the number of districts where public education is anything but on the rise, is increasing. Alas, in some districts that are particularly affected by fighting, absolute and relative gains (in terms of absolute student count and enrollment rates, gender ratio etc.) likely all but disappeared over the past years, with the negative trend effectively kicking in approximatively half a decade ago. It is worthwhile stressing that for all the talk about gains in (absolute) enrollment figures, the quality issue still tends to be overlooked in the general discussion about “strategic gains” related to societal modernization. Hence, while the number of schools keeps steadily increasing (figure 2) and the number of registered civil servants officiating as teachers is also constantly on the rise (figure 3), the general proportion of teachers that never received any formal pre-service teacher training (figure 4) serves as a stark reminder of the uphill battle the education system is facing particularly in the most conflict/war-affected regions. Sadly, this situation is exacerbated for the female school-age population in that the percentage of female teachers among the total number of teachers must be assumed to still be standing at extremely dismal proportions (less than a quarter) in about half of the country’s provinces. It can be assumed that, overall, the implications for the qualitative aspects of educational equity and gender balance are not in favor of the girl child. The spatial distribution also highlights the interprovincial gap, in that the more advanced areas, where in some cases the numerical gender balance has actually been achieved, are the ones that have the highest female proportion among the teacher work force. The general pattern of a NorthSouth divide is shining through quite clearly here. Taking into account ethnic

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distribution patterns, this very roughly coincides with the traditional Pashtun/non-Pashtun settlement areas (figure 5).3 Figure 2: Number of Schools (All School Types 2001-2012)

© Naumann

3

This by no means allows the conclusion of saying that Pashtuns are against education. Quite to the contrary, one can find some of the most ardent advocates of female education among the Pashtuns (especially among more liberal circles in Nangarhar etc.). But in general, it is safe to assume that the fiercest opponents of the same concept can be found in deep rural pockets of the conservative Pashtun heartland in the provinces of Khost, Uruzgan etc.

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Figure 3: Number of Teachers (All School Types 2001-2012)

© Naumann

4

4

Data Source for Figures 2 and 3: 2001-2006: MoE, Educational Statistics, National Education Strategic Plan 1385-1389 (2006-2010), based on various reports to Ministry of Education (MoE), 2007: MoE, The Development of Education, National Report, 2008; 2009: MoE, Education Summary Report 1387-88 2008-2009; 2009: MoE, Summary Report of Education Situation 1388, 2009-2010; 2010: MoE, Annual Progress Report 1389 2010, EMIS 2010; 2011: MoE, Annual Progress Report 1390 2011, EMIS 2011; 2012: MoE, EMIS Data Set 2012.

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Figure 4: Percentage of “Unqualified” Teachers by Province

Source: EJSR Sub Sector Report on Primary and Secondary Education, MoE 2012, edited by CN, © Naumann

5

Table 1: Percentage of Unqualified Teachers in Afghan Provinces (cf. Figure 4)

5

30-39 %

1 Kabul City

40-49 %

2 Jawzjan, 3 Kapisa

50-59 %

4 Laghman

60-69 %

5 Balkh, 6 Samangan, 7 Badakshan, 8 Panjshir, 9 Nangarhar

70-79 %

10 Faryab, 11 Kunduz, 12 Baghlan, 13 Parwan, 14 Wardak, 15 Kabul Province, 16 Logar, 17 Khost, 18 Takhar, 19 Nuristan, 20 Kunar

80-89 %

21 Herat, 22 Farah, 23 Nimroz, 24 Hilmand, 25 Sari Pul, 26 Bamiyan, 27 Ghazi, 28 Zabul, 29 Paktia

90-99 %

30 Badghis, 31 Ghor, 32 Daikondi, 33 Uruzgan, 34 Kandahar, 35 Paktika

Unqualified Teacher: without formal pre-service teacher training; less than 14 years of education, of these 20 percent (~30.000) did not even finish Grade 12.

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Figure 5: Percentage of Female Teachers among Total Teacher Population by Province

Source: MoE EJSR 2012 (cf. Figure 4), © Naumann

In this context, it is paramount to take into account the massive rural-urban divide as well as the significant discrepancy between regions. Here, actually, indications are that the rural-urban gap, as well as the respective degree of modernization between regions, are actually continuously widening. In the absence of any reliable public polling data looking into these issues, the appropriate standard disclaimer should be added that these are, yet again, to considerable extent best guesstimates. In other words, we are constantly looking at assumptions based on available evidence data, which, as explained above, are of course sometimes based on assumptions. Admittedly, this is a rather sad state of affairs and quite unsatisfactory for empirically inclined researchers. But it is what it is and acknowledging this fact is sorely missing throughout the intellectual debate discussing educational data sets.

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W IDENING THE S COPE : H ISTORICAL D ATA In looking at the evolution of the public school system in Afghanistan, many of the general trends of the past 15 years mentioned above can by and large also serve to describe the systemic mega-trends of the past 50 years and even the past century, which coincides with the birth of the public school in Afghanistan as an institutional phenomenon. In applying the half-century prism, the left-hand side of the following curve captures the overall expansion of the school system, including the promotion of female education, during the pre-Communist (Daoud regime) and Communist years. The drastic decrease from 1980 to 1985 is owed to the rebellion against the Soviet-backed regime including the civil war. The graph also conveys that during Taleban rule, the absolute number of students stagnated and became practically all-male, wiping out any advances in gender balance realized during Communist times. Figure 6: Absolute Enrollment 1960-2014

© Naumann

6 7

67

National totals; no reliable national data available for 2000-2002. Data Source for figure 6 to 8: Ministry of Education (MoE); Samady (Education and Afghan Society in the 20th Century); 2000-2006: reports to MoE N.B. CN: official figures inflated by up to 20 %; 2007 MoE; 2008/2010-2014: MoE, EMIS; 2009: MoE Summary Report of Education Situation Version 1, 1388.

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In further widening the prism to the century-long perspective, since the inception of the school system through a handful of schools set up under King Amanullah, the overall historical trend was one of expansion. The more than a decade long hiatus from 1928 to 1940 in student numbers (absolute 1927 figures were only reached again in 1940) are due to the conservative backlash which ousted the modernizer Amanullah from power. Figure 7: Historical Expansion 1912-1960 (Across All School Types)

© Naumann

Figure 8: Historical Expansion 1912-2014 (Across All School Types)

© Naumann

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The same zig-zag between modernizing forces and the conservative backlash by the Taleban was to follow half a century later, with the latest variation of this repetitive theme being introduced as of 2001 with the toppling of official Taleban rule, bringing to an end the almost annihilation of female education around the turn of the millennium. Against this historical backdrop, the spectacular success of the post-2001 increases in student numbers is all the more transparent. Also, the overall historical advances in terms of gender equality in terms of access to education are undeniable. At the same time, the curve clearly depicts how the trend of gains towards all-out gender balance clearly petered out a decade ago. Adjusting the curves for overall demographic growth also shows that gender balance levels reached at the height of Communist, Soviet-backed rule, were only again attained in 2006; and that ever since, i.e. for an entire decade, there have not been any significant advances in this department, with gender balance ratios receding in 2007 (Taleban backlash in the country-side) or flatlining, albeit at a historical high, as of 2012. Figure 9: Gender Ratio of Students between 1912 and 2014

© Naumann

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O UTLOOK In lieu of venturing into a hypothetical prognosis about the further evolution of the public school system in Afghanistan, let us content ourselves with a tentative discussion of what seem, for the time being, the most likely scenarios. Any drastic, radical wholesale change like the scenario of the Taleban re-establishing official rule anytime soon or, even more unlikely, the so-called Islamic State seizing power in Kabul, can be relegated to the realm of speculation – at least for the time being. In other words, the next five to ten years will likely see business as usual. This means that gender (im)balance will likely stagnate at around 0.6 female per male student, nation-wide. Likewise, regional differences and the rural-urban divide will persist and possibly even worsen. Quality of education will remain a major concern, even though especially in urban centers the progress in this area is likely given the focus of the decision makers and key administrators on this issue. If an official or de facto partitioning of governmental vs. non-governmental/ Taleban areas develops, then a system that sanctions different speeds of progress might develop. As a matter of fact, such a system is already very much a reality. For there are crass differences in gender ratio and (especially girls’) relative enrollment rates between comparatively ultra-liberal urban centers (especially Kabul, Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif) and conservative backwaters in Talebandominated provinces. For a number of years now, the Taleban have set up at least a parallel shadow regime in a number of especially Southern provinces. In some districts, they have openly been ruling for at least the better part of half a decade by now, and this regardless of what the respective official Governor appointed by the elected official Government in Kabul might think or say. This being said, it should also be acknowledged that the (official) Taleban position(s) vis-à-vis education, and especially female education, and the stance of the officially elected Government are not completely at loggerheads, anymore. In both regards, the positions have moved away from radical positions along the continuum, reducing the gap between the respective positions. The influence of ultra-hard liners among the Taleban who flat-out do not want to see any girls near a class room of non-religious schooling dwindled significantly, while the Government has taken a few steps in the direction of the position of conservative (non-Taleban) mullahs. Taleban-controlled districts have their own education set-up also running girl schools, while conservative trends not least in the curriculum have made advances, in the public education sector. While the positions between the Government and Taleban are certainly not yet aligned when it

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comes to education-related matters, the distance between what can be considered respective mainstream conceptions in the two camps is not that tremendous anymore. Hence, in conclusion, a system of parallel tracks of varying speeds or degrees of liberalism in education (including female education) seems not so unlikely. Under a scenario of continuous precarious (in)stability as currently the case, the number of boy and girl students is likely to keep rising at least in keeping pace with demographical growth, i.e. between 3 and 5 percent, annually. Spectacular proportional growth in absolute enrollment rates and in terms of the gender (im)balance is unlikely. Again, stagnation at the levels currently reached (estimated gender ratio of nation-wide just above 0.6 girls per boy or roughly 1.6 boys at school per girl student, a national estimated net enrollment average rate of 85 percent with boys’ enrollment at around or above 90 percent and girl’s enrollment hovering around 60 percent) is quite likely.

L IST

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R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Institute for the Study of War (ISW) (2017). Pakistan and Afghanistan. Overview. Demographics. Retrieved from http://www.understandingwar.org/ pakistan-and-afghanistan#Demographics (26.02.2017).

Private Higher Education in Afghanistan An Overview A SADULLAH J AWID

S UMMARY In this chapter, I provide a brief introduction to private higher education in Afghanistan. The historical background, detailed insights, challenges and opportunities are outlined and discussed. After the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, the demand for education and higher education among Afghanistan’s young population experienced a rapid growth. While the public universities have been unable to meet the growing demand, private higher education was introduced to offer an alternative. Since 2004, when the first private higher education was established, the number of students in all private higher education institutes/universities has reached almost 130.000. The sector is offering job opportunities for more than 6000 people (mostly Afghans). By now, in 22 provinces of Afghanistan, at least one branch (main or sub) of the private higher education sector offers services to those interested in higher education. Despite significant progress and growth, there are some fundamental challenges that the private higher education sector faces. Among other things, this includes insecurity, low quality, corruption, and an inadequate infrastructure.

I NTRODUCTION Private higher education is one of the most dynamic and fastest-growing segments of post-secondary education at the turn of the 21st century. A combination of unprecedented demand for access to higher education and the inability or un-

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willingness of the governments to provide the necessary support has brought private higher education to the forefront (Altbach 1999). Afghanistan has experienced more than three decades of civil war, international conflict, and occupation. The resulting instability has brought widespread insecurity, displacement, poverty, and environmental devastation (UNAMA 2009). The higher education in Afghanistan was one of the casualties of this three decades long conflict (Hayward/Babury 2015). After 2001, when the Taliban regime was overthrown by the US-led coalition forces, and the new westbacked government was formed, the higher education entered a new era of development and expansion. Introducing the private higher education sector was one of the fundamental steps taken by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) towards rebuilding higher education in the country. Facilitating the establishing of, promoting, supporting, and observing the private higher education as a key element within the higher education system in Afghanistan are insured by the MoHE (MoHE Afghanistan 2004). The general and detailed legal basis for the establishment of the private higher education institutes was published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in early 2007 and was revised in 2013.1 The contribution of private higher education in the process of rebuilding and development of the country has been significant. Despite this fact, there are a number of fundamental problems and challenges involved with activities of the sector. In order to grasp all dimensions of the discussion around private higher education in Afghanistan, I structure this chapter as follows: The history of higher education, in particular private higher education, is presented first, followed by a detailed insight into the private higher education sector. Then, opportunities and challenges are discussed. The Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education, as an example of a private higher education, is then introduced and followed by concluding remarks.

H ISTORICAL B ACKGROUND The foundation of modern higher education was laid in Afghanistan when the Faculty of Medicine was established in 1932 in Kabul (Ghubar 1999). The students of the faculty were taught by a team of eight lecturers led by Kamel Beg

1

The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004) permits the establishment of private higher education institutes.

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Rafiqi, a Turkish doctor.2 The establishment of the medical faculty was followed by the establishment of the faculties of natural science (1935), law and political science (1938), and literature (1944) in Kabul. In 1956, these separate faculties were merged to create Kabul University as the first one in the country and now widely referred to as the “Mother University” in symbolic recognition of its historical and socio-cultural pedigree. In 1963, Nangarhar University was established, followed by the Kabul Polytechnic University in 1969 (Ibrahimi 2014). From 1970 until 2001,3 the higher education has experienced many ups and downs as other sectors in the country. 4 For our current contribution, however, the post-2001 era is more important as the private higher education was introduced after the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001. Private institutions, with a long history in many countries, are expanding in scope and number, and are increasingly important in parts of the world that have relied on the public sector (Altbach 1999). The private provision of higher education is a recent phenomenon in the developing world (Alam 2009). The history of the private higher education sector in Afghanistan starts with the establishment of the Kardan University in 2004, although the preliminary discussion for the establishment of the American University of Afghanistan (AUAF) started in 2002. The AUAF was formally established in 2006 as the second private higher education institute (Ibrahimi 2014). Since then, another 144 private higher education institutes and universities have been established in 22 out of 34 provinces of Afghanistan – the majority of which are located in Kabul (71), Mazar-e Sharif (10), Herat (9), and Jalal Abad (6) (MoHE 2017).

D ETAILED I NSIGHT This section provides a detailed insight into the private higher education sector in Afghanistan. In particular, an overview of the expansion process is presented first; then, different categories of the private higher education institutions are introduced. Academic details are provided afterwards.

2

The country has a long history in education, art, and science. But due to space limitation, I do not touch them here.

3

This period includes pre soviet-union invasion (1970-1978), the soviet invasion (1979-1989), the civil war and the Taliban regime (1990-2001) (Shroder 2014).

4

Interested readers can check Ibrahimi (2014) for further details.

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Expansion process The sector of private higher education in Afghanistan has experienced a rapid expansion from 2006 onwards (Ibrahimi 2014). There are some important factors behind this rapid expansion. First, since the fall of the Taliban regime in late 2001, the number of students enrolled in schools has dramatically increased. Table 1 shows the number of students enrolled in schools in the period from 2002 to 2015 (cf. Naumann and Wardak in this book). Table 1: Number of students enrolled in schools across the country Year

2002

2009

2011

2014

2015

Count

2.000.000

6.417.919

7.585.192

8.588.903

8.726.387

© Central Statistics Organization – Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (CSO 2017)

Thousands of women and girls found the opportunity to attend schools and universities.5 This dramatic increase in the number of students in schools resulted in the growing number of higher education applicants. Public universities, on the other hand, did not have the capacity to admit all qualified applicants (Bahurstani 2012). The resulting gap between the number of higher education applicants, and those who could be admitted to public higher education institutes was one of the main reasons for the creation and expansion of private higher education institutes. Table 2 shows the gap between the number of higher education applicants and the number of admitted applicants to the public higher education institutes from 2005 to 2014.

5

According to the Education Law of the Taliban Islamic Emirate (published when the Taliban took over the capital Kabul in 1996), “Education is the right of every Afghan”. (No gender is mentioned.) It further states that women’s education will be regulated according to the Sharia laws. But in practice, women and girls under the Taliban regime were not able to attend schools. For details, cf. Ruttig in this book.

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Table 2: Number of applicants, admitted applicants, and not admitted applicants to the public higher education institutes Year

2005

2007

2010

2011

2012

2014

Applicants

55.000

60.000

112.000

117.000

147.000

250.000

Admitted

17.000

22.000

64.000

42.000

40.000

141.000

Not admitted

38.000

38.000

48.000

75.000

107.000

109.000

© MoHE 2017, CSO 2017, Ibrahimi 2014

The formation of the west-backed government in Kabul in late 2001 brought thousands of foreign troops and civilians as well as billions of aid dollars to the country. The state as well private investments expanded sharply. Thousands of construction and reconstruction projects were initiated. A sign of economic expansion and development was the sharp growth of the country’s GDP, which increased from about 2.4 billion in 2001 to almost 4.6 billion USD in 2003 and almost 10 billion in 2007 (The World Bank Group 2017). These rapid expansions in economic activities resulted in high labor demand, among other effects. The expansion of the job market and a rapid increase in the demand for a highly qualified and educated workforce were the direct consequences of the event. High demand for the qualified and educated workforce in the new booming economy was another major reason behind the creation and expansion of private higher education institutes in the country. The flexibility of the private higher education institutes with regard to schedules has allowed many employees of public and private sectors as well as the employees of the NGOs to continue their higher education. 6 This flexibility, too, has been important in increasing the demand for the services of the private higher education sector. Table 3 shows the number of admitted students to the private higher education institutes/universities from 2006 to 2015.

6

Most of the private higher education institutes offer early morning, late evening, and weekend classes in addition to the usual morning and afternoon shifts. Public universities, on the other hand, only offer the usual morning and afternoon classes.

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Table 3: Number of students enrolled in private higher education institutions Year

2006

2009

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Count

3000

7046

20.347

59.466

80.134

105.373

128.735

© MoHE 2017, CSO 2017

Despite a rapid expansion, in particular from 2009 to 2014, the progress of the private higher education sector was undermined by the political and security crisis following the drawdown of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 7 forces and the controversial presidential election8 in 2014. Categories As mentioned above, the main body responsible for issuing permission, controlling, and evaluating the private higher education institutes is the MoHE. The Directory of Private Higher Education Institutes and Universities in the MoHE is managing all affairs related to private higher education institutes, including issuing permission for establishment, controlling, evaluation, issuing certificates for their graduates, and coordinating the expansion of these institutes. In the context of the private higher education sector, there are two categories of institutions:  

Private higher education institutes Private universities

Upon establishment, a private higher education institute is allowed to attach the term institute to its name. After graduating its first round of students and fulfilling some additional academic, infrastructural, and financial requirements, a ‘private higher education institute’ can be upgraded to a ‘private university’ (Ministry of Justice 2017). Currently there are 24 private universities and 122 private higher education institutes registered in the MoHE (MoHE 2017). The AUAF was the first private university in the country.

7

See, for example, the BBC coverage of NATO forces withdrawal from Afghanistan

8

See, for example, the analysis of the Economist for the 2014 presidential election

(http://www.bbc.com/news/world-south-asia-11371138). (http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/09/afghanistans-disputed-election).

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From a business point of view, there are two types of private higher education institutes/universities:  

Profitable higher education institutes/universities Non-profit higher education institutes/universities

The vast majority of higher education institutes/universities are for profit entities. These institutes/universities, like other private businesses, are obliged to pay annual income taxes to the Ministry of Finance (MoF). The non-profit higher education institutes/universities pay no income taxes and need to be registered with the Ministry of Economy (MoE) as an NGO. Private higher education institutes/universities offer both undergraduate and graduate programs. In addition, medical private institutes/universities offer medical degree programs. Academics The purpose of higher education is to provide appropriate, diverse and welltimed training, course content, and skills to secondary graduates 9 to enable them to be competent in their future employment (Smith 2002). Private higher education in Afghanistan, considering its fresh history and existing constraints, is far from meeting the stated purpose. Nevertheless, the private higher institutes/universities have been trying to meet the minimum market requirements. In particular, the curriculums of these institutions, though far from meeting the international standards, are more updated than those of their public counterparts. This does not mean that the curriculums of the state universities have not been updated. The MoHE together with its international partners have been trying to update the curriculum of the state universities (for example, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has been working with the MoHE to update the curriculum of computer science and economic faculties as well as that of German language departments (DAAD 2012). But this process in state universities has been very slow so far (cf. Hanif in this book). There are two fundamental reasons as to why the curriculums of the private higher institutes/universities are more updated. First, the founder team and instructors of most of the private institutes/universities include either foreigners (for example, the American University of Afghanistan (https://www.auaf.edu.af), and the Dunya University of Afghanistan (http://www.dunya.edu.af/)), or those

9

In the case of Afghanistan, the term refers to high school graduates.

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who recently obtained a degree abroad (for example, the Kateb University, https://kateb.edu.af/en/, and the Bakhtar University, http://www.bakhtar.edu.af/). Second, offering updated and market-oriented programs was used as a marketing tool by private higher education institutes/universities in order to attract more customers. The admission process to the private higher education institutes/universities differs from one institute to another. Some of them only hold a general admission exam while others include an English language test as well. 10 However, the entrance exams must be in the framework defined by the MoHE. Private higher education institutes/universities offer a variety of degree programs both in undergraduate and graduate levels. Table 4 summarizes the academic disciplines offered by the private higher education institutes/universities. Table 4: Academic fields offered by the private higher education sector No. 1

Study program (field) Law, Political Science including Islamic Law (Sharia Law)

No. of Departments

103

29 %

2

Economics, Management and related fields

92

26 %

3

Medical Sciences including Pharmacy and Nursing

67

19 %

4

Engineering related sciences

36

10 %

5

Computer science

30

9%

6

Others

23

7%

Total

351

© MoHE 2017

Table 4 shows that non-technical fields clearly dominate the private higher education institutes/universities. Relatively high tuition fees attached to engineering and computer science fields, equipment requirement of and lower demand for these fields are some of the reasons for the lower number of offers. The alignment between the demand of the job market and the specializations offered by the private higher education sector is still a big question. Public universities are having the same problem (Aturupane 2013).

10 The general framework for admission is specified by the MoHE.

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Research is an integral part of a university in the whole world. In most countries, it is research that ranks the universities. Afghanistan (due to decades-long armed conflicts and political instability) is poorly researched in almost all areas (from agriculture to education, health, and mining). It is being proven that quality research is a key for policy development and economic prosperity. As the country is experiencing a transition period towards a sustainable development, academic research (at the local universities) can play a decisive role in this process. Despite its importance, research has so far received very little attention in both public as well as private higher education institutions.

C HALLENGES

AND

O PPORTUNITIES

Private higher education is a young sector in the country. The sector is still in the process of learning by doing. Most of the detailed policies, guidelines, and regulations are being tested and verified. Insecurity and deterioration of the economic situation are the other challenges that the sector faces. On the other hand, however, there are opportunities for the newly introduced sector as well. In this section, I will discuss some fundamental challenges as well as some potential opportunities of the private higher education in Afghanistan. Challenges The most fundamental challenges (both internal and external) faced by the private higher education sector in Afghanistan are:      

Slow and inadequate formal processes Insecurity Slower economic growth in the post-2014 era Corruption Low quality Inadequate infrastructure

As was mentioned in the first section, the main body responsible for managing all affairs of the private higher education is the MoHE. While the MoHE itself after 2001 has been involved in the process of rebuilding, the formal processes for the establishment, the expansion and the evaluation of private higher education institutes through the MoHE have always been slow, inadequate, and complex.

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Security has been a huge challenge for the private higher education sector. As a private enterprise, a higher education institute/university is responsible to take care of the security of its campus(es), faculties, students, and staff (on campus). Doing so requires implementing extra security measures and hiring additional security personals – which burden extra costs (most of the times a large portion) on the entities. With fragile security situation, providing a safe environment to holding classes has become a serious issue. The armed attack on the main campus of the AUAF on 25 August 2016 (McLauglin/Ellis/Stapleton 2016) confirms the seriousness of the security challenge. The worsening security situation has also affected the demand for private higher education. After the withdrawal of the NATO and the controversial presidential election in 2014, the economy has been slowing down. As a result, investments declined and many individuals lost their jobs. Lower household income partly affected the demand for private higher education. In addition, the post-2014 fragile political situation caused some to reconsider their investment in higher education. Corruption is another severe challenge for private higher education in Afghanistan – both internally and externally. Internally, there are some serious concerns regarding the students who do not meet the minimum requirements (not passing exams or not attending the classes regularly) but are issued certificates of graduation. The transparency of the employment of the instructors and staff is also under question. Externally, the interaction of private higher education institutes/universities with the MoHE and MoF has always been complicated. Often, bribe, illegal recommendation of high government officials, and private relations replace the rule of law. While offering quality higher education services is the main goal of the higher education, facilitating an adequate environment, human and physical capital is necessary to meet this goal. In some respects, concerns about quality, in the context of private higher education in Afghanistan, are probably premature (Ibrahimi 2014). However, the low quality is one of the concerns often raised. Different factors, including quantity prospective, low qualification of the students, low incentive among students to work hard, and corruption, are contributing to the low quality in the private higher education sector. The majority of the private higher education institutes/universities do not have the necessary infrastructure, including the building, libraries, labs, and the internet facility. Poor infrastructure also affects the quality of the services offered by these institutes.

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Opportunities The most important opportunities that the private higher education sector has are the following: demand and flexibility. The demand for higher education has increased worldwide (Bahurstani 2012). As was discussed above, there has been an exponential increase in demand for higher education in Afghanistan from 2002 onwards. Despite being undermined by the recent political and security developments, there is still a huge demand for the services of private higher education institutes/universities. As projected by the MoE and the MoHE, the number of higher education applicants will continue to grow in the years to come, while the capacity of public universities is far from meeting that demand. To put it differently, the demand for the services of private higher education institutes/universities will continue to exist and possibly increase in the years ahead. Quality, infrastructure, and an improvement of the curriculum plus offering more market-oriented fields by these institutions will further enhance the demand. Even though the activities of the private higher education institutes/ universities are, in a broader sense, specified by stated laws, regulations, and guidelines, there is sufficient flexibility for adjusting the activities/services within the specified framework. This flexibility allows a private higher education institute/university, for example, to offer classes during the weekends, or to change its curriculum and programs to quickly react to the market developments. The public counterparts, on the other hand, do not have such flexibility in adjusting or redirecting their activities.

