‘Infidels are our enemy’: Afghan fighters cherish old American schoolbooks
Millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars helped fan religious conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to a major new study, and even money spent since 9/11 may have stoked tensions.
The conventional wisdom that building schools in a conflict zone helps promote peace and stability is called into question by New York University professor Dana Burde, whose findings make sobering reading for donors as reconstruction of Afghanistan enters a crucial period.
“Aid education may not always have the influence that we think,” she said. “Although there are dramatic and positive results of current support to education in Afghanistan today, this was not always the case.”
Promoting violence — in the form of jihad against the Soviet invaders and their local proxies — was the goal of the U.S.-funded education effort in the 1980s and early ’90s. Textbooks such as “The Alphabet of Jihad Literacy,” funded by the U.S. and published by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, came out at a time when the CIA was channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to mujahedeen fighters to resist the Soviet occupation.
USAID funded textbooks for distribution at refugee camps in Pakistan, with content written by mujahedeen groups with the support of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and the CIA.
Burde said the rationale of this indoctrination in the ideas of warfare as religious duty rested on the assumption of the “importance of starting early.” While the U.S. program ended with the collapse of Afghanistan’s communist government, its textbooks have spawned dozens of copies and revised editions, she said
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She managed to find several old copies of the Pashto-language books and a 2011 edition on sale in the Pakistani city of Peshawar as recently as last year. The Taliban, she said, continues to recommend these books for children.
The majority of the book’s 41 lessons glorify violence in the name of religion. “My uncle has a gun,” reads the entry for the letter T, using the Pashto word for “gun,” “topak.” “He does jihad with the gun.”
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‘Infidels are our enemy’: Afghan fighters cherish old American schoolbooks | Al Jazeera America
