hunger and poverty, and give women more
independence and economic power through
agriculture.”
THE PEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD
Global studies consistently prove that investing in girls’ education yields huge returns
across the board, from socio-economics,
health, and population control to delaying
the marriage age and decreasing violence.
Most important, education gives women
a voice and the power to make their own
decisions.
‘’Men do not live only by fighting
evils. They live by positive goals.”
— Isaiah Berlin, historian and philosopher
With help from countless international
partners over the past 15 years, Afghanistan
has made huge strides in enrolling children in
school, from fewer than one million in 2000
in school, to 8.2 million in 2014, including
more than three million girls, according to
The World Bank.
However, there remains a critical shortage
of buildings, training, revenue, and access to
educational materials and support. Several
of Afghanistan’s 200,000 teachers went on
strike this past summer, protesting their low
pay — about $120-200 monthly — one
of the lowest teacher salaries in the world,
and that teachers’ pay is often delayed by
months. “Although teacher pay and training is our top priority, we simply don’t have
the money,” Kabir Haqmal, a spokesperson
from the Afghan Ministry of Education told
me this summer.
In the years after 9/11, while most of the
news focused on war, violence, al-Qaida, and
the Taliban, a quiet and successful revolution
was underway as the country saw the greatest increase in school enrollment in modern
history.
However, a severe lack of funding, teacher shortage, ongoing violence, and access to
education present significant challenges for
Afghanistan’s future.
Although a significant teacher shortage
exists in Afghanistan, there are few actual
job openings for new teachers. New teachers
often need connections or an inside track to
get a job. The government has limited or no
funds for the additional 28,200 teachers who
are needed to educate Afghanistan’s approximately 8.2 million students.
Education also has been impacted by politics, ongoing corruption, and lack of foreign
interest and funding. The Afghan elections
last year unfortunately ended in a contested
dispute between the two top vote-getters:
Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah. In
October, with the encouragement of the U.S.
and Secretary of State John Kerry, the leaders
opted to form a “unity government.”
Soon after, a power struggle ensued, and
the appointment of ministers and a full cabinet took up to nine months to complete, par-
alyzing the government and a new strategic
plan. In the interim, anticipated foreign funding fell woefully short, and tens of thousands
of foreign troops withdrew by December
2014, causing national security to begin deteriorating significantly.
In May 2015, John Sopko, the director of the Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),
gave a speech entitled “Afghanistan
Reconstruction: Fact vs. Fantasy” at Weill
Cornell Medical College. In it, he remarked
that even for all the U.S. effort, education
in Afghanistan is not a priority. He told the
audience that in Afghanistan since 2001,
the U.S. has spent $700 billion for military
operations, $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics and opium eradication, but only $768
million for education. This is to say, approximately only one dollar out of each hundred
dollars the U.S. put into Afghanistan went to
education.
KEEP REACHING
Fozia Naseer, who is the CAET (Central
Asia Education Trust — Pakistan affiliate of
CAI) director in Azad Jammu Kashmir (AJK),
is the first locally educated female attorney
out of several million people. She has degrees
in law, political science, and education. She
AFGHANISTAN A SUCCESS STORY, BUT
STILL A LONG WAY TO GO
Afghanistan has been at war or in conflict
since the Russian invasion in 1979, and almost two generations do not know what it
is like to live in peace. The country is landlocked, arid, and isolated; it is frequently
wracked by natural disasters, ethnic, sectarian, and political strife; and is at the crossroads where civilizations and more than a
dozen empires have waxed and waned.
“Education is the movement from
darkness to light.”
— Allan Bloom
FALL 2015
Hussaini village, Upper Gojal, Pakistan
JOURNEY OF HOPE | 19