G AWHARSHAD I NSTITUTE

OF

H IGHER E DUCATION

In this section, Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education (GIHE) (http:// gawharshad.edu.af/) as one of the private higher education institutes, is introduced. In order to give a comprehensive and yet easy to grasp introduction to GIHE, I divide this section into four subsections. General information is presented in the first subsection. Subsection 2 summarizes the academic and nonacademic programs of Gawharshad. In subsection 3, the lists of faculties, departments, and centers are presented. The last subsection presents important facts and statistics.

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General Information GIHE was established by Dr. Sima Samar, a renowned human rights activist and the current Chairperson of the Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission, in August 2010 (GIHE 2014). Gawharshad is located in Kabul, and some renowned figures like the current president, Dr. Ashraf Ghani, the previous national security advisor to the president, Dr. Espanta, the former minister of higher education, Dr. Azam Dadfar, and the former minister of rural rehabilitation and development, Eshsan Zia, are members of its board of trustees (GIHE 2013). Its mission is to educate the future leaders of Afghanistan who respect the values of human rights and principles of an open society. The establishment of GIHE by Dr. Sima Samar is not irrelevant to her past activities. The Shuhada Organization (http://shuhada.org.af/), an NGO founded by Dr. Samar in 1989, has a long history of working in education, health, human rights, and sustainable development sectors in the country (SO 2015). As GIHE is a non-profit institute of higher education and functions under the chamber of the Shuhada Organization; enhancing, promoting, and ensuring the values of human rights and civil society are at the core of its academic and non-academic activities. GIHE puts particular emphasis on women’s education by offering the female students distinguished discounts and scholarships. Currently, about 35 percent of its total students are females who benefit from a range of special financial and non-financial offers (GIHE 2015). GIHE has academic cooperation with some universities in Europe, for example, the University of Education Freiburg, and in Australia, for example the University of Technology, Sydney. The institute has also carried out joint projects with well-known organizations such as the German Embassy in Kabul, the United States Institute of Peace (USIP), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), the United Nations (UN), and the Afghanistan Center (www.gawharshad.edu.af). The institute has made enormous progress in teaching as the number of enrolled students increased from about 500 in 2011 to about 2700 in 2016. Like in other higher education institutes (private and state); however, there is still a lot of work to do.

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Programs GIHE offers the following academic degree programs (GIHE 2015):        

Bachelors of Arts in Law Bachelors of Arts in Political Science Bachelor of Arts in Management Bachelor of Arts in Economics Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Bachelor of Art in Civil Engineering Bachelor of Art in Road Construction Engineering Bachelor of Arts in Education Management

In addition, the institute offers the following non-degree programs (GIHE 2015):   

Gender studies (in the form of summer schools) English and computer skills courses Peace building and conflict resolution trainings

Faculties and Departments GHIE consists of the following faculties (GIHE 2015):   

Faculty of Law and Political Science Faculty of Economics and Management Faculty of Engineering

The following non-degree centers are also established in the institute (GIHE 2015):    

Women Empowerment Center Peace Center English Language Center Research and Development Center

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Important facts and statistics Table 5: Growth in the number of enrolled students Year

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

T. N.

115

487

1.017

1.394

2.281

2.497

2.660

M. S.

89

330

692

916

1.582

1.617

1.723

F. S.

26

157

325

478

697

880

937

Note: T. N., M. S., and F. S. stand for total number of students, male students, and female students respectively. © GIHE 2015

Table 6: Distribution of students over fields of study and gender Field

Law

PS

MNG

ECON

CEN

RCE

CS

T. N.

1.097

283

278

658

146

0

189

M. S.

654

210

164

420

126

0

149

F. S.

443

73

123

238

20

0

40

Note: L, PS, MNG, ECON, CEN, RCE, and CS stand for Law, Political Science, Management, Economics, Civil Engineering, Road Construction Engineering, and Computer Science respectively. © GIHE 2015

Table 7: Distribution of graduates over field of study and gender Field

Law

P.S

MNG

ECON

CEN

RCE

CS

T. N.

173

47

53

99

18

0

0

M. S.

98

36

32

63

16

0

0

F. S.

75

11

21

36

2

0

0

© GIHE 2015

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C ONCLUSION Following the overthrow of the Taliban regime in late 2001, the education sector in Afghanistan experienced the most dramatic expansion of its history. The single most important driver of this expansion was an explosive growth in public demand for learning, outstripping educational services at every level. As the statistics suggest, much of Afghanistan’s young population, held back by decades of war, now look at education as a path of social and economic advancement (Ibrahimi 2014). The significant growth in demand for education in all levels, in particular higher education, and the low capacity of state universities to meet this demand paved the way for the formation of private higher education in the country. The formation and development of private higher education in Afghanistan was a significant milestone towards a sustainable development in the war-torn country. However, because of the highly business oriented functions of a majority of private higher education institutes, the impact has not been comparatively significant. The real motivation behind the creation of many private higher education institutes for their founders has been only financial profit. On a micro level, the existence of such an incentive is a welcoming point, but on a macro level, if we consider the country as a whole, we also need to think of proper investment in the human capital, which is necessary for the development of the nation.

L IST

OF

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Alam, Gazi Mahabubul (2009). Can Governance and regulatory control ensure the private higher education as business or public good in Bangladesh. African Journal of Business Management, 3(12), 890-960. Altbach, Philip G. (1999). Private Prometheus, Private Higher Education and Development in the 21st Century. Westport, USA: Greenwood Press. Aturupane, Harsha 2013. Higher education in Afghanistan: an emerging mountainscape (English). Washington DC: World Bank. Retrieved from http:// documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/307221468180889060/Higher-educationin-Afghanistan-an-emerging-mountainscape (15.01.2017). Bahurstani, Rahima (2012). Comprehensive Study of Higher Education in Afghanistan. Kabul: Afghanistan Investment Support Agency (AISA). Central Statistics Organization – Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (CSO) (2017). [various statistical data retrieved from official website]. Retrieved from http://www.cso.gov.af/en (15.01.2017).

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CNN (2016). Kabul university attack: 13 killed as gunmen open fire on campus. Written by McLauglin, Elliot, Ellis, Ralph, Stapleton, AnneClaire. Thursday, 25 August 2016 15:47. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/25/ asia/kabul-american-university-attack/ (15.01.2017). Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) (2012). Education is the future. Bonn: DAAD. Ghobar, Mir Gholam (1999). Afghanistan in the Course of History. Peshawar: Maiwand. Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education (GIHE) (2013). Annual Report. Kabul: Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education. Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education (GIHE) (2014). Annual Report. Kabul: Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education. Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education (GIHE) (2015). Annual Report. Kabul: Gawharshad Institute of Higher Education. Hayward, Fred M. & Babury, Mohammad O. (2015). The Struggle to Rebuild and Transform Higher Education in Afghanistan. International Higher Education, 81, 18-20. Ibrahimi, Niamatullah (2014). Prospects and Challenges of Private Higher Education in Afghanistan. Kabul: Afghan Analysts Network. Ministry of Higher Education Afghanistan (MoHE) (2004). Strategic Action Plan for the Development of the Higher Education in Afghanistan. Kabul: MoHE, UNESCO. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/ 001495/ 149508e.pdf (15.01.2017). Ministry of Higher Education Afghanistan (MoHE) (2017). [various facts and figures retrieved from official website]. Retrieved from https://mohe.gov. af/en (15.01.2017). Ministry of Justice (MoJ) (2017). [Law of private higher education institutes]. Retrieved from http://moj.gov.af/en (15.01.2017). Shroder, John F. (2014). Natural Resources in Afghanistan. Omaha, USA: Elsevier. Smith, David, Baston, Lewis, Bocock, Jean & Scott, Peter (2002). Americanization and UK higher education: Towards a history of transatlantic influence on policy and practice. Journal of Education Policy, 17 (4), 443-461. Shuhada Organization (SO) (2015). Annual Report. Kabul: Shuhada Organization (SO). The World Bank Group (2017). [World Bank Data: Afghanistan GDP; GDP Growth; Population]. Retrieved from https://data.worldbank.org/country/ afghanistan (15.01.17).

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United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) (2009). UNEP in Afghanistan: Laying the foundations for sustainable development. UNAMA, May 16th. Retrieved from https://unama.unmissions.org/unep-afghanistanlaying-foundations-sustainable-development (15.01.2017).

Teacher Education at the Faculty of Education at Herat University History, Recent Trends and Ongoing Challenges P OHAND M OHAMAD J OMA H ANIF

I NTRODUCTION The educational system plays a major role in social systems, as its main goal is to educate people. Cultural transmission, individual growth and human resource training according to the community’s needs are the functions of an educational system. Our vision in Afghanistan is to continuously improve it and make consistent steps forward. For example, one stepping stone is to ensure the promotion of teachers to Masters and PhD levels at the Faculty of Education as a long-term goal. The last 37 years of internal and imposed war have caused lots of economic, social and emotional problems, with millions of people having been killed, injured and left with disabilities. As a matter of course, these factors have an effect on the educational system as students need physical, mental and emotional support during their training in order to reduce and cope with the resulting stress. The same stress reduction efforts need to be made available for teachers too. Therefore, it can be said that economy, security and education have significant effects on the community’s development. The Faculty of Education at Herat University was established in 1957. In its beginnings it was a teacher training institute and was promoted to the Faculty of Education in 2003. Today it contributes significantly to the above mentioned societal development. The institution can look back on sixty years of experience regarding academic and professional student teacher training in order to enhance the country’s educational level. It is a public institution that qualifies teacher graduates who in their turn will help the Afghan educational system advance.

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S TANDARDS TO B E ACHIEVED C ONCERNING S TAFF AND E QUIPMENT Despite the country currently being insecure and economically weak, the Faculty of Education at Herat University has tried to enlarge its capacities and gain qualified professional teachers in different subjects. It is our goal to assist graduates at their current workplaces and provide services for the communities where they teach. Our commitment is perceived as a great support for the Afghan academic society because a great number of students within 12 different educational degree programs has enrolled at the Faculty of Education and will contribute to the society in the long run. Nevertheless, in regard of the current instable political situation, it is a real challenge for our faculty to fulfill Western educational standards, as are demanded by the Afghan government: The teachers and the leading board hold their teaching sessions based on the governmental und university rules and credit point system utilized by studentcentered approaches. Different fields of study according to the written school curriculum have been implemented. Experienced lecturers of the Faculty of Education have bachelor’s degrees, but master’s degrees and PhD certificates are of course preferable in order to keep up with international standards in research and teaching. The lecturers are expected to use appropriate teaching and learning methods as well as provide academic and educational services that form the students’ characters in accordance with the needs of society, so that they can perform their future jobs in the best possible way. Relevant subjects are to be taught effectively and professionally, such as: general psychology, developmental psychology, educational psychology, fundamentals of education, educational technology, general teaching methods, statistics, surveys, evaluation and teacher training. Therefore the faculty has to be equipped with the necessary facilities and labs to teach natural sciences and information technology. The lecturers have to be experienced and well-trained. For this reason they have been trained in a fellowship program at a German university which provides Computer and English language programs for authorized employees of our faculty. One thing that could be achieved so far is that printing centers are available at every department, which makes it comfortable for lecturers to print their teaching materials before they hand them out to the students. Fortunately, the teaching systems have been changed significantly. Nowadays, teachers make use of different teaching approaches and computer software such as Microsoft PowerPoint to effectively transfer the data to the students.

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Throughout the faculty it is highly appreciated that faculty members use scientific methods for research projects and visit historical sites as well as cultural centers as field trips. On top of that professors do their scientific research on time in order to get academic records which will then be recorded as academic degrees. Also directors of different departments arrange and manage faculty regulations. There are 62 lecturers, but still a great number of teachers is needed, especially with regard to the rising number of students. Currently, the Faculty of Education at Herat University consists of twelve departments: chemistry, biology, mathematics, physics, vocational education, Dari, English, Pashto, history, geography and physical education, in which around 4.500 students – 51 percent male and 49 percent female – do their bachelor’s degree. These students are a big support for the schools in Herat. In fact, 85 percent of school teachers in Herat and Herat Province have graduated from our Faculty of Education. Figure 1: Studying Outdoors at the Faculty of Education

© Herat University

The scientific fields such as physics, biology and chemistry have the possibility to make use of three labs for their practical activities. There is also one computer lab in order to provide the students with up-to-date computer programs conducted in an open-access learner-focused facility. An athletic ground for sporting activities is under the guidance of the Department of Sport. Scientific Council meetings are held regularly in order to resolve issues quickly. The faculty has a discipline committee to align and to ensure improvements. Officials attend all-day programs on a regular basis. Fur-

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thermore, there is a committee that supervises the procedures of the faculty. The Faculty of Education has green spaces with fresh air, and clean drinking water. All these factors help to create an environment with a positive learning atmosphere and make lecturers and students feel comfortable in this institution. Nonetheless the faculty’s conditions, resources and capabilities have to be developed in order to help teachers to achieve their vision for their home country and their fellow countrymen. The faculty’s professional teachers who are educated and knowledgeable can be excellent assets for the Afghan society and its future children. Figure 2: Computer Lab at the Faculty of Education

© Herat University

C HALLENGES IN THE D EVELOPMENT OF T EACHER E DUCATION AT H ERAT U NIVERSITY Despite the educational standards that have been achieved, the Faculty of Education needs more support to provide better services for the western part of Afghanistan in order to fulfill the different standards. For example, the library collection of the faculty needs enrichment as it is too small and has to be enlarged and updated. Also the three labs for chemistry, biology and physics are in urgent need of modernization and the computer lab does not fulfill the requirements of up-to-date information technology. Teachers face the difficulties of having to deal with crowded classrooms (120 students) while having only a low income and at the same time coping with

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teacher shortages and increasing teaching hours to up to 30 hours per week. This situation and the fact that there is a general inattention to the teaching profession does not help at all to attract talented people who are interested in the teaching profession – and who are desperately needed. Also the Faculty’s performance is not at its best, as appropriate learning technologies are unavailable and practical teaching experiences can’t be gained during internships, due to the shortage of schools. It would also be highly desirable to have co-operations and exchange programs with European or American partner universities which offer teacher education. Unfortunately, there is also a lack of teachers’ attention to the promotion of Master and PhD levels. Although having strong points in favor of the faculty’s work, it should not be forgotten that there are weaknesses and challenges like the lack of modern equipment, books and other learning aids, a shortage of fitness instructors for students, and the fact that the majority of teachers only hold a bachelor's degree. This might be tolerable at the current state of Afghanistan’s development, but it goes without saying that it needs ample improvements in order to meet international standards. Furthermore handling the increasing yearly number of freshmen is in itself already a major challenge. Especially worrying is the fact that students register for a teacher’s degree who have not been accepted for medicine or law, for example. It is rather difficult to turn those students with low performance and originally different aims in life into very good teachers who will educate our children and be responsible for our following generation. Other major challenges are the lack of coordination of the administrative and educational system in Afghanistan and the lack of educational and administrative standards as well as the new criteria for graduates. The faculty’s aim is to increase the efficiency of this institution in order to answer and pay special attention to the needs of society. The vision is to provide vocational teacher training and specialists in the aforementioned subjects or fields for the education of the country.

F INAL R EMARKS It needs to be kept in mind that today's students are tomorrow's teachers and that the students’ future is also the future of the world. Therefore, a teacher’s job and his work should not be taken for granted. Thus, everyone should consider the work of a teacher as one that shapes the present and future lives of everyone. If teachers are healthy and happy, they have the necessary personal and social tran-

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quility and comfort. Of course, this impact will be of great benefit for the whole society. Teachers are expected to think differently and we also need them to be critical thinkers. It is good for teachers to command and forbid, but the teachers’ guidance, which is certainly necessary, should be done with love and respect. Providing English language and computer training for teachers is necessary to ensure good quality within the teacher training process. The Faculty recommends a greater use of female teachers, especially in primary school because, based on our long-term experience, they can communicate better with the children. Last but not least the establishment of a global organization to support the teachers would be beneficial. To sum up: professional teachers are scholars, philosophers and artists. And even more importantly, teachers are managers. Teachers have the possibilities to influence and shape minds (information, ideas, believes), hands (skills), and hearts (emotions, attitudes, values). Anything that has been said can greatly influence the sensitivity and responsibility of teachers. Considering all the above mentioned aspects, there is no doubt that inattention to teachers is neglecting the humane and humanity.

III. Educational Programs and Projects

Training Teachers in Peace Education in Afghanistan Achievements and Challenges R AZIA S TANIKZAI , K HALIL F AZLI & D IANNE D ENTON

I NTRODUCTION As Afghanistan looks towards a future that is characterized by peace and development rather than conflict, the role that education plays in achieving this vision is crucial. Education in general, and teachers in particular, are key to ensuring that children develop into adults with the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to contribute to building peace in their families, communities, nation and global world. Current teacher education in Afghanistan acknowledges the need for high quality education that fosters critical thinking in students and equips them with the competencies needed to be contributing members of society. The focus is not only knowledge acquisition but also development of skills that have practical and contemporary applications. Within this context, the Ministry of Education through its Teacher Education General Directorate (TED), in collaboration with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit’s (GIZ’s) Basic and Secondary Education Programme for Afghanistan (BEPA), and the German Civil Peace Service (ZFD), developed a new curriculum for the peace education course introduced in the Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs) in 2013. The peace education course is a mandatory part of the pre-service teacher training program in Afghanistan, which has about 35.000 new TTC students enrolled each year, and will also be a required course for in-service teachers enrolled in the TTC diploma program.

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The first school of teacher education was set up in the era of King Habibullah in old Kabul city in 1912 with 120 students who were young men, religious leaders from mosques and those with private education. The students studied in three departments: the history and geography department, the Dari literature department, and the Islamic education, calligraphy and math department. The 65 first graduates who successfully completed the two-year program were placed in Habibia high school for six months as practicum to gain experience. They were then hired as official teachers in schools. In 1920, grade six graduates of Amania and Habibia School were enrolled in the two-year TTC. In 1923, the Kabul TTC announced that anyone who was literate and over the age of 25 could enroll in the TTC. A hundred people enrolled and after completing three years teacher education, they were recruited as teachers. In 1923, graduates of primary schools were allowed to enroll in the TTC. In 1931, the Department of Agriculture was added. Subsequently, in 1932, the curriculum was revised and the name of the TTC was changed to Main TTC. It was relocated to the Paghman district of Kabul where the surrounding schools were used as experimental schools for the TTC students to practice teaching. The same year (1932) the department of Pashto was added. The expansion of TTCs into provinces happened in 1967 when eight new TTCs that trained teachers for primary and middle schools were set up. These TTCs were located in various provincial capitals such as Jalalabad, Charikar, Mazari Sharif, Herat, Gardes, and Kandahar with the objective of providing educational opportunities for people aspiring to become teachers. 1 After the collapse of the Taliban, the number of students increased dramatically and the need for qualified teachers for schools increased in parallel. According to the National Education Strategic Plan III (NESP III), more than 9.2 million students went to school in 2015, of which 39 percent were girls. The number of schools has increased rapidly from 3400 to 16.400. Currently, there are 48 TTCs with 199 satellite Teachers Development Centers (TDCs) or SubTTCs across Afghanistan. The mission of the TTCs/TDCs is to educate/train teachers for grades one through nine. TTC students are required to complete 96100 credits in four semesters within a two-year TTC program. Of the 96 courses required for the TTC diploma (which is equivalent to grade 14), there are three categories of courses: pedagogy, specialty area, and general education. The pedagogy category includes 29 credits (close to 30 percent of the total TTC curricu-

1

Historical information drawn from the following sources: Kamkar (n.d.); Ministry of Education (1968); Mirzazadah (1990); ‘Our Education’ (1966).

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lum) which are compulsory. Over half the credits (53 percent) are devoted to the subject area specialty. For general education, 14 course credits are compulsory and two additional credits can be selected from the optional (elective) category. Peace education is one of the compulsory, two-credit subjects in the general education category. The teacher education curriculum has been continuously developed and reviewed for both the pre-service and in-service programs in order to improve its quality and make it responsive to the needs of prospective teachers and schools.

C ONCEPTUAL F RAMEWORK OF THE P EACE E DUCATION P ROGRAM Peace education has a long history in the international development and education fields; however, it remains a nebulous concept that has been used as an umbrella term for everything from disarmament education in the 1970s, to skills building programs for peaceful coexistence in the 1990s (Bearns/Aspeslagh 2013), to human rights and environmentalist education in the new millennium (Salomon 2002). Harris (2004: 6) defines peace education as “teaching about peace: what it is, why it does not exist, and how to achieve it,” which includes developing non-violent skills and peaceful attitudes. He classifies peace education programs according to five types: international education, human rights education, development education, environmental education, and conflict resolution education. Salomon (2002) differentiates between types of peace education programs according to three helpful criteria. The first is the conceptual framework used to define peace, which can be either a negative definition of peace, characterized simply by the absence of war, or a positive definition of peace, characterized by cooperation and collaboration between groups. The second is the socio-political context where peace education programs operate, which can be in an intractable conflict, in contexts with tension but no overt hostility, or in contexts that are calm. The final criterion is the level of desired changes, which can be on the micro- or personal level or at the macro- or policy level. The peace education program in Afghanistan discussed in this article can be situated within the theoretical framework provided by Salomon (2002) as one that uses a positive definition of peace, operates in a context with tension but (little) overt hostility, and aims for changes as at the micro- or personal level (with the view that micro-level changes will, over time, contribute to macro-level impact). It best fits within Harris’ (2004) definition of conflict resolution education, as it seeks to address root causes of conflict by building individual interpersonal

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skills in communication, empathy, and problem solving. Conflict resolution peace education programs have been shown to have an impact on school environment and academic outcomes and are designed to help students build peacemaking skills to prevent and address conflict, starting at the interpersonal and school levels, while not necessarily addressing structural violence or global conflicts directly. The peace education program in Afghanistan aligns with the common pedagogical approach of most peace education programs, which is to model interactive, democratic principles through classroom practices (Harris 2004). It also promotes a unity-based worldview, in which unity is found in respect for diversity, human rights, justice, and equality, and which Danesh (2006) posits is at the core of effective peace education programs, such as the Education For Peace program in Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the first Peace Education Programmes (PEP) developed along these lines and implemented in a conflict-affected context was UNHCR’s PEP in Kikuma and Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya in 1997. The Kenya PEP formed the basis for the International Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) PEP materials, which were revised, endorsed, and launched by the INEE in 2004 (INEE 2016). These materials have formed the basis for many peace education programs in conflict-affected countries, including the program in Afghanistan, both because this INEE materials have received positive evaluations and because the international consultant supporting the development of the course in Afghanistan was the primary author of the INEE PEP (Obura 2002; Columbia University 2009).

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The objective of the peace education course is to ensure teachers have the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes to contribute to building peace in their schools, families, communities, and nation. As a two-credit course in the 96credit TTC diploma, peace education represents a fairly small proportion of the TTC curriculum. However, the important objective of this course necessitated involving a large number of stakeholders in its development, which resulted in a non-linear and complex curriculum writing and rollout process. The financial and human resources committed were significant and produced two important results: (a) a high quality, contextualized peace education curriculum for Afghanistan, and (b) a model of curriculum rollout centred around systematic and continued capacity building of TTC lecturers.

