ducation High on the Development Agenda in Afghanistan

According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), pupils attended about 3,000 schools across the country. Overall, there are about 4.5 million children of school age in the country. Many displaced Afghans are still returning to their homes, and UNICEF officials say as many as 2 million more children may register for classes during the coming months.

For many returning students, March 23 marked the first time they had gone to school since 1996, shortly after the Taliban gained control over most of Afghanistan. Older girls, some of whom continued to study at home or at underground schools, attended "catch up" classes before taking their places alongside younger students.

Although the reopening of schools went off without many complications, Afghanistan continues to struggle in its overall attempt to find stability after more than 20 years of civil strife. On March 25, a clash between rival warlord groups left at least one dead and several wounded in the eastern city of Khost. Hamid Karzai's interim government often struggles to project its authority outside of the capital city, Kabul.

Developing a viable education system in Afghanistan remains a formidable challenge. As many as 40 percent of Afghanistan's teachers have died since 1979. The country's literacy rate is now among the lowest in the world.

In 1999, less than one third of all Afghan children were enrolled in primary school, and last year just 3 percent of Afghanistan's girls attended school, mostly in rural areas outside of the Taliban's control. In February, the Minster of Women's Affairs and the Minister of Education challenged a visiting team of World Bank officials to find a single school that had not been destroyed.

Karzai's interim government has adopted ambitious plans for improving the education system. At a meeting with World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn on January 28, Karzai emphasized the need to get children back to school, to build capacity in Afghanistan and to reestablish the place of women in society.

UN agencies and a host of international and national non-governmental organizations - many of whom provided education assistance when official resources evaporated during years of conflict - have welcomed the interim government's commitment to education as a necessary step in Afghanistan's road to recovery.

"Education is a vital component of the rehabilitation effort," said John Ambler, CARE's Regional Director for Asia. "Without education, especially for girls, so many other things get stalled. All the agricultural development and infrastructure development and health systems development - all of those are ultimately dependent on people's attitudes and knowledge and behavior, and education is a key part of that."

In recent months, aid groups have helped Afghanistan's Ministry of Education prepare for the first day of school by training new teachers and acquire tents for makeshift classrooms. In February, the Afghan government and UNICEF launched a "Back to School" campaign designed to equip children and teachers with essential classroom materials.

Supplies were assembled in "School-In-A-Box" kits in Peshawar, Pakistan. Each kit, worth $300, contains supplies to support 80 students, including blackboards, chalk, paper, and writing utensils. The International Security Force in Afghanistan has provided the safe transport of 200 kits, batches of stationery, school bags, and other supplies to schools in Kabul. Kits and other supplies have been shipped overland to distribution centers in Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Khandahar, Jalalabad and Faizabad. Overall, UNICEF has delivered over 7,000 metric tons of school materials to Afghanistan, the agency said in a statement.

Many US-based aid groups and development organizations have focused on contributing money and materials. The Friendship Through Education Consortium and the US Fund for UNICEF opened a fund drive for the purchase of "School-In-A-Box" kits, and the Academy for Educational Development (AED) has distributed some 40,000 of its own kits containing learning tools, a spinning top, and a jump rope, to Afghan refugees in UNHCR refugee camps in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. "If we deprive children of their natural curiosity, it's like depriving them of food," AED's president Stephen F. Moseley said in a written statement. "We don't want to deprive them of their basic needs, and one of their basic needs is to learn."

Years of upheaval have taken a toll on Afghanistan's human capital. "Afghanistan has lost a very large number of its educated people over the past years," Ambler said. "The communist governments in the 1970s there, the Soviet invasion, and the Taliban have bled the country of much of its professional class."

Development experts believe that opening up educational opportunities for Afghan children could play a crucial role in breaking the country's cycle of violence. "Those who are educated can best serve their country," said Mohammed Kuktar Kazemi of the Coordination of Afghan Relief, a local partner of Catholic Relief Services. "Afghanistan faced two decades of war mostly because of lack of education, illiteracy, and ignorance."

Stability, should it come to Afghanistan, will open up the job market in Afghanistan, where for years most men found their choices often limited to service in a local militia group. "All the jobs that go with peace and security need to be filled by people - men and women - who are educated," Ambler said.