Afghanistan: The education/security dilemma
Baadal ( not his real name), who had participated in the training programs I help to conduct abroad, recently sent me an email from his home in Afghanistan. He wrote that, because he had been involved in that educational process which had been “supported by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul,” his “documents [had been] detected by the Taliban while searching [his] home,” and if they “find me out, they will kill me.” Like others of the nearly 200 law students from Afghanistan with whom I have worked in this program, he was pleading for my help to get him out of Afghanistan.
Since 9/11, America’s role in Afghanistan has been a story of competing narratives and competing choices. This has not changed with the U.S. military exit from Afghanistan. But what of the people we helped to educate, now left behind?
Beginning in 2007, the Center for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law has worked with the Commercial Law Development Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce to train law students and professors in Middle East countries using an international commercial arbitration moot competition as a teaching platform. Teams from Afghanistan joined this process beginning in 2014. The first team was a remarkable group of four young women who represented their country in international competition with poise, intelligence and confidence. One of the four, Duniya, has just completed her Master of Law degree at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, with the assistance of a scholarship from our center, and an apartment provided by a Pitt Law alumna and her family. Knowing we have helped Duniya has only resulted in more requests for assistance, like that from Baadal.
As director of our center, I led the Middle East training program for the Commerce Department and came to know students and coaches from many law schools in the region. Doing so gave me hope for the future of the Middle East as I saw young women, in particular, rise to levels of education, knowledge, understanding and self-assurance that are inconsistent with most people’s conceptions of that region of the world.
As the United States has exited Afghanistan, many have criticized the Trump administration agreement with the Taliban and the subsequent Biden administration pullout based in part on that agreement. What elected officials have not done is offer a plan that would have provided what they find to be a proper alternative. Some say we should have helped more Afghans leave the country at an earlier stage, but that creates a Hobson’s choice. The more Afghans who were educated and trained by Americans leave the country, the more it will be easy for the Taliban to create a successful, repressive, replacement government. The more those people stay in the country, the more difficult it will be for the Taliban to create such a government.
I am faced with this dilemma as I hear from Baadal and the dozens of other students we have trained in Afghanistan. Their pleas, on a daily basis, are heartbreaking. Their personal strength, courage and resolve, however, is amazing. One need only consider the reports from students from Afghanistan on Pitt Law’s JURIST legal news and commentary service (www.jurist.org) to understand the strength of the young people who can be that country’s next generation of leaders. Our problem in the United States is that, if we help them all leave their country, then we have pretty much ensured that the type of repressive government we oppose will control that country. If we don’t help them leave, then we will have ensured that some, if not many, of them will suffer in ways we can only imagine. That is not an easy choice.
We must continue to educate and provide true hope for a better future and strengthen the youth in every country the United States can help in this way. We must also honor commitments to them when they are placed in harm’s way. Accomplishing both goals, however, can make it exceedingly difficult to have a policy that provides for lasting peace in such countries. But we will only improve the situation when we understand the complexity of the matter and avoid oversimplification for purposes of scoring political points through criticism without constructive alternatives. We must continue to engage in providing education, especially education devoted to rule of law, while at the same time helping those like Duniya who make it to the United States, and those like Baadal, who remain at risk in Afghanistan.
Ronald Brand is an international and comparative law scholar and founding director of the Center for International Legal Education at the University of Pittsburgh, where he works to enhance opportunities for both U.S. and international students. He also works with the U.S. Department of Commerce to train students and faculty throughout the Middle East and North Africa.