UNITED NATIONS, April 25 (UPI) -- Stung by the loss of four Canadian troops and an air attack on their base last week, coalition forces in Kandahar bolstered defenses as some Afghan women in the city -- unbowed by the violence -- took a step toward post-conflict life.
A group of local women will join two new teacher training classes slated to begin in Kandahar this week, U.N. representatives in Afghanistan told United Press International. The classes are part of a country-wide program aimed at educating the wives of former soldiers.
Afghanistan has the fastest-growing student population in South and West Asia, according to a report released Tuesday by UNESCO. The country saw a 55 percent increase in primary education enrollment between 2000 and 2004. By contrast, the enrollment in Pakistan, which experienced the next-largest increase in the region, grew about only 4 percent.
The exploding student population is straining Afghanistan's pool of teachers. The UNESCO report said 68,000 teachers are currently at work in the country. To keep up with demand and to reach universal primary education, one of the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, it needs nearly 104,000 new teachers -- an increase of almost 9 percent per year until 2015, when the goals are set to be met.
The UNDP is providing support for Afghanistan's newest teacher training initiative to the Ministry of Education and to the Afghanistan New Beginnings Program, which works to reintegrate former soldiers and officers decommissioned by the government.
The primary goal of the teacher training program inaugurated earlier this month is to increase the pool of trained, qualified teachers -- especially female teachers - throughout the country, Besmillah Ekhlas, a program officer for the U.N. Development Program in the country, said in an e-mail interview with UPI.
Nearly 350 women in six provinces have enrolled in the UNDP training program, which will last five months. Women who successfully complete the course will receive a certificate and be offered jobs as teachers in a local school, Ekhlas said.
Only 22 percent of Afghanistan's current teachers are women, and most of them are concentrated in urban areas like Kabul, the UNESCO report said. Rural areas place greater restrictions on women's education, making it more difficult to find female teachers outside city centers.
But the training also seeks to address another common problem in post-conflict Afghanistan: financial hardship faced by the families of former soldiers. Although the salary the new teachers will earn -- between $36 and $60 -- is not remarkable, even when compared to the cost of living in the country, U.N. staff say it can help move former military families closer to normal civilian life.
"This is not a lot of money," Ahmad Jan Nawzadi, a U.N. information officer in Afghanistan told UPI by email, "but if two or three or more people are working and make the same amount of money, then I am sure they can... have a much better life."
Combining incomes is one way former soldiers' families are coping with the economic challenges of post-conflict life. About 63,000 soldiers have been disarmed and decommissioned by the government of Afghanistan, Nawzadi said, and the Afghanistan New Beginnings Program has reintegrated all but 3,000 of those. Finding work is a challenge, however, and the economic instability former soldiers' families face make rejoining civilian life difficult.
"In this post-war context marked by a deprived economy, all Afghans, including ex-combatants' families, have been facing economical problems," Nawzadi said. "Unemployment that lasts too long leads to insecurity when (former soldiers) revert to weapons to make a living."
Training the wives or daughters of former soldiers is one way of avoiding that scenario, the U.N. spokesmen said. In an effort to provide even modest income to ex-combatants' families, the ANBP identified 500 women who had completed high school, or could pass a proficiency exam, as qualified candidates for the teacher training initiative. The Ministry of Education whittled the candidate pool down and began daily training courses two weeks ago.
The future teachers meet six days a week, eight hours a day. The training is focused largely on pedagogy and employs materials previously developed by the Ministry of Education.
There are no official plans to repeat the training, which ends in September, but U.N. staff said the program may become part of a long-term partnership in the works between the reintegration authority and UNDP.
"This training is a good opportunity for the ex-combatants as well as their families to find a place in the new Afghanistan," Nawzadi said, "be it by themselves or in this case through the training of women."