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The curriculum development process began in 2010, when the TED requested UNESCO’s technical support to draft a concept for a peace education curriculum. The TED then requested support from ZFD to develop a curriculum through strong collaboration with the TED at the central level and with TTC lecturers in Badakhshan. One draft module for the curriculum was produced, but not finalized. This prompted the re-engagement of UNESCO in early 2013, with the task of providing technical support to the curriculum development in order to consolidate the work done so far (including the work done by ZFD, which was handed over to GIZ’s BEPA program) and ensure a harmonized final draft. At the time, this was envisioned as a small, time-limited piece of work – once the curriculum was finalized in partnership with the TED and officially approved, the government would roll it out without support from development partners. However, as the curriculum development process evolved into one that was extremely collaborative and iterative, the partnership between the TED, GIZ, and UNESCO grew into one that was particularly strong. The draft of the complete curriculum was developed by a Working Group at the TED with the support of an international consultant contracted by UNESCO. The Working Group consisted of eleven education professionals, including six professional members of the TED, two university lecturers, one TED director, and one staff member from UNESCO and one from GIZ. The Working Group was responsible for codeveloping the peace education curriculum in collaboration with an international consultant and met regularly between March and June 2013 to complete this task. The goal of the cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary team was to write a curriculum that reflected international best practices in the field of peace education as well as the social, cultural, and religious context of Afghanistan. The first draft of the curriculum was developed quite quickly, between March and June 2013. The INEE PEP was used as a basis for the concepts and material development, and the curriculum was designed to align with a peace education school curriculum developed for the non-governmental organization (NGO) Help the Afghan Children (P. Baxter, personal communication, November 8, 2016). The curriculum consists of a Course Guide for TTC lecturers (which includes a syllabus, resource materials, model lessons, and assessment and evaluation guidance) and a Resource Book (which is similar to a textbook) for TTC students. In addition to the regular meetings between the Working Group and the international consultant, this period included a two-day workshop with 38 staff from the TED and from TTCs from eleven provinces to test some of the sessions and validate the approach. The peace education curriculum that was developed took a participatory and skills-based approach, reinforcing methods that the TED had already begun to

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promote but that were still quite new to many TTC lecturers. The peace education course focuses on skills development based on theoretical comprehension as well as competency development to be applied in real-life situations in the classroom. The aim is to help TTC students who are both current teachers being trained as part of the in-service program and those who are prospective teachers being trained as part of the pre-service program to internalize the theories upon which the course is based and to build the skills they need to contribute to peacebuilding in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Pamela Baxter, the international consultant who provided technical support for the curriculum development process, emphasized that the challenge of inserting a rights-based approach with interactive teaching and open discussion into a traditionally hierarchical education system should not be underestimated (P. Baxter, personal communication, November 8, 2016). There are four themes in the course: peace and conflict, peace-building behaviors, rights-based pedagogy, and principles of human rights. The skillsbuilding content and student-centered pedagogy highlighted throughout the course is crucial for behavior change. The course uses student-centered pedagogy, classroom management, and assessment techniques in order to model rights-based, inclusive education. This approach is necessary to promote peace as well as to prevent conflict, and the course demonstrates ways of addressing and resolving conflicts in a peaceful manner. This new approach had widespread implications for the curriculum development process and for the process of rolling out the new curriculum. It became evident that the curriculum would need to be further adapted for Afghanistan’s unique historical, cultural, and social context. June 2013 to February 2015 marked a period of extensive review by religious scholars and TTC lecturers from across the country. In October 2013, a three-day analysis and translation validation workshop was held with 44 participants from TTCs across the country as well as TED, BEPA, and UNESCO staff. The purpose of the workshop was to gather feedback from participants on the peace education curriculum materials (including their translation into Dari) and use this feedback to improve the materials. While the concepts included in the peace education curriculum were quite new to participants, they were generally in favor of the materials and the peace education course as a whole. After the workshop, a small team at the TED worked intensively to incorporate Islamic values, hadiths, and verses from the Holy Qur’an into the curriculum materials. The translation from English to Dari was also improved by small teams from UNESCO, GIZ, and the TED on an ongoing basis. The materials were then translated into Pashto. In December 2014, a three-day workshop was held with 31 TTC lecturers from 15 Pashto-speaking

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provinces, as well as TED and BEPA staff. The objectives for the workshop were to analyze and improve the Pashto translation of the materials, and participants reviewed the workshop positively. Their feedback, which focused on the accuracy of the translation and the validation of the Islamic content and verses, was incorporated into the final version of the curriculum. This series of workshops was crucial to ensuring the quality of the curriculum and building ownership of the new course among TTC lecturers who now teach it. Many TTC lecturers who teach peace education are from the Islamic Education Department, so it was important that the review resulted in the inclusion of relevant Islamic passages in relevant sections of the curriculum. For example, the Peace in Islam section explains the value of peace from the Islamic perspective and includes reference to kindness, unity, good relations, and charity. The Principles of Peace session includes relevant passages for justice, equality, patience, and kindness. This was an important way of synthesizing the international theory of peace education with the local context of Afghanistan by demonstrating sensitivity to and respect for religious beliefs. During this review period (in mid-2014), the peace education project was handed over from UNESCO to GIZ BEPA to continue refining the curriculum and to develop a plan for rolling it out across the country. The review was conducted simultaneously as the curriculum was being rolled out with various cascade modes of training (discussed further in the following section). This was an intentional choice, as the team needed to navigate the tension between the need to develop the curriculum quickly in order to take advantage of political support and the need for adequate time to review the curriculum in order to ensure cultural and religious relevancy as well as to assess the implementation capacity within the TTCs. In practical terms, this meant that the curriculum went through an iterative process of being reviewed, edited, tested, and then reviewed again before being finalized. The curriculum was finalized in early 2015 after many rounds of review and revisions. Copies of the Peace Education Course Guide were printed and distributed to TTC lecturers during the nationwide training in February 2015. The Peace Education Resource Book, which is the textbook for TTC students, was finalized in March 2015. The TED published 45.000 Resource Books, of which 25.000 were printed in Dari and 20.000 were printed in Pashto. The Resource Books were distributed to TTCs and TDCs across the country.

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C URRICULUM R OLLOUT P ROCESS The rollout modality for the curriculum evolved as the curriculum was developed. The TED and BEPA worked collaboratively to plan and implement a comprehensive process for rolling out the curriculum to all of Afghanistan’s 48 TTCs for pre-service prospective teachers and 199 TDCs for in-service teachers. It became clear that the concepts and approach of the course would require support to TTC lecturers to enable them to teach the course as envisioned. To meet this need, the team decided to develop a training plan that consists of three levels of training for each TTC lecturer rather than the usual single training workshop provided in Afghanistan by other development partners. Taking into account the large number of TTC lecturers to be trained, the team decided on a cascade method of training. Therefore, the first step was training a group of Master Trainers (MTs) who could train TTC lecturers on how to teach the course to TTC students. The first of several Trainings of Trainers (ToTs) for TED professional members who would become the core group of peace education MTs took place before the curriculum was even finalized. This was necessary to meet tight timelines for the project and a high demand for curricular resources at the TTCs. In November 2013, 26 TED MTs were trained for five days by an international expert on how to teach TTC lecturers how to teach the new curriculum. A total of four ToTs were held for TED MTs between November 2013 and September 2015. The ToTs were essential to the program’s success, as the cascade training was designed to be facilitated in a very participatory manner, which requires a very high skill level from trainers. The ToTs were good opportunities to work with MTs to build their skills; however, learning was impacted by several factors, including the tense and fluctuating security situation in the country that caused lengthy gaps between ToTs and different participants attending each one (P. Baxter, personal communication, November 8, 2016). In addition to using a cascade training model, the team also decided on a phased implementation approach, which meant that the curriculum would be piloted in a few TTCs before being rolled out across the country. TED and BEPA decided to first pilot the new curriculum in five TTCs in five Northern provinces supported by BEPA (Badakhshan, Balkh, Kunduz, Sar-i-Pul, and Takhar) in fall 2014. Lecturers were trained before the semester started in June 2014. To measure the effectiveness of the training in improving lecturers’ knowledge about peace education, participants were asked to complete an 18question multiple choice test before the training (pre-test) and again after the training (post-test). Each question was equally weighted, and each correct answer was assigned one point. Questions were designed to test lecturers’

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knowledge of the key training sub-topics, and the test included items such as “Principles of peace in Islam can be described as…”, “The bias cycle describes how…”, and “Cooperative learning is important in peace education because…”. The pre- and post-test results from this training showed an increase of the average score from 44.5 percent on the pre-test to 75.9 percent on the post-test. They also showed gains across all sub-topics in the training, but especially around subtopics related to the definition of peace and peace education (measured through two questions: “What is peace?” and “What is peace education?”), listening, communication and problem solving (measured through two questions: “Listening and effective communication are essential skills in peace education because…” and “Problem solving is…”), and rights-based pedagogy (measured through one question: “Rights-based pedagogy is…”). See Figure 1 for more detail. Unfortunately, due to logistical delays, the Resource Books for TTC students were delivered part way through the semester. Figure 1: Peace Education Pre- and Post-Test Scores by Question (Pilot, June 2014)

© Stanikzai, Fazli & Denton

The methodology for assessing the effectiveness of the pilot was to gather observations of TTC lecturers teaching peace education during the semester. Observations were collected by TED MTs and by BEPA staff. These observations were

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cross-checked with the TTC lecturers’ opinions of the peace education course, gathered through a questionnaire and through focus group discussions. Key findings from the pilot were that implementation was problematic because of the late delivery of materials, there needed to be slight changes to the curriculum to correct translation errors, and lecturers needed to understand more clearly the links between peace education and student-centered methodology. These findings helped inform the rest of the rollout plan, and particularly the plan to add a Level 2 training and Level 3 qualification for TTC lecturers to the peace education program. Level 1 training focuses on familiarizing TTC lecturers with the peace education curriculum and supporting them to build the basic skills they need to teach the course. The Level 2 training was designed as a refresher and upgrade training, in which TTC lecturers would participate after having taught the peace education course for one or more semesters. The training includes both a review of the more challenging concepts from Level 1 additional, more advanced topics intended to reinforce understanding of the tenets of the peace education course. The Level 3 qualification was designed in order for TTC lecturers to demonstrate their mastery of the peace education course content through completing three tasks: training at least one TDC lecturer in how to teach the course, completing a number of advanced peace education distance learning modules, and passing an examination. Nation-wide rollout of the peace education course began in spring 2015. About 100 TTC lecturers from across Afghanistan were trained in Level 1 and Level 2 peace education training. The same pre- and post-test methodology that was used in the pilot was also used in the training rollout in order to assess the effectiveness of the training in developing lecturers’ knowledge of peace education. However, the test was shortened to 10 questions for ease of implementation. The results from the pre- and post-test were quite promising, with the average score increasing from 39.4 percent on the pre-test to 72.8 percent on the post-test and positive gains made on all questions. Upon fulfilling the requirements for Level 3, participants will be certified peace education lecturers. In early 2016, an additional Level 1 training was held for TTC and TDC lecturers in the five Northern provinces supported by BEPA. In May and June, one lecturer from every TDC was trained in Level 1 in five zones across the country. Level 2 training for TDC lecturers is forthcoming and will likely be done through peer teaching. As of mid-2015, the new peace education curriculum was being taught in all TTCs across Afghanistan to about 35.000 TTC students each year. After TTC students graduate, many will be hired as school teachers who could teach up to 700.000 school students each year. The peace education curriculum content is al-

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so used in short-term, in-service training courses for current teachers, thus expanding its reach.

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To seek feedback on the curriculum, questionnaires were developed by the authors and distributed by staff from the TED to the Master Trainers, TTC lecturers and students, which constituted the three layers of the training cascade. Five Master Trainers (all male), five TTC lecturers (all female) and fifteen students (all female) were surveyed. In general, the questions were qualitative and openanswer, and they solicited feedback about the content and delivery of the course, the strengths, the areas for improvement, and the new materials for the course. Specific questionnaires were developed for each of the three groups. The Master Trainers’ questionnaire focused on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of the peace education curriculum and the training modality, as well as their perceptions of the TTC lecturers’ response to the course. The questions for TTC lecturers were about the strengths and weaknesses of the peace education materials, and the strengths and areas for improvements they identified as the taught the course. They were also asked about what their students’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the materials, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the cascade model of training. The students’ questionnaire had two questions about the strengths and weaknesses/areas for improvement of this newly introduced course. Responses are organized by respondent in the sections below. Master Trainers’ responses Master Trainers responded that the use of active methods, which were integrated in the TTC lecturers’ course manual, helped students think critically and encouraged them to put in extra effort in their classes. The modality of cascading the training from the Master Trainers down to the students was also a strength of the program. Training a core group of trainers who subsequently trained TTC lecturers who in turn taught students was an effective strategy to build capacity at different levels and enable TED to rollout the course across the country, reaching each TTC despite their vast geographical scope. At the same time, according to the Master Trainers, the Pashto translation and the lay-out of the course materials needed improvement. They also found some parts of the curriculum difficult to teach and comprehend. Specifically, a

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number of Master Trainers found teaching the compound learning theme to be challenging. Some Master Trainers reported that some lecturers thought that the peace education materials were developed outside the country and that some conflict resolution strategies were not in line with Afghan culture. A specific example was the use of animals and their pictures to represent different conflict management styles. However, after some discussions and exchanges, the Master Trainers were able to overcome this challenge through dialogue and helped lecturers see the utility of using animals as examples. Throughout the training and rollout process, Master Trainers encouraged lecturers to modify and enrich the content of the peace education course using relevant and context-specific examples. Master Trainers shared that when monitoring the implementation of the course at TTCs, they noticed that the students were actively engaged in learning and demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm. It was stated by some Master Trainers that an outstanding strength of the peace education curriculum was the use of new learner-centered methods, which differed from the approach of most other TTC courses, which are taught using traditional methods. Lecturers’ responses The capacity of lecturers and the role they play in teaching students was foundational in the effective implementation of the curriculum. When soliciting feedback from TTC lecturers, the lecturers shared that an important strength of the course was that the course guide was very comprehensive and detailed, which they found very helpful. They reported that students found the method of illustrating a concept and an important point through a story to be very effective. However, lecturers confirmed that the translation of the manual was not coherent or fluent. Some of the pictures were hard to understand and interpret. Lecturers noticed that the students actively engaged in the lessons and were not bored in the course. Students were particularly active in group work, and role plays were highly interesting for them. The students’ active participation was indicative of the fact that they understood the lessons well. However, the lecturers stated that they were challenged due to insufficient time in class to move through all of the course material. Also, because of large class sizes, it was at times difficult to manage the classes. Lecturers stated that it was evident that Islamic values and Afghan cultural values were given visible consideration in the development of the materials.

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Students’ responses The students stated that they enjoyed the course as a whole but found the parts about managing emotions and strategies for resolving conflicts particularly interesting and relevant. They also said that some of the diagrams and pictures were hard to comprehend. Students found the examples given from the social and cultural context of Afghanistan very relevant, especially when these were shared as stories. When asked what the key messages of the peace education course were, one student stated that the key message was one of peace and reconciliation as well as caring and sympathy for others. Another student said that it was how to behave in a sensitive and peaceful manner. This student found there to be a good analysis from an Islamic perspective. However, one student was very critical of the lecturer talking too much in the class, which was not in line with the methodology of the course. The remark by the student implies that it takes continuous feedback, mentoring and coaching for lecturers to replace the teacher-centered methods they are used to using with learner-centered ones like those in the peace education course.

L ESSONS L EARNED

AND

F UTURE D IRECTIONS

Several key lessons have been learned from the peace education curriculum development and rollout process. The first is that teacher training curriculum (and education more broadly) must reflect the social and cultural values of the country context, especially for social science subjects. Afghanistan, which has experienced social and political upheavals over the last three decades, relies on its education to tread the path to peace and prosperity. The peace education course, which leveraged international experience in the areas of peace and education, was strongly informed by religious and cultural sensitivities in Afghanistan. A core team of Afghan educators provided insights and guidance throughout the process. Workshops with the participation of teacher educators from across the country were organized to solicit feedback for revisions and to ensure that the curricular materials were sensitive to regional variations throughout Afghanistan. It was a lesson learned that incorporating views through repeated consultations from the field, and especially from practitioners in the provinces, though timeconsuming and labor intensive logistically, was one of the most important ways that the curriculum material achieved acceptability and ownership throughout Afghanistan. The gains of doing things the hard way could not be achieved if the

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development process had been cut short, bypassing the crucial iterations of curricular revision and improvement. In the TTC curriculum, there are currently three stand-alone behavior change courses: Peace Education, Gender and Human Rights, and Health and Environmental Studies. The peace education program could be improved by integrating it with these other two courses in order to create one longer course worth six credits. This would enable stronger linkages between the programs as they mutually reinforce each other, as well as additional flexibility and perhaps funding. This would also increase efficiency, as significant time and effort was dedicated to the peace education curriculum development, rollout, and monitoring process. Expanding the scope of the course would not have required much more additional investment but would have multiplied the benefits as TTC students would have had three times the exposure to concepts related to peace education. In the process of curriculum development for peace education, initially a core team of Master Trainers from among the TED academic members were trained. Their knowledge and skills were further developed through repeated feedback, peer-to-peer support and refresher workshops. Creating that core unit of expertise in the central Teacher Education Department in Kabul provided the resource persons to support the TTC lecturers as the course was rolled out in the provinces. Building institutional capacity was very intentional and important in order to build capacity for implementing a new curriculum at multiple levels of the teacher education system. Those levels (from the experts at the TED central level down to the TTC lecturers at the provincial level) were networked to support each other, with the end result being to effectively reach the TTC students with the new curriculum. However, most TED staff, including the core team of Master Trainers, have multiple, competing professional responsibilities, which resulted in limited availability and time to dedicate to peace education. At times, this undermined the sense of ownership of the program among these people and had knock-on effects on the timely completion of tasks that required regular engagement and follow-up. In the future, talented TTC lecturers in the field could be engaged more closely in the training rollout process, and a consistent group of TED staff and TTC lecturers who had fewer responsibilities could be prioritized (P. Baxter, personal communication, November 23, 2016). The cascade training model has an intrinsic disadvantage of losing quality as the training is rolled out to the lower layers of the cascade. This was compensated for by a near constant reinforcement picking up on the cascade levels. In the training of trainers, the Master Trainers were held to very high standards of excellence. They had to present lessons to each other demonstrating their com-

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mand over the content and methodology/pedagogy of the curriculum. They even had to sit for an exam to show their mastery of the content and approach. There was observation, feedback and mentoring continuously provided to every Master Trainer, even if they had already taught the course to TTC lecturers. The vigor of the process and continuous follow-up mitigated to a large extent the dilution of quality. Some Master Trainers with significant teaching experience tended to share examples and content that they knew very well rather than adhering closely to the objectives of the training sessions. However, they were provided with the feedback that the sessions have a focus and defined objectives that are supported by the content in the peace education materials. This frank feedback, though inconvenient at times, proved useful to those Master Trainers and others who deviated from the main points of the curriculum content. The final lesson learned was that there has to be intentionality about engaging women at the provincial level to be peace education faculty members. Given the fact that the peace education course has been usually taught by male lecturers as it is located in the Islamic Education department where the lecturers are predominantly male, due to a lack of qualified women to teach in this department, particularly in the provinces, training the existing peace education lecturers provided little opportunity for women to be trained in how to teach the course. At the provincial level in Mazar-e-Sharif, for example, where the Level 1 training for TTC lecturers from four adjacent provinces plus Balkh was provided in June 2014, only 3 percent of participants were female – in actual numbers, this was just two women trained with 60 men. In the Level 1 training for TTC lecturers from 30 provinces in February 2015, gender parity was slightly better, with 16.5 percent of the 109 participants being women. However, the glaring underrepresentation of women requires that any future teacher training intervention, and especially one that focuses on core values of equality and human rights like peace education, has very robust strategies to include female participation. One option is to resituate the peace education course so that it falls under the Social Sciences department, which has stronger female representation among TTC lecturers, although it still does not reach parity. Another possibility is that peace education could be a stand-alone course that does not fall under a specific department, which would allow for the choosing from a full spectrum of TTC lecturers and the purposeful selection of additional female lecturers to teach peace education.

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C ONCLUSION The peace education program in Afghanistan serves as a useful case study for how behavior change and skills-building teacher education programs can be effectively developed and rolled out in conflict/post-conflict contexts. The close, collaborative partnership between GIZ and the TED was integral to the program’s success. While this article has focused on the successes and challenges of the program from the perspective of program team members, Master Trainers, TTC lecturers, and students, future research could be conducted to measure the program’s impact. This research could look at the extent to which the program achieves its desired results of positive change towards more peaceful attitudes, behaviors, and practices at the TTC and school levels.

L IST

OF

R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Allen, Lydia et al. (2009). The Peace Education Programme Evaluation. Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Bearns, Robin J. & Aspeslagh, Robert (Eds.). (2013). Three Decades of Peace Education Around the World: An Anthology. New York: Routledge. Danesh, Hossain B. (2006). Towards an integrative theory of peace education. Journal of Peace Education, 3 (1), 55-78. Harris, Ian M. (2004). Peace education theory. Journal of Peace Education, 3 (1), 5-20. INEE [Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies] (2016). Peace Education. Retrieved from http://www.ineesite.org/en/peace-education (01.01. 2018). Kamkar, J. (n.d.). Ketāb-e tārikh-e ma’āref-e Afghānistān [The History of Education in Afghanistan]. (In Dari). Ministry of Education (MoE) (1968). ‫معارف افغانستان درپنجاه سال اخیر سال‬ .‫ه ش‬1347[Afghanistan Education in the last 50 years]. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. (In Dari). Ministry of Education (MoE) (1966). Ma’āref-e mā [Our Education]. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (In Dari). Mirzazadah, A. K. et al. (1990). Tarikh-e Ta’lim wa Tarbiya dar Afghanistan, Az 1357-1367 [The History of Education in Afghanistan, from 1978-1988]. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Wizarat-e Talim wa Tarbiya, Riyasat-e Inkishaf-e Nisab-e Talimi wa Talif-e Kutub [Ministry of Education]. (In Dari).

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Obura, Anna (2002). Peace Education Programme in Dadaab and Kakuma, Kenya: Evaluation Summary. Geneva: UNHCR. [Our Education]. ‫( معارف ما‬1966). Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. (In Dari). Salomon, Gavriel (2002). The nature of peace education: Not all programs are created equal. In G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education, the concept, principles and practices around the world (pp. 3-13). London: Erlbaum.

From Education in Emergencies to Facilitating Change in Afghanistan’s Teacher Education System Achievements of German Development Cooperation in Afghanistan’s Education Sector since 2004 1 A NDREA M ÜLLER

I NTRODUCTION Our vision is to facilitate the development of vibrant human capital by providing equal access to quality education for all and enable our people to participate and contribute productively to the development, economic growth and stability of our country. (MoE 2007: 11)

This was stated as the vision for the National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) developed by the Ministry of Education (MoE) supported by UNESCO. In 2007, six years after the fall of Taliban regime, a lot of challenges were still to be overcome, although “more than 5.4 million children [emphasis] were enrolled in schools today, nearly 35 % of them girls, compared to a little more than a million 5 years ago and almost no girls” (ibid: 11). But more than half of the school-age

1

The author would like to thank Dieter Goepfert (Teamleader of Basic and Secondary Education Programme for Afghanistan, Mazar-e Sharif and Heather Rice, former Education Advisor, BEPA Takhar and Kabul, for the critical review of this article and their fruitful inputs.

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children were estimated to be out of schools with significant gender and provincial disparities. The number of teachers had grown 7-fold, but only 22 percent met the minimum qualifications of Grade 14 (cf. Wardak in this book). Until now, the overall school enrollment has risen from below 1 million in 2001 to 9.2 million in 2015 of which 39 percent are girls and the number of schools has increased from 3400 to 16.400 (MoE 2017: 1). But still challenges for the Afghan government are huge; reducing dropout and repetition rates, and to ensure graduates leave school with the skills that make them employable. Another big challenge is the tremendous gap in school attendance not only between boys and girls but also between the rural and the urban population with socioeconomic status playing a crucial role.2 Afghanistan is still far from achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): number 2, education for all, and number 3, gender neutrality, are not fulfilled. For the German Cooperation education is one of the focus areas of support in post-Taliban Afghanistan, since a well-functioning and quality education system is a key for development and progress; it also minimizes the risk of living in poverty and facilitates social integration and democratic development (BMZ 2014: 33). Education is a national priority defined in the Afghan National Development Strategy (ANDS) and Afghanistan strives to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2020.

G ERMAN C ONTRIBUTION TO AFGHANISTAN ’ S E DUCATION S YSTEM The German Government has promoted quality education in Afghanistan since 2004 through the BMZ funded program BEPA (Basic and Secondary Education Programme for Afghanistan). The program substantially contributes to the ambitious goal of the Afghan Government to provide quality education for all Afghan children regardless their sex, their ethnicity, language or faith. Germany shares 100 years of friendship with the central Asian country and is considered as one of the most reliable partners. The donor community is widely diversified. Sixty

2

Average School Life Expectancy (SLE) is 9.6 years, but varies from 12.4 for urban boys to 4.4 years for rural girls. A major challenge is to increase the low overall primary attendance (only 55 percent of the children aged 7-12 are attending). Large disparities can also be found between rural and urban areas and between socioeconomic status. MoE estimates there are over 3.5 million children out of school (OOS) (2017: 20).

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NGOs, 17 bilateral partners and all the big, multi-lateral organizations support Afghanistan in the rehabilitation of its education system. A major initiative is EQUIP (Education Quality Improvement Programme), which is administered by the World Bank and implemented by the Afghan Ministry of Education. EQUIP’s total funding amounts to approximately 300 million USD. Germany, besides funding BEPA, also contributes to this basket fund (BMZ 2014: 3). In this diversified donor community, the German Government has proven itself as a reliable partner in promoting quality education through its education program BEPA.3 This article is going to give a broad overview of the evolution of BEPA as a program in development cooperation. It will focus on the German contribution to the achievement of the goals defined in the National Education Strategy Papers (NESP I to III)4 designed and enacted by the MoE and its international partners. The objective of this article is to describe the German contribution to the rehabilitation of Afghanistan’s education system in the aftermath of the fall of Taliban regime by illustrating approaches and strategies that had been implemented. The article argues that the German contribution to the Afghan education sector can be described in three phases: In the very beginning, starting from 2004, the program’s efforts were an emergency response5, since the Afghan education system had to be built up from scratch after the fall of Taliban regime. In a second phase BEPA acted as a service provider, supporting its partners TED; Teacher Training Colleges and schools on different levels with services such as workshops, curriculum development and provision of labs but also by supporting the MoE on the macro level through policy advice. During the last years, the need to change the role of BEPA from being a service provider to being a facilitator and agent of

3

The German Government is supporting Afghanistan also in technical vocational training, promoting TVET [Technical and Vocational Education and Training] schools, improving the curricula and work on interface management between secondary school graduates and their entry into TVET schools promoting informed decision and future employment of graduates from TVET schools. This article however focuses on teacher education. For further information on TVET please refer to BMZ strategy, 33 – 36, and the program description for supporting vocational education (GIZ 2018b).

4

Three National Education Strategies have been developed by the MoE to date. These strategy papers strongly guide the architecture of the German contribution, strategy and approach in the Afghan education sector.

5

A similar argumentation considering improving access to education in Afghanistan can be found in Jones (2008).

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change became evident. The Afghan Education System is now at a stage where TED is empowered to provide services under its own responsibility (cf. Wardak in this anthology). Needless to say that it is still a long way to go but the results are encouraging. The relationship with core actors at national and provincial levels was intensified and members of TED and TTCs are constantly being included in decision making, capacity building activities and are sitting now in the driving seat. After a short paragraph on education in emergencies and how the INEE standards fit into the case of Afghanistan after the Taliban regime, the first program BEP will be described and an explanation how this is connected to education in emergency measures will be provided.

P ROMOTING E DUCATION IN E MERGENCIES – T HE B EGINNING OF G ERMAN C OOPERATION IN E DUCATION IN A FGHANISTAN AFTER THE T ALIBAN Reflections on Education in Emergency Measures Education is a fundamental right for all people. Education is especially critical for the tens of millions of children and youth affected by conflict and disasters, and yet it is often significantly disrupted in emergency situations, denying learners the transformative effects of quality education. (INEE 2012: 2)

When the first proposal for the German contribution to the education sector was written, it stated: Basic Education is the key ingredient in rebuilding Afghanistan, igniting progress in all other economic development as well as serving as a key vehicle for promoting peace, stability, and social cohesion. In short, its major task is to develop the nation hood. (BEP 2005: 6).

