PESHAWAR, Feb 9: The new Afghan textbooks are being printed in Peshawar and will be distributed among 1.5 million schoolchildren before the Afghan academic year next month, Afghan Education minister Prof Rasul Amin told a select group of journalists here.

“We started from the scratch. But we have laid down the foundation for others to build on,” Amin said after arriving here on Saturday at the conclusion of interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai’s visit to Islamabad.

The sixty-one year-old former professor of Political Science in Kabul, who has spent 32 years of his life in Pakistan, was the director of Afghan Study Centre in Peshawar before his nomination to revive education in war- devastated Afghanistan.

“It’s not an easy job. Education has suffered the biggest damage. The leftists had Sovietized the education system and the Taliban had Talibanized it. There was not much of education left in Afghanistan. It was a hotchpotch of different political ideologies,” he said.

“When I visited a school in Kabul. There were no chairs and no tables. There were no black boards and no chalk to write. Everything is in shambles.”

Rasul Amin, who originally hails from Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province and is a strong supporter of exiled former king Zahir Shah, recalled the ‘good old days’ when there was a unified single Afghan curriculum and co-education at the Kabul University.

“We have worked day and night to create a new Afghan curriculum and it is ready for implementation from March 23.” He said that he planned to inaugurate the academic year by asking the former king to grace the textbook distribution ceremony in Kabul next month.

Rasul Amin, who has the distinction of being the only Afghan ever elected as secretary of Khyber Union in Islamia College Peshawar, said that one purpose of his stay in Peshawar was to oversee the printing of the new Afghan textbooks. He said that he wanted to ensure their distribution at least 10 days before the commencement of new academic year in all the provinces of Afghanistan. The girls’ enrolment has been completed. This will be a big achievement,” he said.

He said that under the new education policy, Pushto and Dari — the two official languages spoken in Afghanistan — have been made compulsory subjects to bring about national cohesion and integration. He said that English would be the main foreign language to be taught in all schools and colleges.

But the main problem faced by his nascent ministry, he said, was the shortage of trained teachers. “Some have retired others have fled Afghanistan,” Amin said. He said that he had asked foreign agencies to help him train teachers. “We need new schools, old ones need to be repaired but my biggest worry is the shortage of teachers.” He said that educated Afghans living in exile were coming forward in a big way to volunteer themselves and take part in the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Afghanistan.

He said that to an appeal launched by an international agency, nine hundred Afghans living in the US and other countries had volunteered their services for education in Afghanistan.

He said that ordinary Afghans were also taking keen interest in the rebuilding of their country and recounted how an elderly man from Nimroze had come all the way to Kabul to offer six acres of land for the construction of a girls’ school. “It goes to show just how wrong were those who had always claimed that Afghans traditionally were averse to girls education.”

He said that he had met Prince Karim Agha Khan and Pakistan’s Education Minister Farida Jalal and discussed the prospects of establishing a network of education in tribal areas in Afghanistan along the Pakistan-Afghan border. “I have been assured of full help and cooperation.” Rasul Amin said that the effort to revive education in Afghanistan would require big money. “It is the second top priority of the interim government after security. Education is a long process. We have prepared short, medium and long-term plans. I don’t know how much will it cost but it is surely going to cost a lot of money.”

The Afghan education minister said that the interim government also planned to centralize Madaris in Afghanistan and regulate their curriculum. “We had the same system in the past. We want to centralize the curriculum and bring Deeni Madaris under the control of the education ministry.”

He said that he has met Egyptian Ambassador and has asked him to train teachers of Deeni Madaris in Afghanistan.