If you have never been taught your numbers, you cannot read a map. In war, if you cannot read a map to relay your location, you are dead. When I visited Western Afghanistan a few weeks ago a soldier's story made this very point. An Afghan unit, capable of operating independently, was ambushed in a remote valley. They knew exactly where they were...they had been patrolling this area for years...some of them had grown up there...but when they needed artillery and air support...when they needed to evacuate their wounded...they could not provide their location. Not a single soldier could read their map to provide their location.
Literacy, a basic element of education that we take for granted, is a matter of life and death in Afghanistan. When you consider the average literacy rate for an entry level soldier or policeman in Afghanistan is about 14% across the entire Afghan National Security Force, literacy becomes a major challenge in training, education, and even performance of the basic skills required by a professional security force. As I wrote recently in an article for the Wall Street Journal, literacy should not be confused with intelligence, nor illiteracy with a lack of it. The Afghan soldiers and policemen that I interact with every day are quick, witty, and experienced. But literacy is a major challenge to professionalizing their force.
The #1 challenge to building a self-sustaining Afghan National Security Force that can serve and protect its people, and thereby transition into the lead for security, is developing professionalism within its ranks. Professionalism, and the enduring benefits it provides to security forces like the Army and Police, is why literacy development is so important. This skill is the essential enabler that addresses not just life and death issues, but the cornerstone elements of professionalism: the ability to enforce accountability, the opportunity to attend professional military and law enforcement education, particularly specialized skills taught in technical schools and continued education, and the knowledge to combat corruption.
How can personnel provide oversight for all aspects of the force, from equipment to personnel, and regulations to training, if they cannot read? How can an illiterate soldier know what equipment he is supposed to have and to maintain if he cannot read the list? How can a policeman who does not know his numbers read and understand the serial number on his own weapon? Literacy is required to enforce accountability.
Additionally, literacy develops technical competency through professional education. The ability to read provides soldiers and policemen the ability to attend these schools and learn enabling skills such as logistics, maintenance, intelligence and communications. These skills are required to sustain a professional force in the field, as well as build enduring capacity for the future.
Finally, literacy combats corruption within the Afghan National Security Force, preventing bad actors from preying on the illiterate. When the force is literate, standards can be published and everyone can be held accountable to adhere to them, up the chain of command as well as down. This includes soldiers and policemen having the ability to prevent theft of their pay. Only when they can read how much they are owed, and how much have they received, will they be able to prevent such theft.
To provide this critical enabler to the Afghan National Security Force, we have recently created mandatory literacy courses. Today they are educating about 27,000 recruits, Army and Police, at any given time in these programs, growing to 50,000 by this December. By June of 2011, we will continuously have about 100,000 army and police recruits in full-time literacy training programs. Though the creation of these mandatory literacy courses in the past ten months have supported the professionalization of the Afghan National Security Force and educated many students, it will take time and sustained effort to educate an entire generation of Afghans to the level necessary to create professional leaders and allow for the specialization of the force.
Building up the Afghan people in this way is in stark contrast to the approach of Afghanistan's enemies. Where we build up, they tear down. While we are improving the future of the Afghan people through education and development, the Taliban and its allies are destroying schools, poisoning children, and maiming civilians. Let us continue to provide Afghans the skills like literacy that they need to survive and thrive, while fighting to defeat those that promise only death.
Literacy goes beyond just educating Soldiers and is fundamental to bringing peace to volatile societies. As the ISAF is looking toward educating Soldiers to function so to must it receive help in educating the society, civilians can make a tremendous difference in this role, just as Greg Mortenson has and continues to. There will always be cultural differences, diversity is good but just the theory of democratic peace reduces the likelihood of conflict so too will education. The US, our partners and all world citizens can play a vital role in this approach.
You cannot have any kind of a society that does not have literacy at its heart. Ignorance simply continues the cycle of warlordism, tribalism, and underdevelopment and all that goes with it. Glad to see that NATO is doing a good job and is far more intelligent than in our past wars.
We provide basic skills required for life, skills that most in the developed world take for granted because we developed them by age ten. After more than thirty years of warfare, an entire generation of Afghans missed the opportunity for formal education. Unfortunately, this generation of young men and women is the group upon which Afghanistan must depend for its future.
Many of the 27,000 in our literacy programs are the only residents of their towns and villages with any ability to read and write. To enter the modern world and become a functioning member of it, more than the Afghan elite must be literate. Illiteracy hinders every aspect of societal growth and development.
In the NTM-A, we are focused solely on creating security forces capable of protecting the citizens of Afghanistan. A large part of that mission is creating forces that are sustainable, that follow the rule of law, that respect the rights of fellow citizens, and have the capability to obtain information from multiple souces enabling development of individual, independent opinions. Literacy is the fundamental bedrock upon which each of these capabilities lies and upon which the nearly fifty member nations of the international coalition must base their efforts.
Mike Faughnan, Ph.D.
Chief, Education Division
NATO Training Mission Afghanistan
why yes... yes they are. you s/b grateful, not disdainful. if you believe that our presence in the Middle East encourages attacks, how do you explain the many hundreds of attacks on Americans PRIOR to our involvement in Iraq & Afghanistan? no, I didn't think you could. get informed and lose your prejudice and anger. you'll be a better citizen for it.
Thank you for your service, as I vet I know your job can be a thankless at times. However, I must disagree with you in this regard. Your goal maybe true and noble, but it is not our role in this world to build other nations. Our Wilsonian interventionism and military adventurism must be brought to an end. I say this, understanding what is at stake, but the simple fact is, we must respect other nations to run their country's as they see fit. It is not our job to police or build the world.
Our country should focus on educating the Afghan people so they can make inteeligent choices for their future. Extremists like the Taliban depend upon ignorance in order to flourish;give the Afghan people the knowledge to rebut fundamentalist propaganda and recognize it for what it is and the Afghan people will get their country on track.