This statement summarizes what education in emergencies stands for: the contribution to social, economic and political stability of societies (cf. Samar in this book). It helps to reduce the risk of violent conflict by enhancing social cohesion

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and supporting conflict resolution and peace-building (INEE 2012: 3; for details cf. Stanikzai/Fazli/Denton in this book). However, it needs to be considered that education can also have a negative impact on peace and stability. Education can contribute to conflict if it reinforces inequities and social injustice by denying access to education for some learners, or if curricula or teaching practices are seen as being biased. Especially in a case like Afghanistan where tribal, ethnic, lingual and religious boundaries were and still are fierce, though not so strong these days, and long-standing, a very sensitive approach integrating as many different parties and stakeholders as possible is crucial. Therefore a “[w]ell-designed education reform, which can start soon after an emergency, is necessary to help ensure the protection of education systems and set conflict affected societies on path to sustainable peace and development” (INEE 2012: 3). In 2004, three years after the fall of Taliban regime, the education system in Afghanistan was still in a desolate state. Therefore, most of the initiatives focused on education in emergency standards with little strategic efforts to achieve long term and sustainable change. The main challenge was to provide opportunities for the high number of children out of school despite the lack of school buildings and qualified teachers, not to mention the total lack of curricula, school books and infrastructure. Seventy-five percent of school buildings were destroyed during the 20 years of war. The difficulty was to initiate reform processes because there was a lack of capacity on meso level which hindered decision making and the implementation of measures to solve the above mentioned issues. INEE (2012: 3) argues that [c]risis can offer an opportunity for national authorities, communities and international stakeholders to work together for social transformation, to build up a more inclusive education system. The need might arise to reform the curricula or to train more teachers because of new structures and measures that are in place after the emergency. Therefore, education in emergency with a long-term vision can be an opportunity to build a system ready to provide quality education for all.

Along these lines, Germany’s engagement can truly be seen as a contribution to joint efforts to build up a well-functioning and sustainable education system in Afghanistan. Hirth (2005) describes the attitude towards education for children (boys and girls) in Afghanistan as quite enthusiastic at that time. Many parents were eager to send their children to school. Parents perceived education as important for

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their children. Yet, long distances to the next school, lack of teachers and schools, and the need to include the children in labor activities for economic reasons prevented many parents from sending their children to school. It is also stated that these facts in combination with the bad quality of education would encourage parents to withdraw the children from schools. Therefore, this “window of opportunity” to improve the situation in the education sector must not be missed. In the following, the German contribution implemented by GTZ (later GIZ) will be described and connected with the overall attempts to rehabilitate the Afghan education sector between 2004 and 2007. Basic Education Programme for Afghanistan (BEPA 6) In 2004, the Basic Education Programme was established by GTZ (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, the predecessor organization of GIZ) and funded through BMZ (Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development). The program provided support and assistance in an emergency situation in a phase when the Afghan education system was built almost from scratch. BEPA was active in all five domains of INEE Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies: Foundational Standards, Access and Learning Environment, Teaching and Learning, Education Policy, Teachers and Other Education Personnel (INEE 2012: 7-8). The program consisted of three components: a) Education reform within the ministry. b) Improvement of teacher education. c) Integration of elements in teacher education (pre- and in-service). The goals were defined as follows:  The MoE improves its planning and management skills through sector specific consultation by BEPA.  Basic Education in Afghanistan is improved through systematically trained teacher educators and future teachers.

6

At that time the acronym was BEP. Due to consistency and for clarity reasons, the acronym BEPA (GIZ 2018a) will be used throughout the whole article.

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 Pashtun refugee children are integrated in Afghan formal schools. This will have an impact on the peace in the regions. The program focused on the Northern provinces Badakhshan, Kunduz and Takhar, and Paktia as the only province with a majority of Pashtun population in line with the general policy of German development cooperation. BEPA was conducted in cooperation with the DED (German Development Service, which was integrated in GIZ in 2011), and KfW (German Development Bank), which dedicated its contribution especially to the rehabilitation of school buildings. Germany consulted and supported the Afghan Ministry of Education in establishing its National Education Strategy Plan (NESP 7). Furthermore, members of the MoE were trained in monitoring and evaluation and planning activities. In teacher education8 BEPA promoted with “Joyful learning” and “Off campus teaching”, two teaching manuals dedicated to learner-centered and participatory teaching methodology. These manuals had already been used in similar contexts and proven to be useful to engage teachers in teaching methods other than rote learning and lecturing. As early as in 2005 BEPA started the initiative to integrate practice teaching through the diploma course taught at Afghanistan’s Teacher Training Colleges (TTCs). These attempts were fruitful. Ten years later, practice teaching is a mandatory part of Teacher Education at all TTCs throughout Afghanistan. The measures in place and the organizational aspects of practice teaching have been developed with the support of German Cooperation and are detailed in a manual, which is in use today. Catching up with Education for a “Lost” Generation A big issue in 2004 for Afghanistan was that a whole generation only had a few years of education filled with gaps due to migration, war and economic issues. This means an immense loss in a country where most of the population are children and adolescents. Between 1990 and 2004 around 8 million children and

7

The Afghanistan National Education Strategic Plan for 1385-1389 (2006-2010) was developed through a consultative process that included representatives from all departments of the Ministry of Education, provincial and district-level educational representatives, members of civil society and members of the international community (UN and NGO) (MoE 2007: 22).

8

Refer to Wardak and Stanikzai/Fazli/Denton in this book for further information on the architecture of teacher education, as it was established by the Teacher Education Directorate (TED) since 2001.

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youth had their education interrupted or were not even able to start (Hirth 2005: 4). These premises encouraged BEPA to focus in its program on catch-up education. This informal education and accelerated learning courses target children who have missed considerable time in school, remain out of school because of eligibility or other access issues, or are struggling with language or curriculum. The goal of these classes is to catch up with the curriculum taught in public schools and then enroll in public school or receive equivalency diplomas (see e.g. Longden 2013; Intili/Kissam/St. George 2006). Returning migrants faced multiple challenges in Afghanistan; one of those was the different education levels: some of them attended non-formal schools in refugee camps run by NGOs, others received formal education in Iran, and others had a fragmentary education due to migration. In Paktia, Pashtun children coming back from Pakistan received catch-up education in order to be integrated in formal Afghan schools. The integration of refugees’ peace, social cohesion and stabilization were promoted. The focus of catch-up education also fits into measures that are taken especially in emergency settings where education encompasses all age groups. “In emergency situations, through to recovery, quality education provides physical, psychosocial and cognitive protection that can sustain and save lives.” (INEE 2012: 2) The component focusing on reintegration of Pashto children into the Afghan school system was successfully completed as a pilot. This measure was later taken over by UNHCR and locally active NGOs. INEE (2012: 2) argues that “schools and other learning spaces can act as an entry point for the provision of essential support beyond the education sector such as protection, nutrition, water and sanitation and health services. Coordination between different actors is necessary to provide learner-friendly, safe spaces.” BEPA made use of this entry point by providing psychosocial support to these Pashto refugee children. Small-scale studies with the goal to find out about post-traumatic disorders as well as health conditions of school children in gen-

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eral were conducted. School-health9 and drug prevention were also taught with the help of a manual developed for schools.10

D EVELOPING A L ONGER -T ERM S TRATEGY FOR C OOPERATION IN THE E DUCATION S ECTOR In the following years BEPA’s goal was still strengthening its capacity in the structures of the Afghan Ministry of Education with a focus on teacher education through intensifying the cooperation with the MoE. When it comes to longer-term strategy in education a major step is to shift focus from primarily achieving higher enrollment numbers to higher graduation rates (MoE 2017: 22). The long-term goal must be to not only provide access to education for all but to establish the means for children to graduate and to make sure that by the time of graduation they have acquired knowledge not only to know but also to do.11 This shift was not only envisaged by BEPA but also within the whole donor community. In the following, BEPA’s attempts to intensify cooperation in the provinces with the aim of a sustainable partnership will be described. Focusing Teacher Education in the Northern Provinces BEPA started to focus on improving teacher education in TTCs in the five Northern provinces (Badakhshan, Balkh, Kunduz, Takhar and Sar-e Pol (later Samangan replaced Sar-e Pol for security reasons) in which the German cooperation is most active. The measures were mostly focused on supporting the further implementation of practice teaching in TTCs, training of lecturers regarding content knowledge in mathematics and science, and informing lecturers about the

9

WHO launched its school health promotion campaign in 1995. The goal of school health programs is to connect education with health, in order to prevent important health risks among youth and to engage the education sector in efforts to change the educational, social, economic and political conditions that affect risk.

10 The author would like to thank Shagagha Mujadidi, employee and policy advisor of BEPA since the very beginning, for sharing his knowledge and vast experiences about BEPA’s beginning in order receive a comprehensive picture for this article. 11 Refer to UNESCO pillars of education.

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need for equal access in order to improve chances for young men and women 12 to graduate from TTC. Since BEPA offices in the provinces are located in the vicinity of TTCs, or even inside, the cooperation and acceptance of TTC staff and especially TTC heads can be considered as conducive. However, it will be important in the future to improve this cooperation and to ensure more of a partnership based on mutual BEPA education officers and advisors, and TTC lectures. In each Afghan province, a Provincial Teacher Directorate (PED) is in charge of education. Through regular meetings and interaction, BEPA was able to establish strong connections and good relations with the Heads of PEDs and has a good reputation. These relationships were fostered by including them in annual planning meetings and evaluation workshops thus ensuring that BEPA’s activities were transparent. Such workshops are part of GIZ processes before a new program is designed and throughout the programs’ lifetimes. In each of the five provinces BEPA has offices in the vicinity of the TTC. The close cooperation with communities and government officials require an intense dialogue, active participation and openness from both sides. In this second phase, as argued in this article, BEPA dedicated itself to a more sustainable contribution to the education sector, keeping up its multi-level approach. Still BEPA’s role was that of a service provider, active in many different areas: girls’ education, peace education and improving teacher education through practice teaching. BEPA also provided computer and science labs to TTCs and local schools in combination with workshops to build capacity in using the new facilities. Furthermore, one component was about connecting schools to the labor market, promoting the HERFA 13 subject and using activities to prepare secondary students to make informed decisions when choosing a profession. The need to shift BEPA’s activities from service provider to facilitator became more and more evident. The next paragraph will explain this shift and con-

12 Beyond the question of equality of men and women in higher education in Afghanistan the issue of qualified female teachers is crucial because girls are only allowed to go to school if qualified female teachers are employed (for further information refer to Jones (2008) or Wardak in this book). 13 Herfa is an Arabic word used in Dari and means “Vocation”. The subject HERFA is on vocational guidance in the public education system. The goal is to give students insights into the world of employment and provide help with career orientation (refer to BMZ 2014: 32).

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nect it with the new NESP. What is meant by the role of a facilitator will be illustrated with two examples from a current BEPA program.

Q UALITY E DUCATION R EQUIRES Q UALIFIED T EACHERS – BEPA AS A F ACILITATOR IN AFGHANISTAN ’ S E DUCATION S YSTEM After having been a pure emergency response program, the biggest challenge BEPA is currently facing is the change from being a service provider to working as a facilitator. This change forces the program to define its role completely anew. At the same time the reputation that was built in the last 10 years is at stake if the shift is not conducted in a sensitive manner, getting on board all relevant stakeholders and beneficiaries. Everybody needs to understand what BEPA’s goals, strategy and approaches are and that they can still count on a reliable partner. Goals and Strategies Defined in NESP III (2017 – 2021) Afghanistanʼs NESP III (2017-2021) strategic framework entails three sections: 1) Quality and relevance, 2) Equitable access, and 3) Efficient and transparent management. The common goal of the strategic plan is “to prepare skilled and competent citizens through education system to sustain Afghanistan’s socioeconomic development and social cohesion” (MoE 2017: 31). The vision for Afghanistan as a fragile post-conflict society is, to prioritise greater social cohesion and to foster in Afghanistan’s children a mind-set that acknowledges the future of the country belongs to them. The education system has to provide the country’s children and youth with the knowledge and skills to turn this mind-set into reality. (ibid: 31)

NESP III is pragmatic and self-critical when it comes to policy strategies. It is acknowledged that expectations of former NESPs were not fully realized which was due to financial constraints and instability within Afghanistan. However unrealistic assumptions and inefficient management are also to be blamed as well as corruption (ibid: 34). The limitations regarding capacity of education staff are mentioned as well. These statements as well as the thoroughly elaborated theory of change unfolding in results chains and intermediate and long-term outcomes give hope for

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a better-organized and coordinated future in Afghanistan’s education sector. The fact that Afghanistan’s development partners as well as representatives from cooperating ministries14 were involved in designing this crucial plan is also a good sign and gives hope for better results through more coordination and improved accountability. The policy objective is defined as: Quality and Relevance [emphasis]: Learners at all levels acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes, and values needed to be productive, healthy, and responsible citizens prepared to contribute to the welfare of society and equipped for viable employment in the national and international labour market. (ibid: 32)

One of the measures is to ensure that teachers and educators are better qualified, certified and employed according to national standards and regulations (ibid: 39). In this area BEPA will provide support and facilitate changes with partners being in the driving seat in the future. BEPA’s Role in the New Education Strategy In 2014, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development defined the following in its strategy paper as an overall goal for its engagement in the Afghan education sector: The overall goal of German engagement in the education sector is to develop in cooperation with other actors a (general and vocational) education sector which enables the population to improve their living standard through education, or to secure employment which will protect them against poverty. (BMZ 2014: 32)

Good quality teacher education was named as focus area because good teachers [emphasis] are key to establishing a high-quality education and vocational training system. German-Afghan development cooperation will therefore focus on strengthening teacher training through curriculum development, support to training centres for male and female teaching staff, and the construction and equipping of vocational training schools. Particular attention should be devoted to the cross-cutting issue of promoting girls and women [emphasis]. (ibid: 32)

14 For details refer to MoE 2017: 2.

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The means and strategies are gender-sensitive school development, community mobilization, including the active integration of religious authorities and village elders, and the promotion of professional development of teacher trainers on gender-sensitive learning (ibid: 32). Based on these strategy papers the German Cooperation focused its program BEPA regarding improving quality education by reforming teacher education. In the NESP III the MoE clearly states the importance of quality and relevance. The new education strategy also sets the ground for BEPA to hand over more responsibility and act as a facilitator. In the past two years, dialogue between different departments of the MoE had been initiated, and efforts had been made to involve different departments of the MoE15 beyond the main partner TED. This is also true for dialogues between the provincial and national level and between TED staff and teacher educators employed at TTCs. BEPA has employed a multi-level approach since the very beginning, so contacts and partnerships have been established at all levels. This facilitates dialogue between these stakeholders as well as support decision-making across different levels. The long-term strategy of Germany’s engagement in education must be to build up agents of change and qualified staff at all levels. Example 1: Building Capacity and Ensuring Cohesion So called academic members were trained jointly in a four week long methodology training provided by an international consultant contracted by BEPA, education officers of the program, TTC lecturers and ministry of education staff. This is important for continuity and a coordinated approach to improving the quality of teaching. If teacher educators are then applying new methods in their classrooms, academic members from the MoE who supervise will need to understand the use and the rationale behind these new methods. During the intensive 4weeks training, which included practical teaching in real classrooms, boundaries between the actors could be broken down and their ability to cooperate and provide constructive feedback to one another improved. Another example is the process of the development of a diploma program in primary education: the MoE asked BEPA for support for this large project. No specialists in primary educa-

15 The Afghan MoE consists of General Directorates and Departments. Hierarchically General Directorates are superior to Departments. For BEPA most relevant General Directorates are: Literacy, General Education, Islamic Education, Curriculum & Teacher Education, and planning and supervision department.

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tion could be found in the ministry (since the 1970s Afghanistan is lacking specialized training for early grades), so BEPA employed foreign experts to support the project. For each subject however, academic members at ministry level as well as interested teacher educators were chosen to support the process and enhance their knowledge in this important field. These activities unify knowledge from all sides, in addition to the context and language knowledge the Afghan staff brings in the following qualities to the process:  BEPA staff has skills in project management experience.  Academic members have a sound knowledge of political processes and requirements.  Teacher educators share their experiences from their daily teaching practice and know what works in reality and what not.  The foreign education expert contributes with content knowledge. Obviously, this strategy is challenging and time consuming and often more expensive than a ready to use product written by a foreign expert without consultation about the local realities. The advantage of involving different stakeholders from the very beginning is that the actors involved own the product and the probability that it meets expectations and needs of the people at meso and micro level is much higher. Afghan Government as a Reliable Service Provider An important issue why it makes sense to hand over responsibilities to the Afghan government as soon as possible is specified in the country strategy paper by BMZ in 2014. In a fragile situation like Afghanistan still is in, the Afghan people need to trust their government. They get to trust them for example by seeing them as a provider of quality education. For this reason, the German development cooperation has worked closely together with the Afghan Ministry of Education as a partner. Technical experts who are employed by the German government and based in Afghanistan are therefore always in the role of an advisor, working closely with the representatives of the MoE and supporting them with their projects in their daily business. This support enables the authorities to establish strong institutions and in the long run quality and relevant education (BMZ 2014: 35).

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Example 2: Empowering Afghan Institutions Empowering the ministry was for example achieved with the hand-of the program component “Practice Teaching – Twinning Concept” under the ministry’s responsibility. The practice teaching as an obligatory part of the teacher training program implemented at TTCs had been introduced in 2008, yet, without giving a clear guidance on structure and procedures. Basically, it had been added as an obligatory course on top of the regular credits that any student had to achieve. Over five years the BEPA program developed a feasible structure which was a cumbersome task because of a changing institutional environment and rapidly increasing numbers of students. Nevertheless, the program managed to establish a PT course that fitted the students’ needs and that ensured that each student had the opportunity to experience the realities of being a teacher in a protected environment under supervision of a mentor. At that time the approach could be seen as a delivery of solutions for needs arising at the MoE. Even though this can be justified to some degree because quick solutions were needed considering the state the education system was in. This approach does not build capacity at involved partner institutions, it creates lack of ownership and most probably, it is not sustainable. In 2013, because of aforementioned reasons, BEPA changed its approach: Instead of planning the national rollout of practice teaching itself, BEPA empowered TTCs and TED to do so themselves. TTCs which had already implemented practice teaching in their curricula were now trained to transfer their knowledge with the support of TED to “new” TTCs. With this partnering system an experienced TTC supported a new TTC throughout the implementation process. BEPA program provided initially comprehensive support (training, coaching, and empowerment of staff) but gradually reduced its role to need-based backup support. This enabled the TTCs and the TED to take over its core role of delivering quality services to its clients. In the ministry, a unit was built up with comprehensive knowledge about the process, which resulted in ownership and enhanced managerial skills of staff involved. BEPA is able to fulfill its role as advisor and facilitator. Donor Coordination as a Key Element Another important area is donor coordination. The ground is set for better coordination between all donors active in education since NESP III’s clearly defined theory of change and objectives. BEPA fostered the dialogue with different state and non-state-actors. Transparency of own activities and affiliations within the

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ministry are important and proof that BEPA can be and is a trustworthy partner for other donors. For example, BEPA is represented in the steering committee for the Ministry of Education’s comprehensive curriculum reform guided by UNESCO. Furthermore, a strong partnership with the project Afghan Children Read (ACR)16, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), could be established for the development of the diploma in primary education. These partnerships are very important because synergies are created in a meaningful way, it is cost effective and transparency prevents corruption.

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The aim of this article was to describe the evolution of the German development cooperation in the area of education in the last ten years. The changes in BEPA’s approach and strategies that also modified the cooperation between Germany represented by the BEPA and Afghanistan, represented by TED, were described and illustrated with examples. Initially, quick responses to dire needs were required, but eventually a more sustainable approach and a focus on facilitation and advisory were needed to guarantee ownership and sound long-term results. As mentioned in the beginning of this article, it is still a long way to go. Many obstacles are to be faced during this journey; to conclude a few important obstacles should be mentioned here. The turnover of staff at the TED, for example, is very high. This means that trained staff and reliable partners at ministry level may disappear from their posts quickly. A lot of time and money is required to build new capacities and relationships on a regular basis and these circumstances hinder trust and efficiency. Since BEPA’s main goal is to improve teacher education in Afghanistan, a premise is that the trained teachers share their knowledge with children as teachers. Unfortunately, many young teachers are using the opportunity to go to university after successful graduation from TTC. In addition, teacher deployment is a difficult issue: Many teachers want to teach in urban areas and female teachers are not allowed to move away from their families to teach in another region. Therefore remote areas do not benefit in the same way from the improved teacher education (MoE 2015: 48).

16 For more information on the program please refer to: USAID 2016.

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The security situation is not improving in the last couple of years, which hampers BEPA’s approach. A sound and fruitful partnership with relevant actors can only be achieved by regular face-to-face dialogue in coordination and planning meetings, physical presence at the TED, informal exchange, and mutual visits. If, for security reasons, BEPA staff is no longer allowed to be physically present at the TED, the TTCs or even in the country or going for meetings in the ministry will be prohibited, it will be very difficult to sustain sound partnerships. The way forward is going to be rocky, but mutual trust is established which is the foundation for cooperation as equal partners. BEPA and the TED as well as PED and TTCs on provincial level are working towards the same goals. The recently published NESP III shows also that the donor community together with MoE is willing to cooperate, to work on realistic goals and to address the challenges and obstacles. These joint efforts are needed to build a perspective for the big number of Afghan children who are keen to go to school; to learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together.

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Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) (2014). New Country Strategy for Afghanistan 2014 – 2017. Reliable Partnership in Times of Change, BMZ Strategy Paper 3. Retrieved from https://www.bmz.de/en/publications/type_of_publication/strategies/Strategie papier341_03_2014.pdf (28.02.2017). Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2018a). Improving school education through new standards for teaching staff and new curricula. Retrieved from https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/14677.html (01.07. 2018). Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) (2018b). Supporting technical and vocational education and training in Afghanistan. Retrieved from https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/14616.html (01.07.2018). Hirth, Michael (2005). Entwicklung des Grundbildungswesens in Afghanistan. Reform und Verbesserung der Qualität, Vortrag anlässlich der Bildungskonferenz in Kabul September 2005. Interagency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) (2012, (Reprint)). Minimum Standards for Education: Preparedness, Response, Recovery. Retrieved from http://toolkit.ineesite.org/toolkit/INEEcms/uploads/1012/INEE_ GuideBook_EN_2012 %20LoRes.pdf (28.02.2017).

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Intili, Jo Ann, Kissam Ed & St. George, Eileen (2006). Fostering Education for Female, Out of School Youth in Afghanistan. Journal of Education for International Development, 2 (1). Retrieved from http://www.equip123.net/ JEID/articles/2/Afghanistan.pdf (28.02.2017). Jones, Adele M. E. (2008). Afghanistan on the educational road to access and equity. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 28 (3), 277-290. Longden, Ken (2013). Accelerated Learning Programmes: What can we learn from them about curriculum reform? Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco. org/images/0022/002259/225950e.pdf (25.02.2017). Ministry of Education (MoE) (2007). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 1385-1389. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://datatopics.worldbank.org/hnp/files/ edstats/AFGpla07.pdf (18.02.2017). Ministry of Education (MoE) (2013). National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) 2014-2019. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education, Department of Planning and Evaluation. Ministry of Education (MoE) (2015). Education for All 2015 National Review Report: Afghanistan. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002327/ 232702e.pdf (23.02.2017). Ministry of Education (MoE) (2017). National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) III. 2017 – 2021. Kabul, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan: Ministry of Education, Department of Planning and Evaluation. Retrieved from http://anafae. af/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/National-Education-Strategic-Plan-NESPIII.pdf (01.03.2017). United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (2016). Afghan Children Read Program. Retrieved from https://www.usaid.gov/newsinformation/fact-sheets/afghan-children-read-program (18.02.2017). World Health Organization (WHO). Global School Health Initiative. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/school_youth_health/gshi/en/ Global School Health Initiative (27.02.2017).

Private Scholarships for Students from Poor Families at Herat University A Small Substitution or Structural Compensation of a Governmental Task? H EIDE K ÄSSER

I NTRODUCTION Poem about my Beloved Home Afghanistan I’m Taking my Pen, now, and I’m Writing about Grief. I’m Writing about Gunpowder and Bombs. Seeing my Home that Way, I’m Writing About Death and Mourning on my Home’s Behalf. (HABIBA, 2012)

Afghanistan consists of a predominantly young population and despite the country’s difficult security situation the system of education is booming. Although valid data are hard to find, undoubtedly more and more children attend school (cf. Wardak in this book; cf. Naumann in this book). This includes boys as well as girls even in smaller towns and villages. In addition to public schools, there are also numerous private schools. A great number of students intend to go to university after having finished school. Again, there are both public and private academic institutions in Afghanistan (cf. Jawid in this book). Within only few years, a surprising change took place among the Afghan population. Until the end of the 20th century, only a small part of the population

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held university degrees, namely the upper class including their sons and daughters. Nowadays, at the beginning of the 21st century, being enrolled at a university is no longer a privilege for the upper class and most children are able to attend school unless there are still educational inequalities.

