TEXTBOOKS AND BULLET HOLES: AFGHAN SCHOOLS SOLDIER ON
▶ Pupils attend lessons amid damaged classrooms and armed police, writes Stefanie Glinski
Blast walls, armed police officers and the remains of a bombed-out building. At first glance it looks like any other army checkpoint in Afghanistan. But then you notice children sitting at wooden desks in ruined buildings, reciting lessons with little shelter from the scorching sun.
War has taken its toll on Assad Suri Primary School, in Kandahar’s Zhari district, about an hour’s drive from the provincial capital. The walls that have not been destroyed by rockets and air strikes are marked with shrapnel. Even the blackboard is riddled with bullet holes.
Metres away from the pupils, a building used as a police barracks is fortified with sandbags and houses armed sentries.
“People think it’s an army base. They don’t know it’s a school,” said Akhtar Mohammed, one of the teachers.
“That’s exactly what makes it dangerous. Pupils come here to study, but they immediately become a target.”
In Kandahar, 98 of the southern province’s 366 schools are either occupied by armed forces or closed entirely, according to the provincial governor.
Across Afghanistan, the picture is bleak. Last year, 1,150 Afghan schools were closed because of the conflict, the United Nations said.
Despite the Afghan government investing about 4 per cent of its GDP in education, the sector consistently takes a back seat to more pressing security concerns.
It is hardly surprising that only 31 per cent of Afghans are literate – one of the lowest rates in the world, contributing further to rural-urban divides. The majority of people living in cities are educated, while the population of remote areas grow increasingly frustrated with the lack of centralised government services.
Education has experienced nine-fold growth since the USled invasion in 2001, but provincial analysis shows a high proportion of out-of-school children, the World Bank said.
Rural children are 10 per cent more likely to be out of school compared with the national average.
Originally built in 2003 with government support, Assad Suri school has been occupied by armed forces for the past 10 years, from the Taliban to the Afghan army.
“When the school first opened, we had about 2,000 students, but Zhari district quickly became one of the centres of the war,” said
community elder and former police chief Mohammed Dawood.
“Dialogue between the government and opposition would help. They are our people, but we don’t communicate. The Taliban areas are still only half an hour’s drive away.”
Today, the school is partially occupied by armed forces, with the police having taken over several classrooms, now fenced in by blast walls and barbed wire.
There are about 300 pupils at the school, only 50 of whom are girls. Aisha, 9, is one of them. Boys and girls are separated, so she attends classes in the afternoons, while boys go to school in the mornings.
“I’m not scared to come here,” she said. “Most girls I know can’t go to school at all. I don’t like the policemen roaming around, but this is my only chance to go to school.”
With a female literacy rate of only 17 per cent in Afghanistan – most of them concentrated in Kabul – Aisha is one of the few girls who attend school in Zhari district.
“It’s already hard to convince parents to send their daughters to school, but it becomes even more difficult when schools are occupied by armed men,” Mr Dawood said.
He continues to teach, even though he has not received his salary of 3,800 Afghani (Dh179) in six months. “Payment delays by the government are common, but if all teachers were to stop work, there would be no classes,” said Mr Dawood, who works as a farmer in the evenings.
Rahmatullah, 10, also works in the fields in the afternoons, after attending school in the mornings. Wearing an olive green shalwar kameez, Afghanistan’s traditional dress, he crouches on the floor of Shahid Niamatullah Primary School in Kandahar’s Panjwayi District.
He quietly talks about how the fighting devastated his family. “My father was killed by gunfire,” he said. “I still hear the sounds of the bullets when I sleep.”
Rahmatullah went back to school in January. Built in 2004, it was open for only a few years before it was occupied by members of the International Security Assistance Force, which served as the Afghan National Police at the time.
Today the building is a school again, albeit with a heavily fortified army checkpoint only a few hundred metres away.
Panjwayi district still bears the scars of years of fighting.
The dry and dusty area is dotted with ruined houses.
Countless army and police checkpoints are reminders of the continuing threat of conflict.
“Bullets don’t distinguish between civilians and soldiers,” said Tom Ogwal, a protection co-ordinator with the Norwegian Refugee Council who advocates the end of school occupations in Kandahar.
“Pupils don’t only focus on their lessons here, they have to learn what to do and how to act when there’s an attack.”
In Panjwayi district, school attendance is low. Only 128 children, including 10 girls, attend Shahid Niamatullah Primary School.
Some parents say they are comfortable with the armed forces nearby and see them as additional protection for the children. While teachers’ salaries are paid by Kabul, local families contribute to the school’s upkeep, such as helping to buy textbooks.
For their part, Afghan police often see little problem with occupying schools.
“It’s due to economic problems that we use school buildings,” said Haji Lal Mohammad, Panjwayi’s police commander. “Besides that, there is no need for all of the schools. There are other schools operating in the area.
“A few years ago, this was a war zone and one of Afghanistan’s most insecure districts. We have to put up checkpoints to keep control of the area.”
But the province’s new Governor, Hayatullah Hayat, opposes the use of schools by armed forces. “There is a clear instruction that schools should not be occupied. We have to kick them out,” he said. “This year, I want all the schools to be open again.”
At Assad Suri Primary School, despite the damage and partial occupation by police, the pupil register is growing slowly.
Children from 15 villages attend the school. Early in the afternoons, it is bustling as a few hundred boys pack up their notebooks, wave the police goodbye and make their way home on their bicycles.
“Some pupils and parents like the police and even feel safe having them around, but some don’t like sharing the building,” said Mr Mohammed. “Either way, I don’t see things changing soon.”
There is a clear instruction that schools should not be occupied by armed forces. We have to kick them out HAYATULLAH HAYAT Governor of Kandahar