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From U.S., the ABC's of Jihad
Violent Soviet-Era Textbooks Complicate Afghan Education Eorts
March 22, 2002
By Joe Stephens and David B. Ottaway
In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent
millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with
textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic
teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the
Soviet occupation.
The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured
drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served
since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum.
Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,
though the radical movement scratched out human faces in
keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
As Afghan schools reopen today, the United States is back in
the business of providing schoolbooks. But now it is
wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful
strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism. What
seemed like a good idea in the context of the Cold War is
being criticized by humanitarian workers as a crude tool that
steeped a generation in violence.
Last month, a U.S. foreign aid official said, workers launched
a "scrubbing" operation in neighboring Pakistan to purge
from the books all references to rifles and killing. Many of
the 4 million texts being trucked into Afghanistan, and
millions more on the way, still feature Koranic verses and
teach Muslim tenets.
is article was published more than
22 years ago
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Archived article
Original link: https://washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/03/23/from-us-the-abcs-of-jihad/d079075a-3ed3-4030-9a96-0d48f6355e54/
The White House defends the religious content, saying that
Islamic principles permeate Afghan culture and that the
books "are fully in compliance with U.S. law and policy."
Legal experts, however, question whether the books violate a
constitutional ban on using tax dollars to promote religion.
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Organizations accepting funding from the U.S. Agency for
International Development must certify that tax dollars will
not be used to advance religion. The certification states that
AID "will finance only programs that have a secular purpose.
. . . AID-financed activities cannot result in religious
indoctrination of the ultimate beneficiaries."
The issue of textbook content reflects growing concern
among U.S. policymakers about school teachings in some
Muslim countries in which Islamic militancy and anti-
Americanism are on the rise. A number of government
agencies are discussing what can be done to counter these
trends.
President Bush and first lady Laura Bush have repeatedly
spotlighted the Afghan textbooks in recent weeks. Last
Saturday, Bush announced during his weekly radio address
that the 10 million U.S.-supplied books being trucked to
Afghan schools would teach "respect for human dignity,
instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and
bigotry."
The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid
Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the
University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide
textbooks and teacher training kits.
AID officials said in interviews that they left the Islamic
materials intact because they feared Afghan educators would
reject books lacking a strong dose of Muslim thought. The
agency removed its logo and any mention of the U.S.
government from the religious texts, AID spokeswoman
Kathryn Stratos said.
"It's not AID's policy to support religious instruction,"
Stratos said. "But we went ahead with this project because
the primary purpose . . . is to educate children, which is
predominantly a secular activity."
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Some legal experts disagreed. A 1991 federal appeals court
ruling against AID's former director established that
taxpayers' funds may not pay for religious instruction
overseas, said Herman Schwartz, a constitutional law expert
at American University, who litigated the case for the
American Civil Liberties Union.
Ayesha Khan, legal director of the nonprofit Americans
United for Separation of Church and State, said the White
House has "not a legal leg to stand on" in distributing the
books.
"Taxpayer dollars cannot be used to supply materials that are
religious," she said.
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and
Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s
under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha
and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51
million on the university's education programs in
Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.
During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military
leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into
the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-
Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with
illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency
officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also
suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders.
"I think we were perfectly happy to see these books trashing
the Soviet Union," said Chris Brown, head of book revision
for AID's Central Asia Task Force.
AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the
textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even
after the Taliban seized power in 1996.
Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for
continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the
books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the
chagrin of international aid workers.
"The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school
students, but the texts are even much worse," said Ahmad
Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program
coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-
based nonprofit.
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An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page
book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or
passages.
The military content was included to "stimulate resistance
against invasion," explained Yaquib Roshan of Nebraska's
Afghanistan center. "Even in January, the books were
absolutely the same . . . pictures of bullets and Kalashnikovs
and you name it."
During the Taliban era, censors purged human images from
the books. One page from the texts of that period shows a
resistance fighter with a bandolier and a Kalashnikov slung
from his shoulder. The soldier's head is missing.
Above the soldier is a verse from the Koran. Below is a
Pashtu tribute to the mujaheddin, who are described as
obedient to Allah. Such men will sacrifice their wealth and
life itself to impose Islamic law on the government, the text
says.
"We were quite shocked," said Doug Pritchard, who reviewed
the primers in December while visiting Pakistan on behalf of
a Canada-based Christian nonprofit group. "The constant
image of Afghans being natural warriors is wrong. Warriors
are created. If you want a different kind of society, you have
to create it."
After the United States launched a military campaign last
year, the United Nations' education agency, UNICEF, began
preparing to reopen Afghanistan's schools, using new books
developed with 70 Afghan educators and 24 private aid
groups. In early January, UNICEF began printing new texts
for many subjects but arranged to supply copies of the old,
unrevised U.S. books for other subjects, including Islamic
instruction.
Within days, the Afghan interim government announced that
it would use the old AID-produced texts for its core school
curriculum. UNICEF's new texts could be used only as
supplements.
Earlier this year, the United States tapped into its $296
million aid package for rebuilding Afghanistan to reprint the
old books, but decided to purge the violent references.
About 18 of the 200 titles the United States is republishing
are primarily Islamic instructional books, which agency
officials refer to as "civics" courses. Some books teach how to
live according to the Koran, Brown said, and "how to be a
good Muslim."
UNICEF is left with 500,000 copies of the old "militarized"
books, a $200,000 investment that it has decided to destroy,
according to U.N. officials.
On Feb. 4, Brown arrived in Peshawar, the Pakistani border
town in which the textbooks were to be printed, to oversee
hasty revisions to the printing plates. Ten Afghan educators
labored night and day, scrambling to replace rough drawings
of weapons with sketches of pomegranates and oranges,
Brown said.
"We turned it from a wartime curriculum to a peacetime
curriculum," he said.
Illustrations of land mines and knives, found in a math
primer bought last week in Pakistan, resemble drawings
found in old schoolbooks furnished to Afghans by AID.First
lady Laura Bush told Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid
Karzai, on Jan. 29 that AID would provide $6.5 million for
new textbooks and for training teachers.
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