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In my contribution, I will refer to a students’ project that mainly takes place at Herat University and has been organized by the German-Afghan Initiative (GAI, Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V., DAI 2016) in Freiburg, Germany. My statements are based on reports by university students and complemented by statistics of the Faculty of Education of this university (cf. Hanif in this book). These reports have reached me since 2008 via email or handwritten letters. They are all linked with the project which in the first instance is intended for female university students. The idea to establish this project resulted from a documentary which I produced together with students who study “Media Studies in Education” at the University of Education in Freiburg, Germany. The production took place from 2005 till 2006 and was originally named “Afghanistan: Awakening Whereto?” (Kässer/Keller 2006). The documentary was accepted by the German TV station SWR and broadcast under the title “The Adventure of Schooling – Going to School in Afghanistan” (“Abenteuer Schule – Lernen in Afghanistan“) in 2007. Other German TV stations also broadcast the documentary. During on-site production in Afghanistan and while working with the materials in Germany, the question arose what perspective students would have after finishing school. This question especially came up in relation to female graduates. Since the movie was produced in and around Herat, it was obvious to search for educational facilities in this region. This is how Herat University came into focus. In 2008, I filled in an application for a student project at the DAI. The project’s aim was to financially support poor female students, so that they would be able to buy course books and other study materials since the university library did not have enough study materials. These days, we support 42 female students and three male students from their second year up to graduation. This means that we no longer stick to the initial restriction to support female students only. In some exceptional cases, we also support male students with poor family backgrounds, if they show a high potential for a successful university career. At Herat University, a young woman who graduated in English Literature and shows good computer literacy takes care of

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the project’s female students. She transfers the monthly financial support of 35€ to the students, using the Afghan currency of course. We developed a form which confirms that they have received the money. The project is exclusively funded by private donations of German and Swiss donors.

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Right from the start, there was a desire by both, donors and students, to get in touch personally. Initially, this was realized by handwritten letters which were translated in Germany, later we also received e-mails. Since 2008, about 200 letters and e-mails have arrived in Europe. The students correspond with us because they have the desire to thank the donors and also to respond to my questions. A further wish which arose at the very beginning was to enable our supported students to individually contact German and Swiss people by sending English emails. To further their process of education and to establish international relations, the students take additional English and computer literacy classes. By attending these courses, the students use their new gained competencies to stay in contact with their donors in Germany and Switzerland, reporting about their lives in Afghanistan and their studies. The classes are held by our young Afghan women correspondents who have graduated in English Literature. The courses are taught in a room that has been specially leased for the project. Computers, printers, etc. have been paid out of project funds. At present, I am developing a certificate which confirms that students have participated in the English and computer literacy courses. This might help them to find an adequate job after their graduation. On the basis of the students’ reports, one can grasp the change regarding the attitude towards education among the Afghan population. Nassibah, a student from Daisanghi, writes in 2010: “After my mother’s death, I had to quit elementary school. I’ve done household chores and looked after the family’s animals for seven years. Then an organization came into our province and founded three schools. I registered there – against my family’s will. The only ones who encouraged me were my teachers.” Like Nassibah, other female students struggled to convince their families of the necessity to attend school and university, so they reported similar difficulties during these years. Interestingly, very often it was not the fathers but the brothers who were opposed to this wish.

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Figure 1: Classroom teaching in Herat with promoted female students

© Kässer

Nowadays, this situation has changed completely. Farzaneh, a student from Ghazni for instance, writes in 2015: “My family supports my desire to study at a university, because they themselves are illiterate.” Another student also writes that her mother is illiterate and despite great poverty, she supports her daughters to attend university. In none of the letters do students complain about any family resistance anymore. The entrance examination poses an extremely difficult hurdle for these young people. According to Herat University’s principal, only 23 percent of all applying students passed this exam in 2015. It can be repeated only once, which is one year later. Two students told me that all they did during the whole following year was to study hard in order to pass the entrance exam the second time. In our project, there are students of all university subjects and fields. The only admission condition in order to be part of the project is to be born in a poor family. Nassibah, whom I have referenced to earlier in this article, writes in her second year in 2012: “Thanks be to the great God for He has made the world so wonderful. And thanks to Him for He has given us the task to learn and to study so that we can be freed from ignorance and unawareness and go a true and right path. I’ve seen wonderful and unpleasant things in my life. Success and failure

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have been challenges through which I’ve learned. This has motivated me to strive for an improvement of the future. Now, I study and I feel comfortable at the university.” This is what a young Afghan woman writes who by her own account had to tend sheep and goats in her early life.

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The biggest problem nowadays is to find an appropriate job after having graduated. During the first few years of letter and email exchanges, we received a lot of good news: The freshly graduated found good jobs. These days, they often have to search for months, switch to other professions or make do with lower positions. It is bitter to see that sons and daughters who grew up in rich and influential families do not have any difficulties to get an appropriate job. This is also distressing for us since we had hoped that especially those who used to be underprivileged would benefit from this educational boom. Figure 2: Graduation rates at Herat University with employment and unemployment rates from 2006 – 2015 in total numbers

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© Statistics of Herat University, 2015

Since 2012 the rate of unemployed graduates exceeds the number of employed ones, and this gap is increasing.

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Mohammad Amin is a bachelor graduate who studied English Literature till 2014. During his studies he was supported by the GAI and now, he is looking for an adequate job. He writes about his difficulties while hunting for a job. As many of his fellows, all he gets is the information that he would have a chance if he could give proof of work experience for at least two or three years. According to this information one can assume that the content of university studies is not conform with the expectations of the job market. Furthermore, former university students – and in the meantime current university students as well – agree that both teaching materials and teaching methods are out-of-date. In Afghanistan, it is also possible to continue university studies with a postgraduate master program after having graduated with a bachelor’s degree. However, this option is very expensive and financially not affordable for the young people supported by the GAI. So, Mohammad Amin continues his job hunt. He is facing poverty, corruption and drugs if his situation does not change. Fleeing the country would be his last choice, he writes in 2015. For young women, the job hunting process is slightly different. For them, their families of origin play a crucial role. While young men are able to look independently for a job nationwide, it would be extremely dangerous for young women. They need their families to protect them. This is why young women return to their families in order to find a job after having graduated from Herat University. Even though from a Western European perspective, one would perceive this limitation as a restriction to equal rights, they take it for granted since their families protect them. At Herat, young women live in dorms for women only. These dorms are under tight surveillance for security reasons. Those women who study to become a teacher are privileged during their job hunt. A current student at Herat University who studies teacher education confirms this when she writes that she would be very fortunate since there are so many children in Afghanistan. However, many graduates write that very often teachers only get new jobs at private schools which pay very low salaries.

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Figure 3: Development of graduates, employment and unemployment at the Education Faculty of Herat University from 2006-2015 in total numbers

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© Statistics of Herat University, 2015

From 2006 to 2015, the number of graduates in the Education Faculty of Herat University has risen steeply, but also their employment rate has risen whereas the unemployment rate in 2015 is quite low. As shown in the statistics of Herat University in 2015, 60 percent of the employed students of education work in their field of study and 40 percent in other fields (Herat University 2015).

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Despite the poor economic situation in Afghanistan, the desire to attend schools and universities is without limits. Yet, education and employment market need to work hand in hand. This requires that in addition to university programs, vocational education programs at a lower level need to be established – not only for men, but also for women (cf. Müller in this book; cf. Ruttig in this book). Existing structures need to be respected and further developed. I am convinced that those Afghans, who were able to establish the general educational system within only few years, are also able to interlock the educational system with the labor market (cf. Wardak in this book).

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With our low-budget students’ project, we have been able to support less than 50 students in a couple of years. In this way our project can be regarded as no more than a modest substitute for a governmental task but at least it can serve as a role model for the educational policy in Afghanistan especially for young women born into poor families.

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In order to protect the students’ identities, their full names and proveniences as well as the dates of their letters are not fully mentioned. Most of the letters are written in Farsi, some in English. (Anonymous), Farzaneh (2015). Letter to Heide Kässer. Unpublished document, Ghazni, Afghanistan. (Anonymous), Nassibah (2012). Letter to Heide Kässer. Unpublished document, Daisanghi, Afghanistan. (Anonymous), Nassibah (2010). Letter to Heide Kässer. Unpublished document, Daisanghi, Afghanistan. Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V. (2016). Deutsche und Afghanen helfen gemeinsam. Verfügbar unter http://www.deutsch-afghanische-initiative.de (17.11.2017). Herat University (2015): Statistics of the Faculty of Education of Herat University, 2006-2015. Unpublished document, Herat, Afghanistan. Kässer, Heide, Keller, Marco et al. (2006). Afghanistan: Aufbruch wohin? [Dokumentation]. Freiburg: Coreoperation.

The Project of the German-Afghan Initiative with Nomads and Semi-Nomads in the Province of Herat S ARGHUNA N ASHIR -S TECK

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Since more than 3000 years Kuchis live as nomads in Afghanistan – either to the full extent or as semi-nomads. Nowadays an ethnic group of Pashtuns still live as nomads counting about 5 million people. The origin of the English term Kuchi has its roots in the Persian language and can be translated as trekking. In the summertime the Kuchis live in the highlands of the Afghan mountains, but they spend the winter time in the low lands in the south of the country – often they even trek until Pakistan. Semi-nomadism is an interstage between nomadism and sedentarism where nomadic livestock breeding is combined with sedentary agriculture. This way of life is very common in central Asian mountain regions. During the summertime the whole clan treks with its livestock and rainfed agriculture is done wherever they decide to stay longer. During the winter season they live in villages with housing and operate irrigation for agriculture. From an economic point of view Afghanistan is considered as an agrarian state with unfavourable geographical and climatic conditions. Half of the country consists of bleak landscape or semi-deserts. Its arid climate with little precipitation makes agriculture even more difficult and explains why only about 12 percent of the country is used for agricultural purposes (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit 2016). Almost 3/4 of the Afghans live in rural areas mostly close to the rivers. They enable intensive agricultural economic activity through artificial irrigation. The remaining area is only suitable for transhumance of the nomads. About 1/5 of the Afghan people live as nomads or seminomads. Their living conditions are very challenging as they are often cut off

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from electricity and modern infrastructure, have to face harsh weather conditions and bleak vegetation in up to 4000-5000 m altitude. They brave the rough living conditions for longer times only with the help of their herds consisting of goats, sheep, donkeys and camels. Young animals who need special shelter in winter are kept in special tents named Gasch. Other animals are fenced in by portable bushes. They are easily set up and light weight when carried. When the nomads trek throughout the summer grazing’s of the central highlands, they drive down their livestock to the valley at 4 am and back up around 10 or 11 am. Afterwards the animals are milked and herded down again around 3 pm. One nomad can milk 20 till 30 animals per day. This fact was commented by a nomad: “If the number of animals increases to more than 30, a man has to take on another wife to be able to keep up with the milking process.” Each clan member is responsible for certain tasks. The female nomads mainly take care of the daily repetitive household tasks. They set up the tents and raise the children, whereas the men mostly look after the herds. The clan chief has a special role and has to scout the way on horseback accompanied by a small group of males. They bargain with the sedentary clans where they are allowed to track, if they have to pay a toll and whether they could labour on the fields. The clan splits up into smaller groups, each taking their turn on duty. Men sell their goods and animals on the markets. Women travel between the sub-clans to fulfil their duties, like baking bread on open fire and cooking tea to feed the clan members. The nomads live in dark brown tents, which are out of goat hair. Its natural fibre is highly suitable as it is wind and water repellent due to the hairs highdensity and fat rate. An additional protection against weather influences is applied by woollen cloths. They measure 8 till 10 m of length and are fulled after the weaving process. As time goes by the wool felt darkens gradually and appears to be nearly black. Shepherds use the same wool felt for coats which are known as Chapan. They represent a great contrast to the very colourful clothing of the nomads. An Afghan saying is, the more bleak the landscape, the more colourful is the nomads clothing. The preferably dark red fabric for their clothing is brought to bazaars in the cities they pass, sewn as well as applied with embroidered motives by the females using multi-coloured yarn. These techniques are passed down from generation to generation. They wear headscarves but at the same time they are unveiled. Carpets are made out of sheep and goat yarn too. In a first step, female nomads need to wash the raw wool in the cold water of a stream without soap. Mostly boiled out botanicals are used for dyeing. For example the colour red is gained from pomegranates and walnut shells are used for dark brown shades as

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can be found in carpets. Washing the wool once more in cold water after the dying process adds a smoky touch to the colour. Afghan carpets are extremely robust as they do not come in touch with any kind of soap. Maintaining its natural wool grease in the yarn is the feature distinguishing them from Pakistani or Indian carpets, which are made using chemical purification. Sheep and goats supply the nomads not only with wool, but also with meat and milk products that cover their personal needs. Meat is preserved by salting and drying it in the sun. Consequently it is then easier to store and transport over a longer period of time. With little effort milk is easily processed to yoghurt and cheese. Only meat products are sold on markets or to slaughterhouses whereas milk products would not last long enough until a far-away city is reached.

P OLITICAL F RAMEWORK C ONDITIONS IN AFGHANISTAN

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The year 2001 is marked by two important events. On the one hand the ruling of the Taliban era declined and on the other hand the period of drought ended. In the second half of the 1990s numerous nomads were forced to give up their traditional lifestyle due to the prolonged drought. Once this crisis was overcome the number of nomads increased and once again they played a major political and economic role in Afghanistan. Hence nomads got 10 out of 249 seats in the Wolesi Jirga, the Afghan lower chamber of the parliament (Puddington/Dunham 2017: 12), under President Hamid Karzai between 2001 and 2014. A department for handling Kuchi affairs was also established. Unfortunately so far it has not helped to reduce the difficulties the Kuchis have to face. The period of drought has only been one central problem of the nomads and their herds. Of no minor importance is the posing threat of blocked exits to their summer grazing’s especially in the area of central Afghanistan, as in Hazarjat. The Kuchis depend on this area as meadow land as well as a passage for their caravans. On the other hand, the same area represents the basis of existence to the Hazara – a sedentary Afghan ethnic group – who rely on it for the purpose of tillage. Until 1979 both ethnic groups had an amicable and economic relationship. The nomads did not only pass through the meadow lands but also helped to harvest and to convey the goods to the bazaars. Throughout the years the land with its caravan routes from the North to the South and vice versa has decreased. There is almost no more space for the caravan routes of the nomads as warlords and other Afghan chief clans have arbitrarily split up the land under themselves. Up to the present day conflicts arise between the nomads and the sedentary Af-

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ghans. Kuchis are despised and segregated by the sedentary population. For example, when the first post-war democratic elections were held in October 2004 nomads were ineligible to vote. This was justified by the nomads being without a permanent residence even though they could have been registered easily at their summer and winter camps. Once more Afghanistan was afflicted by a drought in 2008. By now the country is located completely within the central Asian dry belt. These circumstances forced some of the nomads to become sedentary. They are ranked at the lowest socio economic level among farmers and only a minor part of them has the resources to return to their traditional nomadic life. Another problem that derives from the economic misery and recurring droughts is the poppy growing. Over the last decades of war the agriculture has been largely affected. The land could no longer be cultivated due to the spread mines and devastation of necessary irrigation plants. Growing opium poppy has the major advantage of needing less ground humidity than crops or rice as well as making higher profits. Consequently its growth has strikingly increased and even expanded into the provinces that used to be kept clear. A lot of nomads that had to become sedentary turned into poppy farmers and contribute to the extended narcotic drug growing.

AID P ROJECTS OF FOR THE N OMADS

THE

G ERMAN -AFGHAN I NITIATIVE

Since the founding of the German-Afghan Initiative, in the following GAI, in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) in 2002, the public charity has found various ways to support the nomads. Together with the chiefs of the clans a number of supporting measures have been accomplished to enable the Kuchis to maintain their traditional way of life. Any given support has been in accordance with the ecological balance. For example, if the natural breeding control of the livestock is disregarded, the interplay of vegetation, water supply and animal diseases is easily affected. In the beginning of the project long-term aid could not take place as the country was in a very chaotic state. Therefore immediate emergency assistance was necessary to ensure the survival of the people. Trucks loaded with warm clothing, shoes, blankets and other supplies were sent from Freiburg to West Afghanistan and to the nomads’ area. A lot of citizens from the area of Freiburg, schools, the city of Freiburg as well as the local council supported the action strongly. Relief supplies where shipped together with the humanitarian Afghan Association and the German-Afghan Medical Association. With the financial support of Caritas International food, seeds and san-

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itary products were made available on-site or in Iran. Aid was given to 60.000 people in the villages and to the settlements of the nomads. They were desperately in need as they had lost their livestock as well as their farming land due to the drought and the ongoing war in parts of Afghanistan. Whenever very strong winters occur again, as it was the case in 2008, emergency assistance is set up once more to support the people with food, forage, heating material and warm clothing. Throughout the last 15 years smaller or larger aids for nomads have been made available, like stocking up their herds. The aid has primarily been given to widows. In the area of Adraskan, south of the city Herat, pregnant goats were handed over to 200 widows as well as rice and oil. Even though the widows and their children are accepted and supported by the clan, they have low social status as clan members as long as they do not have any possessions like livestock, jewellery or a tent. The GAI has also helped after floodings have destroyed mud-walled houses of the semi-nomads due to constant rain that had left nothing but devastated land. Building up houses, assembly halls as well as levees to enhance and ensure the water supply of the settlements are parts of the GAI’s work. In June 2015 the vaccination of the livestock was the main concern of the nomads of the province Herat, as several diseases had decimated and spread such as sheep and goat pox, splenic fever, contagious caprine pleuropneumonia, hoof and mouth disease, and small ruminant pest. All in all over 12.000 animals where vaccinated, mostly sheep. Unfortunately more than 3000 animals stayed unvaccinated as they were still out grazing in the mountains.

E DUCATIONAL P ROJECTS

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The GAI puts special emphasis on obtaining the traditional lifestyle of the nomads. Such being the case a focus is put on investments for education as well as building schools within the nomadic areas. In the West of Afghanistan – in the areas of Adraskan, Gharati, Zulmabad and Schotordaran – school buildings where mainly made out of clay within the last 10 years. School sponsorships ensure their continued existence whereas sponsorships for children created conditions for them to go to school. Apart from constructing a school building, a well was sunk in Schotordaran, followed by a small public bath called hammam (Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e.V. 2016). In addition the hygienic purpose, the hammam serves also an important social purpose, as women meet for an afternoon and chat. By now the irrigation plants – Karesen – have been built up again which got destroyed during

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the war. Hence three villages are connected to water supplies and agriculture starts to develop. A lot of nomads have relocated their settlements close to the wells. As nomadic caravans pass by the wells too, they have the dream of reanimating trade and setting up a trade centre. There used to be a caravanserai back in the old days where goods were traded between nomads and sedentary villagers. If more nomads become sedentary within this area, a continuous schooling of the children could take place as they would stay for a longer period of time or even for the whole year within the village. The Afghan government has always been trying to make nomads sedentary in order to get an overview of how many people live within the country and to include them within political decisions. To achieve this goal small villages, socalled Schahrak, were established in the beginning in North Afghanistan, starting in Kabul. The government succeeded partly in turning them into semi-nomads. Men trek with their herds while women and their children stay back with some men of their clan. Within those settlements schools are being built. By 2012 already 125 schoolhouses had been built. Further 500 schools were supposed to be finished until 2014, but only a part was finished by 2016 – 300 of them for nomad children. Financing itinerant teachers is another project to ensure the education of the nomadic youngsters. Since 2012 the Swedish committee cooperates with the Afghan government and trains future male itinerant teachers. They are Kuchis themselves as well as related to the clans and will teach children along with male adults. Teaching nomadic children is rather challenging as they only attend class for a short period of time. On top of that the students are often edgy and speak different dialects depending on their regional origin. Nomad women are supposed to be educated within the field of hygiene as their number of cases of child mortality is one of the highest worldwide.

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Figure 1: Nomad children at school (2nd to 4th grade) in Adraskan, Herat Province

© German-Afghan Initiative

In 2007 the Afghan Ministry of Education announced that they would establish “a National Institute of Curriculum Development that should be responsible for the coordination of all curricular needs in the country, including general primary and secondary education, Islamic education, early childhood education and education for children with special learning needs” such as the Kuchis and presented a draft budget of approximately $ 195 million for this development (Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2007: 17). Nine years later the same ministry points out improvements as well as shortcomings in its latest National Education Strategic Plan. One major target is still to provide equitable educational opportunities for disadvantaged sections of society such as the nomadic population in order to ensure equal access to education (Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2016: 42). Furthermore, the ministry is aware of the fact, that Kuchis still have low primary attendance and that effective actions are necessary to ensure they attend and complete education (Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2016: 20). The nomadic population, estimated at 1.5 million people, still belongs to the poorest, most disadvantaged and least educated ones “placing an increased burden on the capacity of the education system” (Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan 2016: 17) in Afghanistan. If one compares the objectives in both documents, it is evi-

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dent that the improvement of the educational system for the Kuchis can only be minimal, since the policy purposes have not changed much.

F INAL R EMARKS Nomads seem to become more and more forgotten throughout time (Becker 2010): In the past they used to cover Afghanistan’s demand for meat, fat and milk products. The increasing droughts, war and political turmoil have limited the nomads’ lifestyle massively. Even though they have adapted as much as possible their natural resources keep on fading dramatically. Year by year the dry belt zone is expanding and Afghan rivers fill with sand more and more. Consequently an increasing number of nomads consider becoming sedentary at the edge of towns and to work as day labourers. It also has to be said that the land used for agriculture is also decreasing due to droughts. In comparison to sedentary farmers, nomads are used to sustainable agriculture within the challenging conditions of deserts and steppes. Therefore it is highly sensible to obtain their lifestyle as they are also able to live with very little under rough circumstances. Afghanistan is fighting a lot of environmental problems caused by deforestation in the North East, soil erosion, polluted ground water as well as drinking water and contaminated soil. Nomads are used to having little water supplies but it is a necessity to draw water from uncontaminated rivers. Despite all problems – drought, war, withdrawal of grazing lands, diseases, etc. – that Afghan nomads have had to face since thousands of years and are facing nowadays they have found a way to adjust themselves to the most complicated conditions. When asking a nomad how he would like to live he will answer: under the open sky. They do believe that God has created them for the purpose of trekking with their herds through valleys and over mountains to their dying day.

L IST

OF

R EFERENCES /B IBLIOGRAPHY

Becker, Ulrike (2010). Länder, Menschen, Abenteuer – Afghanistan: Unterwegs mit Nomaden [Dokumentation]. Baden-Baden: SWR. Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V. (2016). Schotordaran. Verfügbar unter http://www.deutsch-afghanische initiative.de/projekte/hilfe_fuer_nomaden/ schotordaran.html (17.11.2017).

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Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (2016). Das LänderInformations-Portal: Afghanistan. Verfügbar unter https://www.liportal.de/ afghanistan/wirtschaft-entwicklung/ (17.11.2017). Puddington, Arch & Dunham, Jennifer et al. (2017). Freedom in the World 2016: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberities. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (Eds.) (2016). National Education Strategic Plan (2017-2021). PDF-Document. Kabul, Afghanistan. Ministry of Education, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (Eds.) (2007). National Education Strategic Plan for Afghanistan 1385-1389. PDF-Document. Kabul, Afghanistan.

How Afghan Embroiderers from Laghmani Discover Writing as a Tool for Communication P ASCALE G OLDENBERG

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Laghmani, a small village settlement within the province of Parwan, is located in the Shomali Plain just south of the Panjshir Valley. Life in this rural area of Afghanistan changed dramatically due to the ruling of the Taliban, as people had to flee several times. The village is the traditional homeland of the Tajiks, the second most prominent ethnic group after the Pashtuns. Consequently, priorities of the people shifted and cultural techniques that were part of everyday life culture such as hand embroidery have disappeared. Traditionally every young woman used to embroider a ‘tshadri’, a full-body veil, for herself in a non-profit context. Embroideries were also made on festive clothing, borders of sleeves and trousers as well as various accessories for family members. Also draperies in various forms and sizes for covering a pile of blankets were embroidered. In 2008 about fifty embroideries were questioned through an oral survey by Pascale Goldenberg, the founder and leader of the embroidery project in Laghmani. These women stated that they had embroidered a ‚tshadri‘ for the last time during the last years of the Taliban ruling. When extreme living conditions had finally eased, female Afghans did not intend to start embroidery again as they considered it to be backward. In their opinion the war had taken away their opportunity to develop towards a more modern society. Therefore, they rather wanted to be modern and hence regarded hand embroidery as old-fashioned. Nonetheless, the hand-embroidery project was initiated to enable the women to raise an income.

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I NTERESTING F ACTS ABOUT THE H AND -E MBROIDERY P ROJECT FOR F EMALES IN L AGHMANI The project was founded in 2004 by the Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative (German-Afghan Initiative, GAI) in Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) and has ever since been run by Pascale Goldenberg (Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative 2016). In order to keep the cultural technique alive, the project suggested to women from three villages to take up embroidery again. Today the project supports approximately 200 women who create about 4000 pieces per quarter. By buying their embroideries and selling them to Europe, the project is able to be self-sufficient. The wages enable the embroiderers to feed their families. Some have even attained financial independence. Other important aspects are the personal encounters between the local participants and the project managers and the long-term cooperation. The embroiderers themselves design the motif squares, which are usually 8 x 8 cm in size. The embroideries represent either traditional patterns or contemporary themes that convey impressions of their everyday life in the villages. The most common technique is the ‘bokhara stitch’ (pokhtadusi Farsi), a layerstitching technique which is used to cover surfaces. One of the main goals of the embroidery project is to build bridges between cultures. For example, it encourages the integration of the squares into textile works in Europe. Also the project regularly organises competitions in Europe and its resulting products are displayed within exhibitions. It illustrates how people of different origins and backgrounds can enter into dialogues by using the language of textile arts (Goldenberg 2009).

T HE T RADITION

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During Pascale Goldenberg’s first journey in 2005, she got an idea of what it must feel like to be illiterate: On the one hand she met people who did not know how to hold a pen or open a book, and on the other hand she experienced people with no concept of written communication who are unfamiliar with the advantages of the production of reading and writing. Therefore, communication is based on oral interaction and plays a vital role in everyday life. It also explains that skills, knowledge and traditions are passed on in Farsi, a local dialect spoken in the province of Parwan. At the very beginning of the project, hardly any of the embroiderers had ever considered the possibility of written communication, nor had they missed it.

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Traditionally information is forwarded orally. Things are constantly narrated and commented on, and narrated again, so oral transmission of ideas represents the current cultural activity. Small children already listen to narration all day long, thus learning much about the world, in direct dialogue or as group members. It is not only everyday life that is commented on, there are also stories about the family, as well as political or historical events.

