Ghulam is Afghan, but migrated to Pakistan in 1979. His family is still refugees there, and Ghulam himself was a schoolteacher in a refugee camp in Pakistan, though he was forced to abandon school in ninth grade. Eventually, Ghulam earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Peshawar University. He is married with four children — two boys and two girls.

Despite his busy schedule, Ghulam sat down to answer a few questions about the current state of education in his embattled homeland.

Q: Please give an overview of Afghanistan’s educational system pre-September 11.

A: With 23 years of war and conflict, our education system was totally destroyed. Sadly, this included teachers. It is estimated that between 1980 and 1999, 2,000 teachers were killed and another 15,000 abandoned the practice because of the hardships going on at that time in our country. Also, there was a lot of skepticism about education at that time — parents were fearful of sending their children to school because they might be used for a political agenda. As is common in many countries, the government traditionally provides access to education. But in Afghanistan, we virtually had no government. The communities were left on their own.

Q: And the children who were educated…were girls among them?

A: During the Taliban era, a law was passed that forbade girls to attend school. It also forbade female employment. These laws were against the will of Afghan citizens.

Q: So Afghan citizens wanted to send their girls to school, but the Taliban forbade them to do so?

A: In the urban areas, yes. In the rural areas, it is more complicated. There, they were not so willing to send their daughters to school. Traditionally, in these areas, honor is gauged by how much women and girls live in privacy. If they are in the home a lot and rarely seen, the family is very honored. Also, there were many internal feuds between families and tribes and communities over water and property, and people thought it would provide more support for their side of the feud if they educated boys. Girls couldn’t provide this support. Lastly, in Afghan marriages, women go to the husband’s family, so mothers and fathers saw little use for educating a daughter because she eventually left.

Q: Were any communities doing something about this lack of education for both their sons and their daughters?

A: Of course. CARE was working in Afghanistan at the time and worked with communities to find a solution. The Community Organization of Primary Education (COPE) project started in 1994 with the goal of emphasizing the importance of education for girls. The training packets CARE developed for the project included information on gender equality and the right of children, especially of girls, to education. CARE felt this was important in order to change some of the commonly held beliefs that girls should not be educated.

A second goal of the project was to assist communities technically — to help them mobilize resources at the local level, and to resolve conflicts peacefully, as well as to monitor schools and teachers.

Q: So these schools operated even during a time when the Taliban forbade girls to attend school?

A: Yes. These communities sent their girls to school, but they did it underground, not out in the open. The local authorities were aware of it; they gave the go-ahead, but they told the people to keep a low profile and not to inform the authorities.

Q: Describe some of the COPE project’s successes.

A: CARE’s successes with this project have been significant. At the moment, there are 310 COPE schools that reach 23,069 students, 46 percent of whom are girls. We also trained 570 teachers, 16 percent of who are women.

Q: Then, with these successes and the toppling of the Taliban, what is left to accomplish?

A: Well, the Taliban are gone, but the situation is still much the same. The United Nations launched a "Back to School" campaign with the goal of enrolling at least 1.5 million out-of-school children. But there are currently 4 million Afghan students out of school. So, even if the goal of 1.5 million is reached, there are still 2.5 million children with no access to education. Two-thirds of those 4 million are girls. So really there is still quite a lot to accomplish.

That is why CARE has started two new projects in Kabul. They were begun in March 2002. One is the Basic Education for Out-of-School Girls project, and the other is the Female Teacher Training project. Though they have just started, 630 schoolteachers were trained in the first session. The second session has begun, and an additional 630 schoolteachers are now being trained. By the end of the project, 2,000 schoolteachers will have been trained, and they will go on to provide quality education to approximately 60,000 children.

Q: And the Basic Education for Out-of-School Girls project?

A: CARE is the first organization to develop this type of project in Afghanistan. It came about because of the law during the Taliban that forbade girls from attending school. That law left thousands of girls uneducated. Now those girls are grown up. So CARE created a condensed curriculum at three learning centers in Kabul so that girls could complete two grades in one year. So far, 1,000 girls are involved in this project.

Q: So what lies ahead?

A: A whole generation of girls, of children in general, has been left behind. The demand in Afghanistan is huge, the need is huge. And the need of women is huge, as well. The literacy rate for Afghan men is 47 percent. For women, it is 11 percent. That is the official statistic. Unofficial numbers are as low as 3 percent. CARE is going to establish literacy and vocational training centers for women to help address this problem. There is also a shortage of teachers. And the birth rate in Afghanistan is 3.8 percent — which is quite high. So these problems, unless they are addressed, will continue to worsen.

In Afghanistan, we need basic things: textbooks, paper, buildings. Ninety percent of our country’s schools have been destroyed. We also need to promote peace and tolerance. We need to educate our children so they grow up to be responsible citizens who strive for a better life.