Taliban lesson in running schools
Insurgents control education in eastern Afghanistan with government consent
JALALABAD, AFGHANISTAN // In a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan the education system has been working well for years – a rare success story amid violence and political instability.
The situation in Nangarhar province’s Bati Kot district is particularly striking as the schools are controlled by the Taliban, with government consent.
It has been this way for much of the past decade, with the insurgents exerting control over the curriculum and officials happy to turn a blind eye to their strict interpretation of Islam.
In a country where the UN estimates less than half of the pop- ulation aged 15 and older are literate, the deal between the two warring sides has benefited hundreds of children, local teachers say.
“Ordinary people and students are happy with both the government and the Taliban. From an education point of view, there are no problems now,” said Shaista Hanafi, in his mid-30s.
Bati Kot lies south-east of Nangarhar’s provincial capital Jalalabad, close to Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Once the site of an ambitious Soviet agricultural project to turn vast areas of scrubland into olive and orange groves, the district’s population is overwhelmingly Pashtun.
Olives, wheat, sweetcorn and watermelon are among the crops grown there now.
The Taliban had significant influence in Bati Kot even when the US-led occupation was at its height in 2010.
This allowed the insurgents to operate openly and they have proved surprisingly flexible when it comes to the education system, ensuring they continue to receive support from the sympathetic local population. The government’s official curriculum is implemented in the district’s eight state high schools, with the Taliban outlawing only the teaching of culture and art.
For the past four years these subjects have been replaced by lessons based on a Pashto book about the five pillars of Islam, and taught by the schools’ religious studies teachers. “Their educated men came to us and told us politely and respectfully not to teach these subjects,” said Mr Hanafi.
The Taliban regime that controlled most of Afghanistan between 1996 and 2001 was notorious for its hardline interpretation of Islam, which prohibited women from attending university and stopped girls receiving all but a basic primary education.
Boys were required to wear a simple Islamic hat up to Year 6 and a turban from then on until Year 12.
Each school day began with a kind of religious song unaccompanied by music. The curriculum was left over from the previous mujaheddin government, with the teaching of two more religious books added by the Taliban.
Even then, however, some local level Taliban officials adopted a more relaxed approach, similar to the one now in place in Bati Kot.
Safiullah Sadiq, another teacher in Bati Kot, said the decision not to teach certain subjects had been tacitly approved by the Afghan government, which ordinarily set the curriculum for state schools.
It continues to pay all the teachers’ salaries and is widely considered to regard the deal with the Taliban as a compromise worth making to allow children an education.
Mr Sadiq said teachers submitted the scores students received in their exams on the five pillars of Islam as their official marks on their art and culture papers.
The government accepts the results, no questions asked.
His school in the village of Nowaglo is a rudimentary building with a yard shaded by trees. It has 36 teachers, all of them male, for hundreds of students.
Girls are taught separately up to Year 7 while the boys study up to Year 12.
Three other high schools in Bati Kot accepted female students to higher classes on the condition that they wear hijabs.
Mr Sadiq said the Taliban carried out regular inspections of most of the schools, checking the children’s hairstyles, clothing and mobile phones to ensure they conformed to their view of Islam.
The insurgent in charge of local education in Bati Kot is a young scholar named Mustafa. He works independently of the group’s fighters and assures teachers that he will help them should any armed Taliban try to intimidate them.
He is “very good with us”, said Mr Sadiq.
Arrangements such as that in Bati Kot are not uncommon in Afghanistan.
While schools were often attacked in the early years of the war, the Taliban has adopted a more conciliatory approach nationally since late 2010.
Past reports by the Afghanistan Analysts Network in Kabul attributed the change to pressure from local communities but said regular talks had also taken place between the ministry of education and the Taliban.
Deteriorating security is beginning to complicate matters in Nangarhar.
The Taliban’s hold on Bati Kot has been contested by ISIL and the education system in other parts of the province is suffering badly because of the violence that has accompanied ISIL’s rise.
A 43-year-old teacher in the district of Deh Bala said the Taliban had begun to negotiate with teachers there in 2010 but only enforced their rules on schools in 2012, when they banned teaching culture and mathematics.
He said the insurgents had initially been “very gentle and nice with us”. They told teachers they must arrive at school by 8am and leave at exactly noon. Teachers absent without a valid excuse had a fine taken from their salary.
But as the Taliban military strength grew their attitude began to change and they “killed some people who were not obeying them”, he said.
The situation deteriorated further when ISIL drove the Taliban from parts of Deh Bala. Twenty-four schools in the district are now shut, open in name only, he said.
The teacher has lived in Jalalabad for two years. He travels regularly to Deh Bala to check on an agricultural institute he helps run from a rented house after its building was taken over by ISIL.
The journey is fraught with danger, as demonstrated when an off-duty policeman was killed while going to the district to visit his family.
“They dropped his uniform on top of his body, to show this was the reason for his punishment,” said the teacher.