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Historical study: Examining the effects of a cold war curriculum in Afghanistan

Mon, March 26, 1:15 to 2:45pm, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 4th Floor, Don Alberto 4

Proposal

Afghanistan has gone through a variety of curriculum changes in the 20th century, that seem to promote the hegemonic agendas of powerful countries to perpetuate cultural supremacy in order to pursue political agendas. Education movements in Afghanistan, since the beginning of the 20th century, can be largely identified by three distinct phases: 1919 – 1979 (post-colonial), 1979 – 2001 (Cold War and beyond), and 2002 till today (Shirazi, 2008).

These changes can be marked further by the incoherent nature of U.S. education development assistance to Afghanistan before and during the Cold War. Before the Cold War, a curriculum was designed by the U.S. to fast track development and infrastructure in Afghanistan to promote the modern concepts of Islam. A secular education system in Afghanistan was promoted, which was similar to the U.S. curriculum with an anti-communist ideology. During the Cold War, the earlier efforts of progressive reform within the education system were dismissed and Afghans were used to fight the ideological Cold War against the Soviet “infidels”. A new religious curriculum was designed to indoctrinate Afghan youth that promoted an extremely rigid version of Islam linked with violence and killing “infidels”. This indoctrination has had devastating long term effects and largely has prevented Afghanistan from developing into a unified and strong Government that remains at the mercy of foreign aid and hegemonic agendas.

There are no quick solutions to the tragic results of Cold War agendas, and for my historical study, I will examine the impact of cultural hegemony in promoting political agendas of foreign countries through curricular changes that are guised as “help”, such as in Afghanistan. Ultimately, then, my goal is to demonstrate that foreign “aid” was always intended to pursue political agendas of powerful countries and rarely for the altruistic purpose of “helping” Afghans. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia, with logistical help from Pakistan, supported the Cold War curricular “reform”. Which promoted militant ideology among Afghan youth (5-16 years olds) that focused on the radical Islamic concepts of Jihad (war against the enemies of Islam), clearly points towards an agenda of winning the Cold War to control the spread of communism, and not the slightest concern or care for Afghans. The resulting instinctive suspicion of Afghans towards foreign “aid” is, therefore, not a surprising response.

The year 2002 saw a resurgence of interest in the Afghanistan education system which emphasized education equity and access for all, girls and boys, in the region (Jones, 2009). The agenda towards social reform included turning to schools to solve significant social and ideological problems, such as controlling the drug trade and reclaiming rights of women. It should be noted that even after 9/11, the violent textbooks of the Cold War were still in circulation (Yaseer, 2007), but they briefly received media criticism and an outpouring of public grief and rage as these textbooks poisoned Afghan children into a warrior state of mind (Stephens & Ottaway, 2002). Subsequently, attempts were made by the USAID and UNICEF (2004) to extract the violent images from the textbooks, and many suggestions for improvement were made, such as replacing the images of war paraphernalia in textbooks with pomegranates, and the violent texts with safe texts for Afghan children. I agree with the suggestions for improvement in the curriculum, but it is extremely useful to consider the problem that arises when changes in curricula are challenged by the Taliban leaders as further control of “infidels” and they threaten to burn down schools (Jones, 2009).

Following a brief section of demographics and other contextual information, this study chronologically presents a historical analysis of Afghan public education starting with British occupation in 1919 to map out the key events that played a role in shaping the education system in Afghanistan. Starting from the post-colonial era and then focusing on the Cold War era (1979-1989). This study embeds examples of Afghanistan being used as a battle ground for external political agendas, and school curriculum was shaped accordingly, to indoctrinate Afghan youth into a militant ideology. Subsequently, this study will explore the impact of these political agendas post-9/11 and in current day Afghanistan. The study concludes with possible considerations that foreign countries should be mindful of when and how they “help” Afghanistan and a discussion of the implications of these educational policies and their impact today.

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