Afghanistan’s Mommy, Nancy Hatch Dupree, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times:
SINCE 2001, when the Taliban were dislodged from power in Afghanistan, the international community has spent many billions of dollars toward the nation’s reconstruction. Yet not much progress can be seen. Poor management and lack of coordination among aid agencies are the major reasons for this dismal record, but another very simple problem has been a failure to make sure that the Afghan people have access to books and other printed materials with the information they need to move forward…
Afghanistan’s radio network is growing, and an estimated 70 percent of the population listens at least three days a week, but radio messages are ephemeral. Some people scoff at the idea of distributing books to a population that is barely 28 percent literate. But 28 percent amounts to nearly 9 million people out of a population of 32 million, and that is certainly a worthy beginning.
It is important that a high government body like the Ministry of Education endorse the concept of distributing books to the population. Money is needed, too, ideally from both foreign governments and the Afghan government. And experts are needed to write the simple, accurate texts that Afghans need — on subjects from health care and household management to science, culture, history and the environment.
A start, yes. It is depressing that the international community still seems content to hand out fish rather than teaching them how.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 1 comment }
This puts me in mind of that comic-tragic joke:
Give a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day.
Light a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.