By Sanjeev Miglani
KABUL, June 22 (Reuters) – A third of Afghan national
security forces are taking basic lessons in reading and counting
as NATO commanders accelerate their training ahead of the
withdrawal of most foreign troops in 2014, the coalition has
said.
More than 95 percent of recruits in the Afghan national army
and police are functionally illiterate, having never been to
school, so are sent on a beginner’s course to teach them how to
write their name and count to 1,000 in their mother tongue.
Afghan forces, which hit a strength of 343,000 men in April
as part of a rapid build-up, are set to take over security
responsibilities by the middle of next year as a deadly Taliban
insurgency rages.
The widespread absence of elementary reading and counting
skills in a nation torn by three decades of war has slowed their
training and their ability to do the job, underscoring the
challenges facing Afghanistan after the bulk of Western military
support is withdrawn.
“For many in Afghanistan, because of 30 years of war they
have had little access to information, education. They know a
lot but they don’t know how to read or write,” said Barbara
Goodno, chief of the literacy and language division at NATO’s
training mission in Afghanistan.
“What we are trying to do is to jump-start the process,” she
said.
On Friday, Afghan forces battled Taliban gunmen who were
holding hostages overnight in a popular lakeside hotel on the
outskirts of Kabul.
About 119,000 Afghan soldiers and police are undergoing a
three-stage literacy programme which aims to teach them writing,
reading and counting skills equivalent to students aged eight in
the third grade of the Afghan school system.
NATO said a 2009 survey found that the Afghan national army,
which is considered the most professional of all the country’s
forces and the spearhead of the fight against the Taliban, had a
literacy rate of 13 percent. The police were assumed to be
little better, on the basis of the army survey.
The coalition said it was not aware of a follow-up study,
but its assumption was the figure would have risen since then,
though there was no hard statistical data.
The soldiers can neither read nor write at the start of the
literacy course, so instructors have to explain everything in
pictures. All training is manual and every skill has to be
demonstrated, commanders say.
Troops are unable to read instructions on how to maintain a
vehicle, fill out a form for the issue of equipment, or read a
serial number to distinguish their weapon from another – all
basic soldiering duties anywhere in the world.
“If you have someone who is injured and they are unable to
read a map and to provide their location to get picked up, its a
serious problem. That is a matter of life and death,” said
Goodno.
“If you have an individual, a police officer who is
responsible for enforcing laws that they are unable to read, and
they are unable to write a report, that is a matter of life and
death.”
Afghanistan’s overall literacy rate is 37 percent, ranking
117 out of 123 nations.
Some 3,000 Afghan teachers have been hired as part of a $200
million programme for basic literacy funded by Japan, Britain,
Finland and the United Arab Emirates until 2014.
“Training is difficult, it does not happen quickly or
easily,” Goodno said.
(Editing by Daniel Magnowski)