W RITING AS A T OOL FOR C OMMUNICATION – A P ROCESS I S S TARTED Written communication started to play an increasing role to the embroiderers. Not only due to the regular meetings with German team members of the project, the women raised their awareness for writing throughout the last 10 years. Also sending the children to school had a vital impact on these developments. The very first embroidered letters were stitched next to or into a pattern, for example the letter “A” next to an apple. English school books of brothers or sons were used as a creative source. Often the embroidered motifs were used to describe a word and therefore unconscious literacy took place in English (Latin letters) as well as in Dari, the literary language of Farsi. The piece “Hen and Pencil” embroidered by 12-year-old student Nadjiba from the village Kâkârâ shows this technique too. Figure 1: Embroidery of a hen and a pencil, both as symbols and in letters

© Nadjiba, Photo: Goldenberg

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Logos and brand names from clothing or packaging were used as a basis for letter-stitching. For example, illiterate Mahjan from Kâkârâ plays with the name of the sports brand Adidas. The letter “A” is used more frequently than others – perhaps because the Afghanistan begins with an “A”, too. Matahugol from the village Sufian payin, also illiterate, produced several squares with an embroidered crest. When asked for an explanation, she showed a plastic shopping bag with the crest logo where she kept her embroidery materials. These shopping bags are used to pack the groceries at the Tsharikar bazaar. (The nearest bigger city is approximately 12 km further north and is also the capital of the province Parwan.) She had started with copying this logo and three months later she presented an interesting graphic variation of the theme that she had worked out herself: The capital letters “P”, “N” and “E” were arranged on a striped background. The creative treatment of the model shows a clever design, repeating the letter “I” countless times in the form of stripes. Such logos and signs have always been present in the women’s lives, but so far they had not paid any attention to them. By now they recognise them as signs, identify them as letters, and enjoy reproducing them. Figure 2: Shopping bag as an inspirational source

© Goldenberg

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Figure 3: Embroidery with capital letters taken from a shopping brand

© Matahugol, Photo: Goldenberg

In the meantime, this process is showing a very satisfying development as the women have started to embroider chunks and phrases with a clear communicative purpose. No one would have imagined this a few years back.

T HE S ENSE

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The very obvious presence of more than 30 nations in Afghanistan made the women in the villages realise that international communication is omnipresent. This was reinforced when electricity was brought to Laghmani by the end of 2011. Soon some wealthier families had TVs and consequently got insights into the rest of the world. Even though they had not met foreigners themselves, they were aware that the nearest hospital had been built by the Koreans or that a new school was built by the Japanese and that mines were cleared by the French, or that other programmes were carried out by various different nations. Some Afghan men are even employed by the Americans, either in other provinces or in the nearby US base Bagram. Many women make embroideries of the Afghanistan map, its flag or province names etc. They show their strong awareness of their Afghan identity by sending their embroideries into the world. Therefore, their works should earn appreciation as their first collective written message. The following image from Simin, a graduated girl from Kâkârâ, shows a spontaneously stitched map of Afghanistan with its 28 provinces.

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Figure 4: Embroidery of Afghanistan and its provinces

© Simin, Photo: Goldenberg

T HANK Y OU M ESSAGES , G REETINGS , W ELL -W ISHING , C OMPLAINTS AND R EQUESTS Thank you messages for foreigners, Germans, the GAI or personal messages to Pascale Goldenberg are sent regularly and sometimes they are also signed, which indicates strong self-assurance. Usually the writing takes up the complete square, showing a strong colour contrast in terms of writing and background. After so many years the women have understood perfectly well that they can communicate with the team members of the GAI through writing. Every now and then even complaints and requests are put down on paper as well as embroideries on cloth. Here are some examples: • On a large 12 x 55 cm piece the illiterate woman Shala from the village Qala-

e-Kona embroidered very carefully “I have no money, I am a poor woman. I have to do embroidery. I hope you will always help me. Dear Pascale, greetings, and stay well. Shala.”

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• Soraya from Sufian bala, also illiterate, probably asked a man to write her

message in the margin of an embroidered piece “Greetings from Soraya. My work is very good, but why do you pay so little?” • Rasuhagul from Qala-e-Kona complains in an embroidered square in blue writing on an almond-green background “There is always too little blue thread.” Such a rare story implies an enormous achievement: As she wanted to communicate, she had asked a man to write these few words with a ball point directly on the fabric. Afterwards she stitched them which took her probably 6 to 8 hours. Coming from a western culture where written communication is nothing special and at the same time arts and crafts are becoming marginalised, while time efficiency is one of the highest priorities, the question arises why the message was not simply jotted down on a piece of paper. One interpretation could be that the common ground between Rasuhagul and Pascale Goldenberg is embroidery work, i.e. the material (cloth and thread) as well as the tool (the needle). For Rasuhagul communication is only possible on that level as she is illiterate. However, she is used to working with her everyday materials, like cloth instead of paper and needle and thread instead of ball point. At the same time, she can be sure that the message is delivered, while a note on paper might get lost. Other stitched messages are sent spontaneously “just for fun”, simply expressing their joy of life with no special intention. Shazia, a young woman from Kâkârâ, puts her message spontaneously in the margin of the embroidered cloth “I am giving the bird a letter with my greetings. Best wishes for the New Year.” Shazia is illiterate, but her young sister Rubina has finished school.

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Figure 5: Embroidery with bird and flowers alongside New Years greetings

© Shazia, Photo: Goldenberg

Hatefa from Sufian payin spontaneously did three strips, one below the other. She is illiterate, but her eldest sister Jila learned to read and write during the Russian occupation. Years later, she ran a GAI literacy programme in her village. When Hatefa was asked why she had done these long stripes, she answered, “Just like that,” without any explanation. Each of these stripes measures 8.5 x 43 cm, which makes it a rather large piece. But it was a spontaneous production, and its purchase was uncertain even though the proceeds would equal the income of 17 squares. The writing on the upper strip is clearly legible, even the space between the three words “how – are – you” is represented. Only the question mark is missing. Unfortunately, the Latin as well as the Dari writing of the middle strip are incomprehensible, consequently this communication attempt must be regarded as failed. And, when asked three months later, Hatefa could not tell what she had wanted to write. The meaning on the third strip can be deciphered at a closer look. The difficulties are missing letters and spaces between words. Taking this into account, one can read these three words “Hello Mi(ss) Pask(a)l”, with the letter ‘s’ being written inversely.

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Figure 6: Spontaneous embroideries by Hatefa

© Hatefa, Photo: Goldenberg

“I, Zarghuna, send greetings and pray for you, dear Pascale, who lives in Germany.” This was stitched by Zarghuna, an illiterate from Qala-e-Kona in one of the usual 9 x 9.5 cm squares. Shala from Qala-e-Kona, another illiterate, made a short poem. Fitting the season, each word on the 44 cm band is in a different colour: “Spring has come, spring has come, my flower, my dear Pascale, it is time to germinate (meaning: to start working), my flower.” The different examples show how words in textile art can engage the viewer and express ideas that cannot be conveyed otherwise (Impey 2013).

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It is still an Afghan tradition that parents arrange marriages for their offspring. The determining factor is not love, but to serve the family’s and the clan’s interests. A girl has to say ‘yes’, knowing that far-reaching agreements have already been made. A girl simply must trust her mother to make decisions in her best interests. There are clans where the betrotheds have never met before the wedding. In more modern families, they can meet regularly for months, like in the case of Hamida from the village of Kâkârâ who had finished her school education and whose dream had been to become a pilot. After having spent a day and a night

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per week with her future in-laws – within the areas which are intended for females only – she had finally married a young man from the village of Qala-eKona. The point was to find out how well she would fit in the women’s community. This arranged marriage seems to work out well, just like Lutfia’s, an illiterate from Sufian bâlâ village, who got married to a young tailor from Kabul. Unfortunately, these cases are rare and the young women often complain about their lives as affianced. When asked privately, they even state very directly that they are not happy. However, they are also proud to have been chosen, and they know very well that they can only gain the clan’s respect and acceptance when they give birth to children, preferably boys. Having been brought up not to complain, they bear their lot silently. Nonetheless, in numerous embroideries love is addressed. It seems that in their images they venture to express things they would never dare to articulate in words. From the traditional songs and tales, as well as from the Bollywood movies that they can occasionally watch, they create their concept of love and the corresponding feelings that most of them will always be denied. The yearning for such feelings is frequently, collectively, expressed by embroidered heart motifs. As females are not taught to express their emotions through writing or arts, embroidery gives them the chance to deal with them individually in a creative way. A wide variety of love symbols is used, for example the (usually red) heart pierced by an arrow, from which blood is dripping that is caught in a saucer. Additionally, if there is some space left, the following symbols are used: a weeping eye and a butterfly burning its wings on a lit candle. These symbols of love are often combined and represent a kind of embroidered symbolic language.

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Figure 7: Embroidery of a variety of symbols of love

© Rahima, Photo: Goldenberg

T HE N EW R OLE

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In Afghanistan, school is compulsory until the age of 12, but when a father does not send his children, nobody comes to the house to take them to school. In 2004, for the rural population only 60 km north of the capital Kabul, tradition only rarely allowed girls to go to school. When asked for the reason at that time, the answer was: “What for? They don’t need it. It’s no use for their household duties, anyway.” There was also the argument that they did not have the time, having so much to do around the house and on the plot of land every day. At least, this argument gave hope that the father might allow the girls to go to school, if only they had more time. Another wide-spread – and very reasonable – argument was (and sometimes still is) that the long walk is too dangerous. As the conviction that going to school is advantageous also for girls is gaining acceptance, solutions have been found: Girls will wait for each other to walk to school together in a group. The willingness to send girls to school is very different throughout the various villages. Almost all the girls from Kâkârâ, which is directly on the main road from Kabul to Tsharikar, are now attending school. Many of them graduate, whereas the girls from Sufian, which is situated farther east, have only started to go to school recently. A Japanese organisation has built a primary school directly at the outskirts of the village for enabling the 7-year-olds to attend school. The topic of school is also presented in the embroideries and is becoming more frequent, no matter whether the embroiderer herself attends school or not.

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There are images of girls on their way to school, school buildings, classrooms with boards, (female) teachers and students and school materials, such as books or pencils. Roqia from Kâkârâ, who goes to school herself, deals with this topic frequently and produces fascinating images, such as the embroidery with a stack of books shows. Figure 8: Embroidery showing different symbols connected with education

© Roqia, Photo: Goldenberg

This new development of sending girls to school has been one of the greatest changes in rural areas within the last ten years. In 2004, those who were allowed to attend school were a minority. Even in 2016, there are still some girls and boys not going to school, but these are exceptions. Basically, it is still a decision of the father but sometimes mothers fight for their children, including their daughters. Shila, an illiterate from Qala-e-Kona, has four daughters. She was married very young, probably at the age of nine. In the middle of the raging war, torn from her family so young, she had to endure extremely hard years. Her family consists of her husband, her father-in-law, a sister-in-law, and her four daughters Shewa, Jila, Enjila and Waheda. They live in poverty; the little plot of land is not their own. Shila wanted to give her daughters a better life. Her daughters were already allowed to attend the Koran school in the village but Shila was not satisfied with that. She said that she addressed the topic of school when talking to her husband every day for half a year. But he refused: “What will the neighbours say?” At last, however, Shila prevailed and the oldest girls were allowed to attend primary school. After their first years, the father did not understand why he should allow them to go to a secondary school. A year passed with the two older girls staying at home, while their younger sisters went to school. Shila was

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not satisfied with this, and kept talking to her husband, until he finally agreed. Now, in 2016, only the youngest girl is still in school, where she is even best student in class. Her sisters have finished their university studies to become primary school teachers or are on their way of finishing their teacher studies. Their father is very proud of having such intelligent and successful daughters. Now, however, Shila is of a different opinion: She thinks her daughters do not have enough time to help her in the house. The embroidery programme financially supports each embroiderer or her daughters who continue their education after finishing secondary school by paying them 30 € per month. Since the start, ten girls have managed to become primary school teachers. Sonja is studying economy, Shabana does her language study in Dari, and Najla has just finished her training as a nurse.

T HE S IGNATURES AN E XPERIMENT

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Over the years, some women came up with the idea of signing their cloths with a ballpoint pen or an embroidery. This development prompted me to create a collection of embroidered signatures and to ask each woman for her signature. Some of them had a man sign their piece such as “Khowaida, daughter of Said Hamid” or “Sonja, daughter of Ibrahim”. But there were also embroidered signatures such as “Marri, daughter of Mohammed, poor Mohammed”; and proud Matahugol, who used a complete square to produce an aesthetic embroidery in Dari, embroidered: “This is Matahugol’s personal work.” When collecting the embroidered pieces in the villages, it is a continuous concern to make sure that the woman under contract, not somebody else, has really produced the pieces. The signatures also ensure that they will be paid. In the villages it had to be explained what a signature actually is: one’s own name designed in an unmistakable way to be individually identifiable. Each woman received a small piece of fabric, about the size of a handkerchief, to fit in their embroidery frames. They were asked to stitch their signature, but were not supposed to fill all the area, as usual with the normal squares; instead, the writing was meant to look like a sign. The choice of language was theirs. The women realised the opportunity to earn some additional money, so each of them delivered her small piece after three months, even if it was not correct. For them, who were among the best embroiderers, it was a surprise that the items, which had evidently been created with much effort, did not come up to the standards. The fabric sometimes still showed traces of ball points, which testified

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to the writers’ great efforts. There are no two pieces alike. Some are only done in one colour, but most are very colourful. Some show thin lines, as if drawn on paper; others spread in large segments. Some are strictly graphic; others are loaded with figurative motifs. Some are only in Dari, some have both languages, although isolated Latin characters are rare. Some stuck to the simple signature, others decorated it lavishly, probably for the fun of it or hoping to earn more money. As the following example shows, the experiment resulted in a fireworks display of colours and patterns, as diverse as the women in the villages. Figure 9: Embroidery of Wadja’s decorated signature

© Wadja, Photo: Goldenberg

F INAL R EMARKS During the conference “Teacher Education in Afghanistan”, held in autumn 2015, the embroidered signatures were presented, and their development and designs were discussed in workshops. For the exhibition of the Afghan embroideries, fourth-grade students of the Reinhold-Schneider-Schule in Freiburg (Germany) and students of the University of Education in Freiburg integrated embroidered squares of the Laghmani project into picture stories. This kind of textile art work is typical for several school projects that took place during the last few years (Goldenberg 2016). By putting the embroidered squares together to make picture books and create storylines, the student groups of the department Fashion and Textile were inspired by the Afghan everyday life and the political situation there. They developed stories like “Sami & Jara – children from an Afghan nomad tribe” or “The search for freedom”. In other textile seminars the embroidered squares were expanded us-

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ing textile materials as well as several techniques like appliqué techniques, hand or machine embroideries, dyeing or printing on fabric as well as adjustable hook & loop elements. Intercultural and transcultural education did not only take place during the textile seminars but also in the context of the exhibition and the workshop by focusing on the unique educational situation of female Afghan embroiderers. Integrating the embroidered squares in a picture book enabled both student groups to deal with the matter from different perspectives. Theoretical aspects as well as the hands-on approach in combination with designing allowed all students to reflect about the cultural background of the textile objects. In fact, they got emotionally involved and identified themselves with the Afghan females and their individual cases. All in all, the embroidery project showed how illiterates became familiar with written communication through a textile cultural technique that is part of their tradition. On the one hand, embroideries are both a nonverbal and a verbal kind of aesthetic communication, on the other hand, they also bear witness to Afghan everyday culture, and textile culture in particular. The textile skills have always been passed down from woman to woman along with the possibilities of aesthetic expression. They almost got lost through the turmoil of war but were resurrected through the GAI’s “low budget embroidery” project in Laghmani.

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Deutsch-Afghanische Initiative e. V. (2016). Stickprojekt Laghmani: Übersicht. Verfügbar unter http://www.deutsch-afghanische-initiative.de/projekte/ frauenprojekte/stickprojekt_laghmani.html (03.11.2017). Goldenberg, Pascale (2009). Fäden verbinden. Threads unite. Augsburg: Maro Verlag. Goldenberg, Pascale (2016). Guldusi: Schulprojekte. Verfügbar unter http://www.guldusi.com/schulprojekte.html/ (03.11.2017). Impey, Sara (2013). Text in Textile Art. Using Lettering and Fonts with Stitch and Embroidery. London: Ratsford.

History Alive Cultural Education as a Key to Multicultural Consciousness and Understanding L AILA S AHRAI

S TARTING P OSITION The integration of people with a migrant background often focuses on the culture of remembrance in the majority society. Above all, it conveys an image of history and social norms, which is based on the cultural identity of the majority society. Many people with a migrant background feel excluded from this culture of remembrance or cannot find a connection to it, especially as they are shaped in one way or another by their culture of origin with its culture-specific values and norms. Thus, they look for alternatives in their quest for cultural identity. They often believe to find it in religious communities or in compatriotic associations. Here, oftentimes social-religious codes are communicated and mediated. A historical image though, which these individuals could use as a base in their search for cultural identity, and which they could link with social and cultural norms of the majority society, is often missed by the young migrants. Most of them are not even aware of the possibility of realizing such an image. The project History Alive aimed to contribute to the development of a crosscultural historical consciousness. At the same time, it keeps strengthening the intercultural consciousness in a society that is multicultural but shaped unilaterally by the cultural identity of the majority of the population. This is illustrated below.

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To be able to assess the feasibility of such a complex project, I first carried out this project as a pilot project with children and young people with an Afghan migration background. Currently about 250.000 people with an Afghan migration background live in Germany. These people are considered to be among the best-integrated immigrant groups. Children and youth with Afghan roots, no matter where they were born, do not represent a problematic group, but are rather classified as very successful in terms of education. Accordingly, their parents are presumed to be very ambitious concerning education. Doubtlessly, these are very positive outcomes; nevertheless, young Afghans often connect Afghanistan with war, poverty and necessity. To change this and to support them in finding their cultural identity, the project had to be tailored especially to this target group. Age and social background were not considered. Originally, it was planned to include German adolescents as well in order to realize a synchronic character of reflecting history. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was quite difficult to recruit young German people for this project in that short period of time that I had at hand. So, I decided to carry out this project only with young Afghan migrants, who nevertheless worked out the German history in the parallel epoch to their Afghan history topics. In doing so, they considered historical developments in both countries in comparison. The project was carried out in the Leipziger Osten, a district in the eastern part of Leipzig, which is known as inner city with a high number of migrants. Afghan people, most of whom fled during the Taleban era, are also accommodated in this district. It was rather easy to convince the young Afghan people to participate in this project. I had already lived in Leipzig in the same district and knew many Afghan families from other occasions; e.g. I had helped their children with their homework, I had interpreted and written official letters and so on. Our relationship had become closer and the families were at ease with me. Mutual visits and further familial occasions, like birthday and wedding parties as well as traditional feasts had strengthened the reciprocal reliance and mutual friendship. During these occasions, I had become acquainted with other Afghan families and their children. Due to these acquaintanceships, I was already known within the Afghan community in this district. During this process, they got to know a part of my family; so they knew who I was, what I did, how I worked and that a joint cooperation would be fruitful for both sides.

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T HE I DEA After studying the Afghan history autodidactically, I came up with the idea of comparing countries at different epochs and thus using history as a medium for integration, cultural education and creation of identity. I was personally fascinated to find out so many interesting things about my home country and birthplace, things that made me proud and self-confident. At the same time, I realized how boring my history lessons in German school had been, where we were only instructed in German and European history. I had no relation to all of that, everything was abstract and clueless. The only way to succeed was to learn by rote. By reprocessing the Afghan history, I could immediately connect things and events, literature and the history of arts of the country. The personality of my father (who was a poet himself and culturally engaged) was a great source of inspiration for my engagement in further research on Afghan history and culture. I realized that I couldn’t but share this awareness with everyone who had the same fate, especially because the interest for the German and European history was growing simultaneously. Suddenly, the relations between Orient and Occident became clear, which cannot be comprehensible by a one-way knowledge transfer.

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Now the challenge was to work out a concept and tailor it to the target group. For this purpose, I had some fruitful discussions with the ethnologist and orientalist, Mr. Wolf-Dieter Seiwert, a member of the Centre for European and Oriental Culture (ZEOK e. V). Together, we conceptualized the idea for a German and a non-German population. Afterwards we sharpened this to the Afghan and German history, which was finally carried out only by Afghan children and youth. To convince the Afghan children and youth of my project, I first of all referred to their parents and the young adults. Unexpectedly, they showed great interest. The adults’ enthusiasm created curiosity in the youngsters. Hence, Mr. Seiwert and I organized a meeting in one of the locations of the ZEOKassociation. We invited all the interested young Afghan people mentioned above and their friends. I introduced the project to them, gave a lecture on Afghan history in a chronological order and emphasized that the history of their homeland was being treated critically. The aim was to explore the intercultural relations in

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the country as well as the interrelationships with other countries and cultures throughout history. It was imparted that, by doing this project, they would be enabled to develop an awareness of their culture of origin and at the same time to consider the culture of their new homeland. Artistic and scientific research was intended to permit them to rediscover the diversity of Afghanistan’s history from their own perspective. The work in this project would require contacting associations, libraries and museums. Their families would also be involved by being interrogated about their roots and discussing with them, thus including personal experiences and new perspectives. This would give the youngsters an important mediating role between their parents and the public, while at the same time allowing them to link their new and old homelands. At the end of the lecture, I suggested that everyone could choose an epoch of Afghan history to work on and simultaneously work on the same epoch of German history. So I asked whether somebody was interested. This question became superfluous since everyone was enthusiastic about a certain age and the corresponding topic, whereupon they decided immediately. After the topics were chosen, I informed them about regular meetings that were going to take place during which the updates about their work progress would be exchanged. Then we had to find a common date for our regular meetings and decided to do these on Sundays in the afternoon so that our appointments would not coincide with the school assignments.

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At our next meeting, some of the participants had already gathered some information and presented it. It was very interesting and admirable that some of the children and young people contributed their own suggestions to topics, which I had not had on my list. The result was that the overall project took on a participatory character and was further developed and co-created by the participants. So it also happened that the title of our project Zusammenfinden, which has different meanings in the German language, e.g. get together, come together or people directly or indirectly affected by the same rare conditions, was renamed to History Alive, to which I had no objections. From my artistic point of view, it was very enriching for me, because the exchange created communication and enabled a dialogue, which in turn gave me the inspiration to pursue this form of cooperation and further enrich the project.

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For example, two children wanted to get involved with typical games in different areas of Afghanistan. Among other things, they presented the Gudiparânbâzí (kite flying). So I advised them to build such a kite themselves and to let it fly and then to write and illustrate instructions for kite handicraft and kite flying, e.g.: “What kind of paper do you need? What kind of wood and what thread? How do you put it together? Do the colors and patterns have any meanings? If so, which ones? Which weather conditions are most suitable for kite flying?” This would give everyone the opportunity to build his/her own Afghan kite. One girl was interested in fairy tales. I suggested to collect fairy tales from different ethnic groups, e.g. “[…] fairy tales of the Tadjiks, the Uzbeks, the Pashtuns, the Hazaras, the Paschai, the Nooristani, etc. basically everything that you can find. Find out any similarities or altered forms of the stories. Where could they be originated? How, when and why could they have adopted another form or have changed their morale? What could be possible reasons for such changes? Are there similar fairy tales here in Germany? How old are they? Where could the similarities come from?” Here, a parallel to German history was established as well, using the fairy tales as an example. For example, the young lady found out that the German fairy tale Der Wolf und die Sieben jungen Geißlein (The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids) and the Afghan fairy tale Bôzak-e Chiní (The Chinese/Porcelain Goat) are almost identical. I suggested to her to write the fairy tale in her own words, e.g. “[…] with a description of the individual figures, a description of the landscape and social conditions, the time in which the whole story should be situated, setting it up with suspense, […]” etc. As a next step she could illustrate her self-written fairy tale and place the illustrations at the appropriate text passages like a real book. Later on, she had the idea of rewriting a fairy tale into a drama and staging it together with the other participants. A great idea, especially since it was enriching the group’s cohesion. One of the youngsters decided to study the climate, geography and natural resources of the country. In order to ensure that the comparison with the historical course and the connection to the development of European culture and history would not fall by the wayside, I gave him the following assistance, e.g. on the subject of mineral resources: “What natural resources are there in Afghanistan? How are they used, for what and by whom? According to a study in Afghanistan in the province of Badakhshan, more than 90 percent of the world’s lapis lazuli is to be mined. Famous painters from the Renaissance period in Italy have used lapis lazuli from Badakhshan to make paint (azure and ultramarine) and used it for their famous paintings, such as Giotto di Bondone, a pioneer of the early Renaissance. In Damascus, for example, this rock was imported from Asia with the

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foundation of the Ottoman Empire and incorporated into villas, mosques and castles, as color or gemstones in the walls. It would be exciting if you could find more examples of how and what for this or other rocks from Afghanistan were and still are used. And maybe you’ll find out which famous Italian trader imported on his trip to Asia the lapis lazuli and other exotic treasures into Europe and introduced them there [...]” Two other young people took on the areas of music, fashion and Afghan cuisine. As with all other topics, I insisted on the parallelism of cultural development in the context of time and space in the Orient and the Occident. By asking specific questions, I motivated them to deepen their respective topics. On the subject of music, the following questions were asked: “Which instruments are typically Afghan? Is there a typical Afghan? Which instruments can be assigned to which ethnic groups? Where do they have their origins? Where are possible merging points? How have they evolved? What branches of the individual instruments are there? Try to find parallels to European, American, African and other national instruments.” Fashion in Afghanistan is also a wide range of topic. Therefore, they should first gain an overview of the different national costumes in the different periods of time and become aware of the diversity: “Which national costumes/clothes were fashionable among which ethnic groups at which period in Afghanistan? How has fashion evolved? Find merging points among the different ethnic groups [...]” Likewise, Afghan cuisine should not be underestimated: Here too, it is important to find the various dishes of the different ethnic groups and how they have melted together over the course of history and produced new dishes [...]. I deliberately kept the range of topics that the participants were supposed to work on, quite extended in order not to deprive those interested in reflection through a procedure of self-awareness. The intention was rather to liberally find a topic of individual interest than its elaboration in a scientifically focused manner. The brainstorming character of the project served to undertake a situation analysis in order to figure out the variety of possibilities. Only step-by-step, in the course of our further meetings, the participants concentrated on their individual topic of interest and deepened it further. For example, the young person who dealt with fashion presented interesting clothes, while explaining their meanings within the Afghan society as well as their local origins. Among other things, the Pakol was highlighted – a round headgear for men, which is worn mainly by the Tajik population in northern Afghanistan, but which has spread to Pakistan at the same time. It is made of a special and very elaborately processed wool. Furthermore, he reported about dresses

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on which small round mirrors are sewn and which are mostly produced and worn by the Pashtun ethnic group; he also explained the meaning of the patterns and mirrors on the dresses. The headscarf/veil did not go unnoticed either, especially as it has also led to major political controversies in the West. With similar questions and inspirations, the participants were led to their respective topics which are the following: Settlement of the early Aryans, conceptual interpretation, alienation in National Socialist Germany; The Army of Alexander the Great invades Ariana (Afghanistan); Religions before Islam, invasion of the Arabs, introduction of Islam and its expansion under the Ghaznawids, various diversions of Islam; Invasion of the Mongolians under Changiz Khan in 1220 and their expansion of power among his descendants; Art and Culture of Afghanistan: wedding, hospitality, dances. Each and every one was individually accompanied in terms of content and methodological interests. At the same time, they developed the history of Germany in the corresponding epochs and established a link to Europe. In our regular meetings we discussed the status of their research work. Various research strategies were discussed and a research plan was drawn up for each topic. The implementation phase included visits to libraries, internet research, source analysis, recording eyewitness reports and working with various media such as photography, artistic means (literature, handicrafts, drawings, poster design, etc.). Introductory information on the use of these facilities and methods was provided to all participants, regardless of the subject under discussion. Between the meetings, the young people worked independently on their own topics. At the regular meetings, the current state of affairs was discussed, questions were answered, and further proceedings were reflected on. The results of our meetings were recorded and the instructions and assistance on content and methodology for further work were documented. The young people worked scientifically in a self-learning manner and partially implemented their research results artistically. The entire work was presented publicly at an exhibition with lectures and a Fashion Show at the Socio-cultural Centre Leipzig and received a very positive resonance. Associations and institutions showed great interest in cooperating with us. The project was implemented in a period of about twelve months, since the young people could only dedicate a limited amount of time to this project due to their school commitments. Originally, the plan was to publish a brochure containing all the information collected on the various countries of origin, but for financial reasons it was not possible to produce it.

