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Afghanistan

Taliban plan "education offensive" in Afghan fight

By Can Merey

Kabul_(dpa) _ Taliban-led insurgents burned down more than 180 schools and killed 61 teachers and students in Afghanistan last year, government officials said this week as they took stock of damage in the ongoing conflict.

But now the militants plan to open their own schools for Afghan children in a kind of radical Islamic educational offensive to be waged parallel to the armed struggle against government and international forces.

Ten madrassa religious seminaries for boys were to be opened in ten districts the Taliban controls in southern Afghanistan, the Taliban said on its website.

One million dollars had been allocated to the task, it claimed, which if true, speaks of significant financing for an organization that not so long ago had been written off as all but defeated.

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wishes to be prepared in all aspects for the defeat of its enemy," the statement said, referring to the long-term objective of forcing the withdrawal of foreign troops and toppling the Afghan government in Kabul.

That they are still far from achieving these goals does not seem to deter the militants, who still have considerable authority in many rural areas.

"The government controls the cities (in the targeted provinces) but we control the entire countryside, so there should be no problem running these schools," Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi told the BBC.

As well as Islamic religious education, the school syllabus would include history, geography, physics and chemistry, he said.

They would start with schools for boys only and establish girls' schools later on. Meanwhile, the production of thousands of text books was in the works.

But the Taliban's proclaimed wish "to prevent harm to the education of children of the nation" draws justified scepticism.

During its six years in power in Afghanistan the radical militia denied education to girls and enforced rigid religious instruction for boys at the expense of broader studies.

And today, despite impassioned appeals from Afghan President Hamid Karzai not to give in to terrorists, many parents in the south keep their children from attending schools for fear of Taliban attacks and reprisals.

Many schools that opened since 2001 as a sign of progress have now had to close again, prompting the New York-based Human Rights Watch to call the assault on education in Afghanistan last year a "human rights crisis."

The Taliban plans have caused alarm not only in the international community but also among the Afghan government in Kabul.

Calling the Taliban "enemies of education in Afghanistan," Education Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar this week said the government would attack if militant-run facilities were opened.

As well as noting last year's tally of more than 180 schools destroyed by the insurgents and numerous people killed, he said the Taliban also forced the closure of nearly 400 schools, depriving 200,000 students of education in the southern provinces.

Their use of schools would "shift their terrorist training centres from Pakistan to Afghanistan," Atmar told journalists.

"We will never allow the opening of such schools, because our people will not accept these kinds of schools," he vowed.

But according to the militants, their services are in demand.

Spokesman Ahmadi said the Taliban would begin establishing schools in areas which were most in need and gradually expand to less deprived areas.

"People want education for their children, but they do not want to approach the government for this," he said. dpa cy fp na gm ds

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