The Importance Of Education In Afganistan
ABSTRACT:
Afghanistan is now at a critical point in its history; it needs to build a strategic path
from emergency to long-term reconstruction and development. Education helps to form the
very foundations of peace, nation building, poverty reduction, and economic growth. But
since 2006, the armed insurgency in Afghanistanhas begun to target schools across
Afghanistan, and as of this year 670 schools in southern Afghanistan have been closed
indefinitely. The central aim of this paper is to explore how grassroots approaches can be
mobilized in Afghanistan to achieve education goals. Along the way, it explores how control
of the educational system has historically been a mobilizing force for theconservative
Islamist movement, the communists, the overthrow of the Soviet government, and the
subsequent rise to power of the Taliban. If the new Afghan state is to have a chance at
surviving, the people must be permitted to take the education system into their own hands.
The Importance of Education in Afghanistan’s Reconstruction P a g e
INTRODUCTION:
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATIONIN AFGHANISTAN
In the past half-century alone, Afghanistan has seen the collapse of its monarchy,
the installation of a Soviet secular state, a successful Mujahideen insurgency to overthrow
the Communist government, debilitating factionalization of Mujahideen clans, the
precipitous rise and collapse of the Taliban government, and the installation of Hamid
Karzai’s fledglinggovernment in the wake of the post-9/11 US intervention. After five
tumultuous decades, Afghanistan’s human capital has been thoroughly and repeatedly
decimated.
Afghanistan is now at a critical point in its history; it needs to build a strategic path
from emergency to long-term reconstruction and development. Education helps to form the
very foundations of peace, nation building, thereduction of poverty, and economic growth.
Above all, education opens doors to new ways of thinking about Afghanistan, by Afghans,
and thus will be necessary to Afghanistan realizing its potential as a nation.
The starting point—in late 2001 at the fall of the Taliban—for recent developments in
Afghanistan was dire. Protracted conflict in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as drought and othernatural disasters, severely damaged the Afghan economy. Exacerbating the country’s
economic disaster, the conflict depleted and degraded factors of production: less manpower
available because of people who had joined the conflict or fled the country, and lower quality
of human capital due to lack of education and a “brain drain” as well-educated people left.
The education sector is amajor participant in both the economic and social
development of Afghanistan. Education plays a significant role in providing the productive
skills that are necessary for the implementation of development goals in agriculture, industry,
and health; training in the maintenance of natural resources and physical infrastructure
The Importance of Education in Afghanistan’s Reconstruction Pa g e
necessary for rural and urban development; knowledge and skills to cope with the demands of
development, such as written communication, banking, taxes, bureaucracy and operating
machinery; and training for self-reliance in meeting basic needs in health, nutrition, civic
participation and communication. This implies a holistic approach to education and
development, wherebyultimately all sections of the population can have access to an adequate
education to enable them to participate in the development process both as productive workers
and as effective citizens.
Quality education is among the most critical investments to be made in Afghanistan.
As a long-term investment in Afghanistan’s social and economic development, success in
education cannot be...
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