The Afghanistan situation clearly doesn’t seem very pleasant. The war seems to heading to a dead end and increasingly, we are hearing voices from certain sections within the USA and elsewhere of an American pull-out from Afghanistan too. Their arguments include the fact that even 9/11 was planned and carried out from Western cities. This is fallacious as none of this would have been possible but for the ideological backing that the Arab and Middle Eastern radical fringe groups give. Pulling out, it goes without saying, would be disastrous both for the region and the world.
The new American administration realizes that this war cannot be won by military means alone. This, in spite of the all the news reports we read about increasing military action in Islamic-extremist infested regions. Drone attacks, for example, have increased. And, consecutively, so have civilian causalities.
Taliban and other outfits will continue to enjoy support from a ‘fair’ proportion of people in the region for several reasons. These include the ingrained idea of sovereignty, where certain people continue to see the USA as an outsider and they hence wrongly assume that the Taliban are the local heroes fighting the foreign evil. Such sections prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t. At the margin, however, there exists another section that finds itself an easy prey for Afghan warlords to hire, a section that would probably not have tended to such a direction had they had they been safely employed elsewhere. (Note that this is not a generalization for all militia, but only a reference to a section at the margin)
Bottom-up and Top-down strategies of Education
Increasing of peaceful employment might pull such a section out of the local militias and into meaningful contribution. Education is an enabling factor that helps in this regard. However, everyone recognizes the shortcomings of an impractical goal of establishing a strong primary and secondary schooling system in a short span of time. Even if this was done, by the time a sizeable proportion of people got educated, a good 10-15 years would have passed, surely passing the political sell-by date of the war to the American public. Also, schools become easy target of militants, as to them, they represent symbols of American occupation.
An education policy which seems more practicable is the top-down strategy, as opposed to the bottom-up strategy of primary school setting discussed above. Specifically, I propose the setting up of the Afghanistan Institute of Management (I’ll refer it as AIM henceforth), in the lines of the infamous Indian Institutes of Technology. The nuances and advantages are discussed below:
1. It is easier to build one big institution and secure it from militant strikes, rather than building several small schools in every district with relatively lesser or no security.
2. The AIM would be completely residential and anonymity of students will be maintained so that they and their families aren’t targeted by militants.
3. Finding able and excellent teachers might seem to be a big problem. However, in today’s day, it shouldn’t be. English speaking professors can be hired from universities around the world and be asked to teach as little as 2-4 hours every week from the comforts and safety of their universities in, say, New Delhi, Singapore or London, via videoconferencing facilities.
4. To compensate for the lack of quality education in their schools, an extra semester or two of basic education and English training can be imparted.
5. AIM can be funded by many countries that have a stake in a stable Afghanistan.
6. The students studying here (at least initially) shouldn’t have to pay anything, and must be selected by a merit test.
7. There would be a small and important condition for admission: After completing their education, they will be required to stay and work in Afghanistan, and hence contribute to their economy, for at least 5-7 years. If they want to leave, they’ll have to pay up, say, 150% of the cost of their education.
8. On successfully completing their education, those who wish to be entrepreneurs will be given a capital grant of, say, Rs. 1-2 crore ($210k-420k), on submitting a project report of their intended firm/industry. This ‘loan’ will not need to be paid back if certain goals are met. These could include conditions such as: the enterprise should be employing ~20 workers at the end of year 1, ~50 at the end of year 2, ~100 at the end of year 3, and so on. Of course, profitability is important. If for various reasons profits cannot be maintained, they can submit reports to governing councils of these loans for restructuring of conditions and terms.
9. Since this project is of international interest, at least temporarily, these firms should be allowed to trade without barriers with these nations. Hence even if their own markets saturate, which I presume they will, they can produce for or serve foreign markets.
10. Worker training will be important, of course, given our unstated assumption that people are unskilled because of a lack of good, or any, education. Worker training should be subsidized by the international community, where the workers pay should be paid in part until they are fit to productably begin work.
What could potentially be achieved
Every year, hundreds of students from Afghanistan come to India to study in various universities. Clearly, there are several more who don’t qualify for the scholarships. This shows that there is more than a handful of students looking forward to quality education. Let us assume 100 students are taken in each year. Of these, only 10% end up as successful entrepreneurs at the end of their courses. Going by the conditions of worker employability given above, this would mean that there would be 700 workers working at the end of year 2, 1700 at the end of year 3, 3200 at the end of year 4, 5200 at the end of year 5, and so on and so forth. The rise in workers in such stable jobs is exponential.
The governing council will have to be careful to promote only such industries that do not cause harm on already existing local industry, or at least protect the workers if they are harmed. If they don’t do so, this can actually be counterproductive to the security scenario.
Over a period of time, worker supply would saturate (markets might not as free trade between these firms and other markets in assumed). This might raise demands for quality lower levels of education, for which the local government will have to respond, and will be more able to respond, given the growing economy.
I do not imply, not by a long shot, that these workers will be people who gave up on their fundamentalist groups to join work. However, eventually over years, this might begin to happen. I also understand that there already exist foreign universities in Afghanistan. But the model of the AIM clearly different from what already exists.
And why stop here? There can be such Institutes of Medicine, Technology, Economics, you name it.
Of course, I understand, and it is important to realize that this will not solve the problem. Hardly. Development measures such as these only contribute marginally to a direction that might eventually lead to stability. But it is important, as with such increments in peaceful development might eventually help Afghanistan reach its tipping point towards stability.
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