Young Afghan students studying at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek Kyrgyzstan.
Meeting children of states marred by turmoil and bloodshed is one of the few things capable of placing a face on the cost of war. Three decades of conflict has left Afghanistan with 49 percent of its population below the age of 15 and burgeoning demands for security, employment, and most problematically education.
Sultan Mahmod a senior at the American University of Central Asia spoke openly of the educational difficulties he has faced in Afghanistan. “When I was studying I couldn’t concentrate on my education because of the war,” he said. “Sometimes rockets or bomb blasts were near my school. Mostly we were thinking about our safety, or security not education.” Understandably, these difficulties prevented Sultan from learning how to read and write until the age of 11.
With the ending of a bloody civil war and the collapse of the Taliban, Afghanistan was left with a nonexistent education system and a population where only 17 percent of adults over the age of 25 had received formal schooling. This legacy is reflected in the October findings of the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, which confirmed the country’s education and literacy indicators reflect a “poorly performing education system.”
The efforts of the international community and the Afghan government have attempted to address the challenges faced by the current education system specifically: the lack of adequate facilities; low levels of literacy; an astounding gender gap in all education indicators; and unqualified teachers. Such efforts have brought limited success that many fear have become increasingly jeopardized by the country’s rapidly deteriorating security environment.