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Unfortunately, some of them had formative experiences due to the wars of the last decades and these did not go unnoticed here either. The participants of the group had different ethnic origins. In the course of the project, for example, I noticed some discomfort in the group, which was probably influenced by their parental homes. From their point of view, I gave a slightly more positive weighting to the actions of one ethnic group over the others. Some of them felt disadvantaged and expressed their resentment. My clarifications concerned the fact that the project was ultimately about getting an overall picture of Afghanistan in which everybody identifies him-/herself as an Afghan and not only as members of fragmented ethnic groups. I did not know these distinctions and was quite perplex about their reactions. In the days of my parents there were indeed prejudices regarding other ethnicities in Afghanistan, too. They also made jokes about each other, but it was by far not such an ethnopolitical issue. It was only during the cooperation within this project that I became very much aware of how torn up the Afghan society had become in recent years and how quickly it assigned blame to the respective other ethnic groups for any conflict. So even our project was not spared from political conflicts. There were many different points of view expressed by diverse ethnic groups within the team concerning controversial historical events. Nevertheless, we were able to use these controversies constructively in order to illustrate differentiated views. I tried to factually explain that these differences in opinion are very positive for our work, since we could now understand why conflicts arise at all. Most of the time, they arise when people ascribe positive attitudes just to themselves and their ethnic group while attributing everything negative to the other. Every person has positive and negative characteristics and so does every ethnic group. With these relatively simple comparisons, I mitigated the situation so that it could not escalate any further. Surely, everybody did understand, but one noticed how strongly emotionalized the surviving dependants of war still are.

R ÉSUMÉ All in all, the project was, however, a great success, even if we faced temporal and financial barriers and despite the fact that ethnic disruptions tried to split us here as well. The success was also noticeable in the fact that each and every one developed great enthusiasm and had the desire and pleasure to help shape the project with diligence and seriousness and to work on their topics as well as possible.

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They learned to get involved and to participate in the project; they pursued their own ideas and developed methods to illustrate them, which, in my perspective, in turn contributed to the positive development of their personality. This again was expressed in the cooperation within the group and was for the benefit of everyone. At the same time, they acquired knowledge on Afghan and German history, so that they could communicate it to others. Thus, not only the ethnic groups within the team found cohesion, but forging the bridge to Germany and Europe showed how similar people are, even if they live in very different areas, not to mention the many different social codes. In addition, there was a mutual intergenerational transfer of knowledge between parents and their children. Both sides could benefit from each other, e.g. by the parents reporting from their experiences, how they witnessed history or how they know it from narrations by their parents and grandparents and how their children on the other hand were able to convey what they had gathered from books and other sources. In this way, historical ambiguities could be supplemented and lead to new insights. Accordingly, it was possible to see German history from different angles and to better understand the connections. A positive reference was made to Afghanistan and Germany and their historical occurrences. The participants were visibly strengthened and proud, had more selfconfidence and self-assurance. They so to speak shaped their own cultural identity themselves, which, however, was created as a plural identity – not excluding, but complementing German identity. The parents also gained from the learning process and were impressed by the whole project as well as by the work of their children. They also expressed their admiration for me, so that a feeling of self-confidence and gratitude mingled in me. I thanked them for their confidence and their willingness to participate indirectly in this project. They helped to shape our project and enriched it accordingly. Without these Afghan families and their children, the project would not have been possible in this form. Thanks to all these participants, this project proceeded in an exemplary manner: each and every one could profit from one another. Hence, a fruitful basis for further projects was laid. In the course of our project, even before the title Zusammenfinden was renamed to History Alive, we were invited by the Leipziger citizen radio, Radio Blau, to talk about our project. We were invited by the radio station Zwischenraum (interspace-multilingual, multi-generational and multi-cultural broadcasting) to talk about our project. They described our project as follows: “The Zusammenfinden project: In the first October broadcast of Zwischenraum you can learn how the work of young Afghan people with art, culture and

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history of their homeland increases their self-esteem, how it serves them as a support for their integration and also imparts their intercultural competences. Five sympathetic and bright young people […] and their dedicated project manager provided us with information about the education policy project Zusammenfinden.” The visual artist Laila Sahrai explores the history and culture of her home country thematically with the kids like a fellow student […] (Radio Blau 2012, translation by the author).

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Radio Blau (2012). Zusammenfinden – ein Projekt zur Stärkung interkultureller Kompetenzen. October 4th. Retrieved from https://radiozwischenraum. wordpress.com/tag/afghanistan/ (06.08.2018).

The Visual Heritage of Afghanistan Photographic Testimonials between Destruction, Decay and Oblivion D OMINIC W IRZ , A NKE S CHÜRER -R IES & P AUL B UCHERER -D IETSCHI

Photographs which tell of the times before the turmoil in Afghanistan are practically non-existent in Afghanistan. Radical ideologists targeted the cultural roots of the country in the past decades and destroyed millions of images to make space for their own beliefs. First, in 1978, communist activists burned all the prerevolutionary photographs which were seen as remains of a bourgeoisie past. Then, from 1996 onwards, religious fundamentalists hunted down all images of living creatures as this sort of representation was blasphemy in their eyes. Today, after almost 40 years of war, exile, collateral and intentional destruction, the country lacks visual heritage with which it can display the achievements of the past to younger generations: something which is worth protecting; something on which a positive national identity can be based upon; moments of pride. Towers of Knowledge The main aim of Phototheca Afghanica is to reach the Afghan people. The people’s interest in authentic historical images – and thus the need to provide access to further photographs – has been demonstrated by a travelling exhibition called “Towers of Knowledge”. The exhibition consists of five separate units, so-called “towers”, each summarizing a particular part of Afghan history. Showing images of historic buildings and former personalities, the travelling exhibition was designed to reach the Afghan public, especially children and young people. Therefore, 68 copies of this exhibition – two for each of the 34 provinces

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of Afghanistan – are currently circulating through the 11.000 schools. The first presentation turned out to be a real attraction as students started to take pictures of the historical photographs with their mobile phones. And even Afghan president Karzai was deeply moved when he looked at the first prototype of the exhibition. The project was commissioned by the Afghan Ministry of Education in 2008 and opened in July 2010 at the German High School in Kabul. It was devised by the Swiss Afghanistan Institute and financed by the governments of Germany, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. Figure 1: The five “Towers of Knowledge”

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Paul Bucherer

T HE P HOTOGRAPHIC C OLLECTIONS OF THE S WISS AFGHANISTAN I NSTITUTE AS A C RADLE OF H ISTORY Images are an important source to convey values, especially in a semi-literate society, as it still exists in Afghanistan. For this reason, the Swiss Afghanistan Institute established the project Phototheca Afghanica. Its aim is to collect images of historic Afghanistan, to preserve them and make them accessible for the Afghan people.

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The primary source of Phototheca Afghanica is the institution’s own image archives which comprises approximately 50.000 photographs. In addition to the visual material, the archives also contain important written documents that were entrusted to the institute for processing by private persons and other institutions. The oldest available images date from 1869 and document the visit to India by the Afghan Amir of the time. As mentioned above, the pre-1978 photographs were almost completely destroyed in their country of origin. So, even recent photographs stored at the institute in Switzerland are of a similar historic value as old ones. The overall significance of the institute’s visual collection cannot be anticipated at present, as most of the collections that have found their way to Switzerland have not yet been catalogued. The Swiss Afghanistan Institute The Swiss Afghanistan Institute (SAI), officially registered as Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, is a politically and religiously neutral institution. Over a period of 40 years, the institute made its mark by systematically researching and documenting Afghan history and culture. From October 1998 to March 2007, Paul Bucherer, head and founder of the SAI, curated the Afghanistan Museum in Exile. The archaeological and ethnographic objects temporarily safeguarded in this museum were repatriated from Switzerland to the Afghan National Museum in Kabul in 2007. Moreover, the SAI is engaged in cultural rebuilding on the spot. For instance, the institute’s archive could be of assistance in reconstructing the Giant Buddhas of Bamiyan with the help of the only existing high-resolution stereo-photogrammetric shots in the world. Other photographs kept at the SAI were used to restore the famous Moghul garden Bagh-e Babur, the buildings of the Afghan National Gallery and the Afghan National Museum, and even the oldest parts of the former Royal – now Presidential – Palace, the Koti Baghcha. Due to such references, its international reputation, and strengthened by years of experience, the Swiss Afghanistan Institute also became a rich source of images and photographic collections of Afghanistan. Today, organizations like the Afghan Ministry of Culture, the Afghan Ministry of Education or the Swiss Department of Culture, the German Foreign Office, as well as the British Library are numbered among the Institute’s most prominent partners and donors. In 2015 – on the occasion of its 40th anniversary – a “Festschrift” was

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published by the members of the board of directors of the foundation: 40 Jahre Bibliotheca Afghanica: Beiträge zu Recht, Politik und Kultur in Afghanistan (cf. Koellreuter/Seidt 2015). Figure 2: In the courtyard of a mosque in Kandahar in 1907, a Mullah is studying a globe

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Kandahar 1907

B ASIC G ROUNDWORK : P RESERVATION AND I DENTIFICATION OF THE V ISUAL M ATERIALS So far, some selected collections have been scientifically identified, and currently comprise approximately 5000 photographs. The vast cultural richness in the photographs as well as the manifold interdisciplinary relations soon became obvious as the identification proceeded. The visual documents raise questions of historical, cultural and political relevance, including questions of media relevance and those regarding the history of technological development. In a first step, the basic archival work includes the conservation of the photographs, the digitization and long-term preservation. Even more importantly, the identification done by the Swiss Afghanistan Institute serves as

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a necessary prerequisite to make the above mentioned interpretative connections. The scientific importance of the images lies in the possibility to analyze them according to chronological and geographical criteria, who the images were made by and who and what is in the image. It is however a major concern of the institute to create a systematic corpus of images as a point of departure for further research questions. For this reason, the Phototheca Afghanica will gradually be made available online. The first 3000 images and data have been accessible via an online platform since 2016 [www.phototheca-afghanica.ch]. The following overview of a part of the online series highlights the perspectives that could evoke further research and co-operation concerning the photographic collections.

S AMPLE C OLLECTION 1: T HE S ECOND ANGLO -AFGHAN W AR , 1878-1880 The photographic collection of the British Royal Engineers is an informative example for interdisciplinary research. The deployment of the Royal Engineers ran like a red thread through the military activities of Britain in Afghanistan. The Royal Engineers were first given the possibility to photograph military action in Afghan territory during the Second Anglo-Afghan war. The photographs – thus the expectations toward the new technology – were intended to supplement the conventional documentary options. Up to this point it had been the officers’ duty to draw sketches and plans of important stations of the journey and events. These types of documents were sometimes not very accurate, and the Photograph School of the Bengal Sappers & Miners instructed by the Royal Engineers were thus given the possibility to prove themselves in 1878. The Swiss Afghanistan Institute processed the photographic collection together with Brigadier Woodburn, who was a former Royal Engineer himself. It may be of interest that John Burke, a famous professional photographer, had accompanied the expedition too. One could maintain that Burke already practiced in 1886 what is today called “embedded journalism”. He was able to pursue his photographic work under the protection of the British troops and in return he assisted the photograph school with creative and technical advice. While Burke’s photographs were commercially successful, the military photographs remained undiscovered in private albums, official documentation or had disappeared into state archives as confidentially classified material. Deprived of their classification, the photographs almost lost their worth as contemporary

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documents. Often the context needed for an appropriate interpretation of the photographs was missing. Today, due to the work done at the Swiss Afghanistan Institute, the photographs can be read as visual documentation of the troop movement again. In cooperation with Brigadier Woodburn, and with the help of military maps and reports, the institute succeeded in recovering a chronological order, naming the places and identifying key personalities shown in the photographs. Now the collection tells us how the army advanced into the embattled country, crossed rivers, received the Amir and his delegation, and coped with the daily challenges that life in a foreign country brought with it. On the basis of the work done, it became possible to draw parallels to the reports in the contemporary press. An interesting aspect was the comparison of the official military photographs and the exaggerated engravings that were based on the sketches done by William Simpson for The Illustrated London News. He also accompanied the troops moving towards Kabul as a war correspondent for some time. The current data base does however also raise new questions:  Questions about the technical and aesthetic conditions of war photography of the time, as in the case of the Royal Engineers who were assisted by Burke.  Questions concerning the social meaning of the photographs for a colonial power such as Britain.  Questions about media implications regarding different forms of realization through photographs, engravings based on sketches.  Questions of cultural correlation. Photographic technology was unknown to the Afghans in 1878. Brought to the colonies from metropolitan Europe, photography was only known by sight in Afghanistan. The act of taking a photograph reflected to some degree the polarity of domination and subordination. Just as the photographs of the British documented the land and its peoples, it also reflected the colonial gaze. As a sample we present a photograph and an engraving of the ruins of the British Residency inside the Bala Hissar of Kabul:

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Figure 3: Ruins of the British Residency inside the Bala Hissar of Kabul

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Royal Engineers

Figure 4: Engraving of the British Residency inside the Bala Hissar of Kabul

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection The Illustrated London News

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S AMPLE C OLLECTION 2: A G ERMAN AMBASSADOR BEHIND H OSTILE L INES The collection of the German ambassador Werner Otto von Hentig tells a completely different story. In 1915, his expedition to and through Afghanistan ended in “one of the most adventuresome undertakings you have probably ever heard of”, as the Berliner Illustrirte reported in 1918 (Wirz/Schürer-Ries/BuchererDietschi 2012: 28), only three years later. Up to this time, the country at the Hindu Kush had been sealed off from the outside world by Great Britain. During the First World War, the German emperor Wilhelm II. ordered an undercover diplomatic and military expedition to the Afghan Amir Habibullah Khan, suggesting an attack on British India. For this, von Hentig travelled to Kabul, keen to learn about the country, open-minded as a petitioner always has to be. Meanwhile, photographic technology had made some progress, which allowed von Hentig to take photographs more spontaneously. Von Hentig’s collection however yields another remarkable difference compared with the British collection: due to von Hentig’s good relationship with his Afghan hosts, they provided him with prints from the Amir’s own photo studio. The lion’s share originates from this photo studio and was taken from the archive of Mahmud Tarzi who was the editor of the first illustrated weekly journal in Afghanistan Serâj ol-akhbâr (in English “The Great Light”). These photographs are among the very earliest Afghan images that have been preserved to date. They embody the Afghans perspective of their own country, expressing the upcoming interdependencies between an Asian culture and European technology.

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Figure 5: Durbar at the occasion of the enthronement of Emir Habibullah Khan in early October 1901

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Emil Rybitschka

S AMPLE C OLLECTION 3: P HOTOGRAPHS AS AN E XPRESSION OF AFGHAN S ELF -R EPRESENTATION The series “Souvenirs d’Afghanistan” gives evidence of an idiosyncratic variation of cultural interdependencies. The series – based on works of Afghan artists only – was composed and edited by the Afghan ambassador in Paris in 1924. In those days, the recently independent Afghanistan was merely an unknown actor on the diplomatic stage; few governments had established diplomatic ties with the oriental country at the time. Consequently, little was known about the country itself, and therefore the ambassador considered it his duty to introduce Afghanistan to his guests and acquaintances. The “Souvenirs d’Afghanistan” was given away as a keepsake, comprising 51 high-quality prints of Afghan scenes assembled in a booklet, each photograph printed on postcard-paper. There is no doubt that the editor, the Afghan ambassador, always bore in mind the later distribution, and that he anticipated the circumstances of the reception in Europe. To demonstrate the country’s status as a modern and up-andcoming nation, photographs corresponding with a European sense of “modernity” were selected. Interestingly, the propaganda focused on technological progress. In particular, the collection comprised shots of buildings, cars, and bridg-

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es. People were hardly shown, and if so, they belonged to the royal household and were dressed in Western apparel. As the progressive King Amanullah sought to avoid any impression of a state of underdevelopment, Western fashion was important to him. Historical sources report that it was explicitly forbidden to wear traditional apparel at court. Many different photographs bear witness to the Afghan adoption of Western customs. From this point of view, the collection “Souvenirs d’Afghanistan” serves as a prism, refracting both an Afghan particularity of photo art and an Afghan perception of (Western) “modernity”. On the one hand, the scientific importance of this collection is manifested in the aesthetic contrast that the Afghan photographs enunciate in comparison to European ones. On the other hand, the photos document former heydays, for instance by showing magnificent buildings which have been turned into rubble since then. In close co-operation with the French Afghanistan expert May Schinasi, the history of some of these buildings which shows baffling parallels to the fronts of contemporary British buildings, copied from engravings and photographs in The Illustrated London News, could be retraced. Figure 6: The summer residence of King Amanullah at Paghman in 1924

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Souvenir d’Afghanistan

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Figure 7: The summer residence of King Amanullah at Paghman in 1996

© Stiftung Bibliotheca Afghanica, Collection Paul Bucherer

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At the age of more than 94 years, Werner Otto von Hentig personally handed over his archive to the SAI. The photographs themselves are considered to be significantly important to Afghan history. Furthermore, the detailed explanations, provided by von Hentig’s notes and oral anecdotes, were an unusual blessing for the researchers when identifying the photographs. This example illustrates how witnesses to history are crucial for the SAI’s work with historical photographs. Destroyed monuments and buildings – as well as personalities – cannot be identified and localized unless someone is alive who is able to recall what and who is shown in the pictures. The SAI counts on those witnesses to history every time its own archive and its own experience reach certain limits. In view of a further cultural rebuilding, the preservation of knowledge will be crucial to the re-establishment of Afghanistan’s heritage. Besides the scientific aim to document the visual heritage of Afghan history, the photographs provide the young generation with an access to the pre-war life in a peaceful Afghanistan. Each photograph shows a fact, a building, a landscape, or a detail on a man’s clothing: what counts for Afghan people is the fact that an element of the old tradition, a moment of former Afghan life has survived, a testimony of an otherwise un-imaginable world.

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This, too, is a reason why the website of the Phototheca Afghanica is designed not only to meet scientist’s needs but also to provide access for a broader audience, interested in its own lost achievements or its parents’ and grandparents’ world. A further important step will be the translation of the texts into the main Afghan languages Dari and Pashto. This was already achieved in the collection “Towers of Knowledge”, providing worldwide access to the photographs and documents of the exhibition for the Afghan diaspora in the United States, in Germany, as well as in Russia. Forty years of war and unrest, brainwashing with diametrically opposed ideologies, and foreign influences based on different cultural patterns created a vacuum of national identity and self-understanding among Afghans. In the face of an unending political struggle, economic misery, and hopelessness, radical and fundamentalist ideas are successfully spread and growing to fill this vacuum. Creating awareness of a comparatively “glorious yesterday” which was achieved in the past could help to rebuild a national pride and hope for a better future. In this sense it is hoped that the accessibility of a visual testimony of “the good old times” could also help to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan today.

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Koellreuter, Andreas & Seidt, Hans-Ulrich (Hrsg.). (2015). 40 Jahre Bibliotheca Afghanica. Beiträge zu Recht, Politik und Kultur in Afghanistan. Liestal: Verlag Basel-Landschaft. Wirz, Dominic, Schürer-Ries, Anke & Bucherer-Dietschi, Paul (2012). The visual heritage of Afghanistan: Photographic testimonials between destruction, decay and oblivion. International Institute for Asian Studies (Ed.), The Newsletter 61, 26-28.

IV. Concluding Statements

Afghanistan Today – Perspectives of an Afghan Living in Exile A NONYMOUS

There is no need to argue about the politically difficult situation in Afghanistan. Various statistics confirm that security problems have gotten worse. The negative trend is not limited to the southern and eastern regions anymore, Afghanistan’s western and northern parts also show this downward trend. Even its capital Kabul, which used to be safe, has been hit by disastrous attacks. These terrorist attacks do not only aim at the international alliance or Afghan military institutions, but also at mass meetings in order to cause as many victims as possible. The Taliban have grown stronger than they used to be in 2001. In my statement I want to show why this could happen. In order to do so, I will point out crucial strategic and political decisions that have been made since September 2001. Let us look back: A military operation started on October 7th, after the given ultimatum to deliver Bin Laden had elapsed. From the view of US troops and their alliances this intervention was a quick and effective procedure. Within only two months the Taliban had been banished from Kabul and Masar-e-Sharif and only little later also from the Taliban’s stronghold Kandahar. US troops formed an alliance with the North and other militias in order to avoid ground forces’ operations. The US were not picky about the selection of their alliance partners. Their strategy arose from rather short-run thoughts, but on the long run major problems regarding the peace process developed from the alliance with Afghanistan’s North. One thing about the alliance was a disastrous signal to the Afghan population: How can we expect average citizens to keep law and order, if they see that commanding officers and militiamen do not have to stick to these rules? And what is

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more, from a citizen’s point of view the military staff has even been rewarded with higher offices, functions and positions. This kind of strategy to arm and coopt Afghanistan’s warlords has enormously harmed the trust in the goodwill of the international association in the eyes of the average Afghan population. So, it is no wonder that the international association was rather seen as accomplice. The whole legitimacy of the political system has suffered from these kinds of undemocratically structured agreements and actors. The powerful position of these actors – warlords – was further strengthened by the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) mandate which was restricted to Kabul. It was quite illusive and naive to think that a victorious rescue and stabilization of Kabul would have a positive signaling effect on the remaining parts of Afghanistan. Instead, the international alliance has missed the opportunity to fill the vacuum which originated after the Taliban had been overthrown regarding political power structures. An Afghan army that could have taken over these tasks had not even existed in an initial state at that point of time. Based on the fact that a successful process towards peace strongly depends on the need to win over the population, the exclusive focus on Kabul at that time is irreproducible. This does not mean that it was not important or good that Kabul was freed. What was ignored at the time, however, was the fact that the Taliban did not have backing support regarding its radical and fundamental concepts of social order by the capital’s larger population anyway. Their strongholds were located in the South and East of Afghanistan. It was not until 2006 that British troops were sent to Helmand in the South, Canadian troops to Kandahar and US troops took command of the Eastern parts of Afghanistan. The Taliban managed to reorganize their network before 2006. The same is true for the leading militiamen and commanding officers who opened up an immense source of capital by opium plantations. The loss of time was not restricted to the military component. The civilian reconstruction was also neglected. While many international organizations and NGOs were present in Kabul, only few were willing to become active in the South and East. The population had been waiting for help for many years without seeing any positive effects. At the same time, Afghanistan’s population knew that the international alliance promised billions for the country’s reconstruction. So it is no surprise that people asked where the money disappeared. This is why the people’s frustration and resentment grew larger towards their own government and also towards the Western alliances which in turn was for the benefit of the Taliban. Despite the criticism regarding the failures of the international alliance, we Afghans should not consider ourselves to be mere victims in order to shirk responsibility for the present-day’s misery. Low educational standards, ethnic con-

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flicts, corruption, and opium plantations are also essential backgrounds for the present situation. In addition to all these circumstances, another factor is the rivalry between Afghanistan’s neighbors, India and Pakistan, which also try to get political influence within Afghanistan. This aspect further deteriorates the country’s situation. The Pakistani government keeps on taking a hand in Afghanistan’s politics in order to make sure that the government in Kabul remains to be loyal to Pakistan. In doing so, the Pakistani government uses the Afghan Taliban as a powerful instrument against Indian influences. This is why Pakistan supports the Taliban not only in military and logistic ways, but also financially. By the end of 2014, the military forces of the NATO and their confederates withdrew from Afghanistan after thirteen years. Nowadays, Afghan military forces successfully fight against the Taliban to a very large extent. Even though the have Taliban performed numerous military attacks, they have not able to gain a credible victory. Their strategies primarily aim at suicide attacks, long-range ignited bombs, kidnapping and terror. In summary it becomes clear that the security situation highly depends on the degree to which the Afghan population trusts the democratic structures and institutions that have been established in Afghanistan so far. The absolute majority of Afghanistan’s population is war-weary and the only thing people want is to have peace. However, their fate is determined by other people. This stand-off perils each and every progress that has been achieved for Afghanistan up to date. Unfortunately, there is no alternative at short notice despite looking for a peaceful solution with the Taliban. In the long run, it is indispensable to motivate young Afghans for educational offers so that they are able to take responsibility for their own future. More than 68 percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 25. So it is their level of education which is the key to change.

More Schools for Afghanistan L AILA N OOR

As daughter of the last freely elected mayor of Kabul, I hastily left Afghanistan together with my family after the occupation of the Soviet Union in 1979. Today I live both in Germany and in Afghanistan and I am chairwoman of the Independent Afghan Women Association (IAWA), based in Bremen, Germany. In retrospect, the period between 1933 and 1973, the reign of Mohammed Zahir Shah, which I have witnessed in part, is referred to as the golden era in which Afghanistan opened up to the west. This modernization was initiated by King Amanullah Khan and his wife Soraya Tarzi, who made a trip to Europe in 1928, which took them to Germany. Supported by his wife, Amanullah was very much in favor of establishing education in his ten-year reign until 1929. To this day, Soraya Tarzi is still regarded as one of the politically most important women of Afghanistan who pleaded for equality, education and employment of women and against polygamy. She also turned against wearing the veil in public and made her attitude clear by wearing European clothing. In 1978, the journalist and publicist Peter Scholl-Latour travelled to Kabul to interview my father in his political functions among other things as mayor of Kabul. This was, however, no longer possible because he had been put under arrest before the official Russian invasion as there was a strong communist influence from the Afghan side which started in April 1978 and was supported by the Russians. Scholl-Latour's intention was to draw the Europeans’ attention to the political and economic significance of our country – also for other countries – in particular to the strategic significance of the geographical situation in the heart of Asia. He identified the endangered situation of my family and advised us to leave Afghanistan. After my arrival in Germany, I could see that hardly anyone had an idea of what was really going on in my country. The Afghans who had studied in the West or belonged to the old regime were arrested, killed or they

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just disappeared like my father and my brother under the Russian occupying force. For each of my lectures I put on colourful Afghan clothing so that people would look at me and ask where I was from and what happened to my country. Then I started to design clothes and, together with a befriended artist, organized my first fashion show. With my fashion, I try to build a bridge between Afghanistan, the Orient and Europe because my clothes can not only be worn by European but also by Afghan women. Afghan embroideries and oriental fabrics made of cashmere and silk, as well as velvet, are cut and used according to European patterns. Furthermore, I work with patchwork patterns due to the fact that the traditional Afghan clothing is very colorful. To this day, I regularly organize fashion shows and support the building of schools in Afghanistan with the revenues. From my point of view the world public has slowly lost interest in Afghanistan during the time of the Taliban regime until the Buddha statues in Bamiyan Valley – a Unesco World Heritage Site – were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001. With the destruction of these and other cultural assets in Afghanistan, the public’s interest increased again, however, it has only gained significant concern after the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11th September 2001. In the following year, six German ministers invited various women nationwide to help the people of Afghanistan, especially women and children. I was one of the invited women. When in Berlin I saw that there were dedicated women standing up for my country, I proposed to set up an association to be able to achieve more together. After the foundation of the IAWA in October 2002, I travelled as chairwoman of this association and, upon the invitation of the Federal Government of Germany, back to my home country for the first time. In my memories it was the Afghanistan of 1979 when the Russian invasion was only at the beginning and the country and the people were still intact. After my arrival in Kabul, however, I came across a completely destroyed city. There was no tree left, only skeletons of houses, one could see thousands of bullet impacts and blood on the walls. Under these painful impressions, I started immediately with first aid actions. Firstly, I went to families that lived poorly clothed in tents on the bare ground in winter with temperatures below zero. Thereupon, I distributed clothes and then started to visit schools. By this I do not mean a school building but at the first school I visited, one part of the pupils was accommodated in a tent, the others were studying outdoors. As soon as it rained or snowed, the children had to go home. It was fascinating for me to see that they were able to concentrate despite the cold, the few clothes they were wearing and the poor nutrition that they had. It also showed me what it meant to these kids to be able to go to school

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at all. This key experience has encouraged me to mainly work with the IAWA for the construction of school buildings in Afghanistan. The major task of the IAWA (2017) is to help build educational structures in Afghanistan. Above all, girls and women should be enabled to have access to school and university education and thus to social life as they were forbidden during the Taliban regime to go to school and vocational training. In the meantime, the association has more than 100 members who, regardless of religious and political beliefs, volunteer and help in the pursuit of the following goals: advancing the education and training of Afghan girls and women, awareness training, building and developing schools with unlimited access for boys and girls, promoting the education and training for widows and disabled girls and women. In Europe, the association’s function is to provide information on the current situation in Afghanistan and impart Afghan culture. Despite the difficult political situation we have been able to provide access to education through the schools we are building for over 12.000 children and about 150 women. Meanwhile, more than 600 of our former pupils attend universities. We are grateful and proud that in this way we have done something for the future of Afghanistan with the support of many friends and sponsors, as well as of the BMZ in Germany. In Afghanistan, the construction of a school building always requires a wall of the school grounds to protect children and teachers from intruders. The wall costs as much as a school building and makes it difficult to finance schools. The construction time of a school takes between seven to nine months according to the specifications of the Afghan Ministry of Education. The interior is of course not comparable to a school in Europe but compared to what the pupils had before, it is a big step. In the meantime, we also set up daycare at large schools that we need for the teachers' children when they teach the whole day. For this reason we have built one high school, in which 6000 male students are taught. The nearest high school, a girls only school, is four minutes away. Thus, the teachers of both high schools can bring their children to the daycare center. Each increase and expansion of the school buildings saves the children and teachers from outdoor lessons in heat or cold. In addition, with a higher number of classrooms there is the possibility of not having to go to school in three time shifts but only in two, which means that the lessons end in the afternoon and not in the evening. The students are divided into these shifts because the buildings are not large enough to teach all children at the same time. As the number of pupils still increases, there is an urgent need for action. The first school which I opened had 500 students in 2007, today there are over 3000. The school buildings and their management have a key role for education in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, there are still not enough school houses and many

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children in Afghanistan remain outdoors or in tents and are exposed to extreme climatic differences between 15 degrees below zero in winter and approximately 40 degrees of heat in summer. In addition, the children are confronted with long walks to school that can take several hours. Another concern is that the schools are closed for three months in winter time because there is not enough money for the heating. In my opinion, there are about 4 million children still waiting for access to schools and about 2000 school buildings have not been provided yet. Therefore, my association and I still have our work cut out for us, but I will not give up hope.

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Independent Afghan Women Association e. V. (IAWA) (2017). Our goals. Retrieved from http://www.iawa-online.org/ (17.11.2017).

Access to Education as an Essential and Urgent Need S IMA S AMAR

Access to quality education is one of the very basic human rights, and it is not bound and limited to time, location, and the socio-economic or the political situation of the countries. A lack of access to quality education is one of the reasons behind deterioration and destruction of the socio-economic and political situation in human societies. That is why poverty and a lack of access to education, especially quality education, is very much interrelated. We can take Afghanistan as a case study. The formal education system in Afghanistan, as a poor country, started late. According to the Nezam Nama (a document similar to a national law or semi constitution), education was made compulsory in 1925. Although the very first boys’ school, Habibia School/Habibia High School, was established in 1903; years later in 1920 a girls’ school, Mastoora, started functioning with the enrolment of 40 girls in the capital city of Kabul. However, all these facilities were available only in the capital. One year later in 1921, the very first girls’ high school called Esmat was established; meanwhile 15 girls were sent to Turkey to attend nursing school. In July 1928, King Amanullah officially announced the need for girls’ education, but months later in September of the same year due to pressure and opposition of conservatives, he annulled his announcement. After that, during the 1960s and 1970s, despite economic and political hardship and problems, Afghanistan gradually started to build schools and high schools for both girls and boys. Even in some populous and large districts, primary and secondary girls’ and boys’ schools started functioning. Unfortunately in 1978, pro-soviet parties in Afghanistan carried out a bloody coup and toppled the regime and smoothed the way for Russian invasion to protect its puppet regime.

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The pro-communism and pro-Soviet regime started to curb the rights of the citizens (particularly intellectuals and academics). They started arresting intellectuals, Khans, chiefs of tribes and those who were not regime sympathisers. The regime continued their rampage and even arrested more educated people and started torturing them and went on a killing spree and murdered thousands of innocent people. All this caused people’s uproar, and people started opposing the regime; a resistance started. As the regime could not tolerate people’s resistance and uproar, they bombed all the areas in which they suspected resistance. As a result, the old infrastructure such as schools, clinics and other buildings which were controlled by mujahideen groups were destroyed. People found themselves in a very bad security, economic and political situation, and the wave of migration started. On the other hand, the pro-regime people, who were either educated or semi educated, were interested in the soviet style regime, the opposition groups (mujahideen) assumed that they were the product of all schools and high schools of Afghanistan; therefore, they started either destroying or banning schools. The opposition to the regime got even bigger and an armed struggle started all over the country. Both the regime as well as the opposition groups did not pay much attention to scientific and formal education as both parties were spending a big part of the resources recklessly on the war and on upgrading their warfare. As a result of the wave of intimidation of people by the regime and the intensification of conflict, the migration of people to the neighbouring countries increased to about six million. The international community, for the sake of preventing growth and progress of communism in the region and Asia, poured all the resources to the less educated and conservative Afghan groups residing in Pakistan. Meanwhile, there was some new political progress in the region. Islamists in Iran toppled the regime and took over power and announced the Islamic Republic of Iran with hardcore Islamic ideas. Pakistan’s then president, General Zia-ul-Haq, was a conservative soldier and he was the main force behind the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan as well as in the region. In the idealistic battle ground against communism, western countries (especially the United States, Great Britain, some other western countries and Saudi Arabia) started funding madrassas. Because the refugees were poor and were unable to provide education for their children, these madrassas were a welcome option for their children’s education as they were taught Islamic education, and food and shelter were also provided to them.

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Regretfully, one of the reasons behind the rise of the Taliban were these madrassas. Jihadis from all around the world were also educated and taught in these madrassas who are now leading and operating hard core Islamic fundamentalist aggressive groups. As the Soviet Union withdrew its forces from Afghanistan in 1989 and collapsed in 1990, the University of Nebraska along with some other international non-governmental organisations in association with Afghan mujahideen groups and some Afghan NGOs started developing an educational curriculum for schools in Afghanistan. Sadly, the curricula that were developed by them were not standard curricula for schools. Because all the jihadi ideas and subjects were incorporated among the other contents of the curriculum and basically were very much focusing on the Jihadist ideology. Unfortunately, as a result, a new generation with radical Islamist ideas have emerged among the young generation of Afghans in exile, and the Taliban movement have formed out of these people. On the other hand, due to a failed peace process, the pro-soviet regime in Kabul collapsed and the Mujahideen took over the power. As soon as the Mujahideen took over Kabul, they started in-fighting for the control of Kabul and the grab of more power. This in-fighting continued for years during which no one paid any attention to education and educating the upcoming generations. Some schools in some parts of the country started systematically radicalising youths and boys. As stated earlier, due to these policies, the Taliban as graduates of religious madrassas emerged as a new power and started their sharp advances in the West and the South West of Afghanistan. They took over Kandahar and later Herat, and after a few months, the western part of the country along with the southern part were all under their belt. In September 1996, the Taliban overran the mujahideen and took over Kabul. It was during the Taliban era that girls’ education was banned, women were not allowed to get out of their homes and walk alone in the streets. But, in some areas which were out of the Taliban’s grab, schools were functioning with the support of some national NGOs. Boys’ schools were allowed to operate, but there were some restrictions. They enforced their rules and regulations and this means more religious thoughts and subjects were part of the academic curricula.

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The after 9/11 era From 2002 onwards, there has been very obvious and considerable progress in the educational sector. Today, more than six million children are going to school, but there are still some places where children are not attending school. Although the number of children going to school have significantly increased, there are concerns over the quality of education provided to these children. Unfortunately, the current education quality does not meet the realities present in today’s world. Literacy and its role in the continuation of conflict Afghanistan’s case study reveals that there is a dire and urgent need for education and quality education under any circumstances. Whether we are involved in the conflict or recovering from conflict or whether we are in a post conflict situation, we need to focus on educating our people and children under any circumstances. I am going to tell you the ugly and problematic part of the consequences of not paying attention to education under the excuse of an emergency situation.  Education is the only way to change the mentality of a society and improve the living standards of citizens of that society. One of the main reasons behind a long and violent continuation of conflict for several decades in Afghanistan is illiteracy, because less educated and illiterate boys and youths are easy targets for any disruptive and violent groups to exploit and take advantage of. So, it is easy for any opposition and insurgent groups to recruit them and exploit them for their own purpose.  The relation between poverty and illiteracy or a lack of access to education is very direct and obvious. That is why poor countries have the highest rates of illiteracy. This is not the only problem: the higher the rate of illiteracy is, the higher the number of the population will be. So, it is like a vicious circle. If there is any problem with any element of this circle, there will be an increase in another element. Illiteracy, poverty and overpopulation are all interrelated and cause and bring misery to any society.  A lack of education, particularly the lack of education of women, causes a lot of sexual and gender based violence in the family. Family is the first place where children grow, if they watch all the violence in the family no one can expect a normal person without violence because they think that being aggressive is part of manhood and pride.

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 A lack of education, increased poverty, and insecurity in conflict countries increase child marriage, forced marriage, child sexual exploitation all over the world – which is one of the serious concerns of humanity.  A lack of education blocks democracy and promotes dictatorship, which itself in addition to a clear violation of human rights, blocks all human security and human development. Also, it prepares the grounds for terrorist groups and mafias of drug production and militarisation in the world.  A lack of education prevents the development of countries; for example, they do not have enough human resources to build the country’s health system. They simply do not know the importance of vaccination, such as polio, which could reach any place in the world.  A lack of education makes people vulnerable to any kind of abuse by authorities, by terrorist groups and makes people depend on groups who can give them some means to feed their children.  Finally, education is key to living with divinity and rights and respect the other people’s rights and freedoms. The experience in Afghanistan shows that if we do not focus on education for all, we will face insecurity and terrorist groups all over the world. These acts of violence and aggression will not stay within any geographical boundary. It is a human responsibility to take serious steps to focus on good quality education and treat education as emergency in every circumstance, particularly, in poor and in conflict countries such as Afghanistan, with a coordinated, long term, multidimensional strategy. Otherwise, the Afghan people will stay as a burden on the shoulder of the international community.  The excuse of respect to culture, tradition and religion should not be used to push away a good quality of scientific education to save humanity.

List of Authors

Aravena, Francisco Rojas, is currently Rector of the University for Peace (UPEACE) in Costa Rica and former Secretary-General of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLASCO) and Director of FLASCO in Chile (19962004). He is intensively working on strengthening the University’s relationship with the United Nations system and its agencies in Costa Rica, as well as fostering a close relationship between teaching and research, generating innovative ideas on “new threats to peace”, and reinforcing existing connections with institutions in The Hague (Netherlands) and Geneva (Switzerland). Rojas-Aravena was also Professor at the School of International Relations of the National University (UNA) of Costa Rica (1980-1990) and a Fulbright Professor at the Latin American and Caribbean Centre (LACC) at Florida International University, Miami (FL, US). He is currently a board member of the Spanish edition of Foreign Affairs Magazine (Mexico), an Advisory Member of Pensamiento Iberoamericano magazine (Spain), and is a member of the Editorial Committee of Ciencia Política magazine (National University of Colombia). He conducts advisory and consulting work for various international agencies and governments in the region. He is specialised in international relations, human security, integration, Latin American political systems, negotiations – theory and practice – and international security and defense. Bittlingmayer, Uwe H., is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Education Freiburg (Germany) and current Dean of the Faculty of Educational Sciences. His main research topics are sociology of education, inequality and health as well as the sociology of Afghanistan. Bucherer-Dietschi, Paul, studied architecture at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (Switzerland) and went to Afghanistan for the first time in 1971. In 1975 he founded the Bibliotheca Afghanica in Liestal (Switzerland) as a centre of documentation on the nature, culture, and history of Afghanistan,

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which is now a foundation under the supervision of the Swiss Government with Bucherer-Dietschi as director. He spent almost four years in Afghanistan, working with the Ministries of Culture and Education. Denton, Dianne, spent three years in Afghanistan working for GIZ and UNESCO on teacher education, girls’ education, and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) programmes. She is currently an Education Advisor with Plan International Canada, supporting education programmes in Egypt, Mozambique, South Sudan, and Tanzania. She holds a Master’s degree in Education in International Education Policy from Harvard University, Cambridge (MA, US). Druwe, Ulrich, is the rector of the University of Education Freiburg (Germany). Furthermore, he is a political scientist. He received his PhD at the LudwigMaximilians-Universität of Munich (Germany) and habilitated at the University of Augsburg (Germany). Fazli, Khalil, is Assistant Professor and Master of Chemistry who was born in 1961 in Kabul city (Afghanistan). He was appointed as a professional staff member of the Teacher Education General Directorate (TED) of Afghanistan in 1989. He was promoted to become Director of the Curriculum and Standards Department at the TED in 2008. Later, this department’s name was changed to the Department of Research, Evaluation and Standards. He continues to work as the director of this department. Goldenberg, Pascale, is a freelance artist and workshop leader in adult education for textile design, as well as the author of articles on textile topics in German and French journals. She organises textile art exhibitions and projects at an international level. Since 2005, she has been the artistic director of the embroidery project Guldusi in Afghanistan and regularly visits the girls and women involved in the project in the villages of Laghmani (Afghanistan). Grundmeier, Anne-Marie, is Professor in Fashion, Textile Sciences and its Didactics at the University of Education Freiburg (Germany) and Head of Department of Fashion and Textile at the Institute for Everyday Life Culture, Sports and Health. She was trained as a vocational school teacher. Her research interests are fashion and textile sciences with an emphasis on cultural education, education for sustainable development and vocational education.

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Hanif, Pohand Mohamad Juma, is Head of the Faculty of Education and Professor for Biology at Herat University in Afghanistan. He attended Kabul University and from then on worked as a lecturer, assistant and Head of Department in various educational faculties. He has undertaken many educational trips abroad and has written several scientific books for students. Harsch, Stefanie, is a PhD student at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Education Freiburg (Germany). She works as a Research Associate in the Consortium on Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence focusing on the Promotion of Health Literacy of people from a refugee background (including Afghans in Germany) in educational settings. She holds a Master of Arts in Health Education and a Promotion from the University of Education Freiburg (Germany). Jawid, Asadullah, is a PhD candidate at Kiel University, and the Official representative of the Gawharshad University, Kabul, in Germany. His research focuses on quantitative methods for analysing the economic impact of climate change, climate change risk, and climate change adaptation. He was an instructor at the American University of Afghanistan from 2012-2015 and a Scholarship Advisor at the German Academic Exchange Services Information Centre in Kabul from 2012-2015. Jones, Adele, worked in Afghanistan from 2004-2007 as Head of the Aga Khan Foundation rural education sector programme in Badakhshan, Baghlan, and Bamyan (Afghanistan). Her research and writing (including PhD) has focused largely on Afghanistan and Pakistan, and on related issues of education in conflict areas. She is currently Adjunct Researcher at Arnold Bergstraesser Institute Freiburg (Germany), while continuing international education and health work. Kässer, Heide, is a former Professor for Didactics in the field of Fashion and Textile Sciences at the University of Education Freiburg (Germany). She is particularly interested in the cultural history of textiles. One example of her work is the examination of flat woven fabrics in the Near and Middle East, which are produced by women from nomadic origin or rural background. Since 2002 she has been working to support the education and vocational training of girls and women in Afghanistan. Kößler, Reinhart, was Director of the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute in Freiburg (Germany) until 2015, where he remains a research associate, and is a professor

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in the Department of Political Science at the University of Freiburg (Germany) and Visiting Professor and Research Associate in the Institute of Reconciliation and Social Justice at the University of the Free State (South Africa). Mueller, Andrea, is Research Associate at the University of Teacher Education Zug (Switzerland). Previously, she worked as an Education Advisor for GIZ in Afghanistan supporting the Afghan government in the development of a diploma in Primary Education. She was trained as a Primary School Teacher in Switzerland and holds a Master’s degree in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from the University of Bern (Switzerland). Nashir-Steck, Sarghuna, is an ethnologist and translator. At the University of Göttingen (Germany), she completed her Master’s degree in Ethnology and Iranian studies in 1993. The same year she successfully took her exams as a certified translator of Persian and Dari languages. She has lived in Switzerland and Germany ever since she left her hometown Kunduz (Afghanistan) in 1980. In 2000 she co-founded the German-Afghan-Initiative and has been an actively engaged member from the very beginning. Her projects primarily aim at supporting female nomads. She regularly travels to Afghanistan in order to implement her projects as well as to evaluate life circumstances and needs of female nomads in the region. Naumann, Craig C., has six years of experience in Afghanistan working in the areas of educational programme design and project management, and macroeconomic strategic planning. Agencies he worked for include the World Food Programme (Food-for-Education Coordination Unit-Ministry of Education, 2002-2005), USAID’s Teacher Training programme (BESST, 2006-2007), UNDP/the Ministry of Economic Planning (2009) and the Administrative Office of the President (2016). He holds a diploma in political science from FU Berlin’s Otto-Suhr-Institut (Germany) and a doctorate in sociology from the University of Münster (Germany). Naumann works as free-lance development advisor for the UN. Noor, Laila, is the daughter of the last freely elected mayor of Kabul. In 1966 she began studying the German language at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin, and simultaneously started training as a fashion designer. After her return to Kabul she worked at the American Embassy, and from 1971 to 1978 in the culture and press department of the German Embassy. After the Soviet invasion of 1979, she

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and her family fled Afghanistan and came to Germany. She is a cofounder of IAWA and works in Bremen (Germany) as a fashion designer. Rohrer, Walter, has a teacher diploma in secondary education and in special education. He is also an ethicist who has done research in economics and ethics. For over two decades he worked as a head of continuing education in different institutions. Since 2013 he has been leading the internationalisation at the FHNW School of Education (Northwestern Switzerland). Ruttig, Thomas, has a degree in Afghan studies from the Humboldt University of Berlin. He has been working on and in Afghanistan since 1983, as a diplomat, journalist, for the UN and as deputy to the EU special representative. Since 2009, he has been a co-director and a senior analyst of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent research organisation based in Kabul and Berlin. Sahrai, Diana, is Professor of Social Learning under difficult circumstances at the FHNW School of Education. Her main research topics are inclusion and heterogeneity, sociology of education, health, and early childhood education. Sahrai, Fereschta, is a Doctoral student at the UN-mandated University for Peace in Costa Rica and Lecturer at the Institute for Special Education and Psychology at the FHNW School of Education. Previously, she worked as a Lecturer and a Research Assistant at the University of Education Freiburg (Germany). She holds a Master’s degree in Peace and Security Studies from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and a Master’s degree in Social Sciences with specialisation in French Philology, Philosophy and Social Anthropology from the University of Münster. Her focus of interest in research is on inclusive education, peace education, conflict transformation and mediation. Sahrai, Laila, is a Visual Artist. She studied Painting, Drawing, Graphics and Visual Communication at the Academy of Art & Design in Enschede (Netherlands). At the Freie Landesakademie Kunst in Freiburg (Germany) she completed a postgraduate study in Visual Profiling. During her master’s studies at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences, close to Bonn (Germany), she extended her definition of arts on Dialogue with Society. She is an independent artist and lecturer. Her main focus is on Fine Arts as well as Art and Society. In her artistic projects she transmits artistic activity that has the aim of bringing social change, concerning culture, participation, inclusion, integration and quality of coexistence in an ever-changing society.

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Samar, Sima, is a well-known woman’s and human rights advocate and activist within national and international forums. She has also served as the first Deputy Chairperson of Interim Administration of Afghanistan as well as the first Minister of Women’s Affairs in Afghanistan’s history, from December 2001 to June 2002. She is currently the Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Acknowledging her vast human rights expertise and experience, she was appointed as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan and served in this post until 2009. Samar has established and nurtured the Shuhada Organization in 1989 in Quetta (Pakistan). Since then under her leadership, the Shuhada Organization has operated more than 100 schools, 15 clinics and four hospitals dedicated to providing education and healthcare, particularly focusing on vulnerable groups such as women and children in and outside of Afghanistan. Her contribution to the cause of women’s rights and human rights is acknowledged worldwide and she is the recipient of more than a dozen honours and international awards. In 2009, she was nominated and shortlisted for the Noble Peace Prize along with the former United States president, Barack H. Obama. Schürer-Ries, Anke, is a temporary volunteer at the Afghanistan Institute, Bubendorf (Switzerland) and Research Assistant for Special Collections at the Basel Missions Archive (Switzerland), which is concerned with documents and photographs taken by missionaries in the 19th century. Stanikzai, Razia, worked as a Senior Manager with the Teacher Education General Directorate (TED) in Afghanistan for almost four years. In 2016, she joined The Asia Foundation as the Deputy Chief of Party for the Education Programme. Stanikzai holds a BA from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame (IN, US) and a Master’s degree from the Karlstad University of Sweden. Stanikzai has also worked with UNICEF, Save the Children, and the IRC on education programmes. Wardak, Susan, is Director General of the Teacher Education Directorate, Ministry of Education, Kabul. Wirz, Dominic, studied media sciences at the University of Basel (Switzerland) and is a freelance journalist. He fulfilled part of his alternative civilian service at the Bibliotheca Afghanica.