April 20, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Afghanistan: Daily Nebraskan: The majority of the controversial textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Thomas Gouttierre said

Peace Corps Online: Directory: Afghanistan: Special Report: Afghanistan Expert RPCV Thomas Gouttierre: February 9, 2005: Index: PCOL Exclusive: RPCV Thomas Gouttierre (Afghanistan) : April 20, 2005: Headlines: Figures: COS - Afghanistan: Daily Nebraskan: The majority of the controversial textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Thomas Gouttierre said

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The majority of the controversial textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Thomas Gouttierre said

The majority of the controversial textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Thomas Gouttierre said

The majority of the controversial textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Thomas Gouttierre said

Controversial textbook topics OKed by UNO

By JENNA JOHNSON / Daily Nebraskan
April 20, 2005

Amid the pages of Afghan textbooks are drawings of tanks and machine guns.

The long twirls and quick dots of the Dari and Pashto languages translate into definitions of jihad and anti-Soviet sentiment.

Turn to the back cover of one of several million of these books, published in the late 1980s, and see a familiar logo – that of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Paul Olson, a Nebraskans for Peace member and University of Nebraska-Lincoln English professor, uses the words “propaganda,” “covert” “operations,” “terrorism” and “violence-and-jihad-promoting” when describing these textbooks.

At the University of Nebraska Board of Regents’ meeting on Friday, Olson said these textbooks were used to educate grade-school children and UNO’s involvement indicates a lack of ethics.

“We provided the violence-laden propaganda to the Taliban-era Afghan children,” Olson said. “The 9/11 terrorists emerged from this context.”

Nebraskans for Peace, a statewide peace group, has asked the board to conduct an investigation of these textbooks, develop a university-wide ethics policy and strengthen existing policies on the matter.

Regent Howard Hawks of Omaha, chairman of the board, said the center followed university policy at the time, and there is no need to change those policies now.

Thomas Gouttierre has been the director of the UNO Center for Afghan Studies since 1974 and said historical context has to be taken into consideration when looking at these textbooks.

“While their intentions may be good,” he said in a phone interview, “their interpretation of history is out of context.”

Since 1974, the center has received three contracts from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to help develop education in Afghanistan. The most controversial books were produced at UNO between 1986 and 1989, using USAID’s funds and rules – which said all content of the textbooks was left up to the Afghans.

“We were told explicitly that we were not to have any input into the content,” he said, adding that the center has never denied that several of these books were militantly anti-Soviet.

But those books were only used in adult education, he said.

The majority of the textbooks were written to help Afghan refugees in Pakistan educate their children while the Soviet Union occupied their country, Gouttierre said.

When Afghanistan was occupied in the late 1980s, seven million people were forced out of the country and one million were killed – leading to a countrywide fear of the Soviets that permeated into the textbook writings, Gouttierre said.

“I think it’s important to understand why the Afghans might have felt that way,” he said. “They were concerned they would never have their country back.”

And the “jihad” the textbooks allude to is much different than the jihad the Western world came to know following 9/11, he said. Back then jihad was known for more positive connotations, such as the quest to be a good Muslim.

Hawks said in a letter to Nebraskans for Peace that the textbooks the group is referring to were not published in Nebraska – the final books were published in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Later, those same books were defaced by the Taliban and redistributed to Afghan schools, he said.

Although more than 50 UNL and UNO faculty and staff worked as consultants on these book-publishing projects, Hawks said the books were the creation of the Afghans and guided by the rules of the USAID.

“Just as school boards in America have control over the content of curriculum, so too did the Afghan Ministry of Education have control over its curriculum and textbooks,” Hawks wrote. “The presumption that UNO through its actions could dictate Afghan policy is flawed.”

Any qualms about the guidelines for the books’ content should be directed to the USAID, not UNO, Hawks said.

Peggy O’Ban, USAID senior public affairs adviser, said the official in charge of the textbook projects was out of the office Tuesday. O’Ban said the controversy over the books was an old issue, and she was surprised it was being brought up yet again.

In 2002, the center signed another contract with USAID and produced 15 million textbooks for the reopening of Afghan schools, Hawks said. All of the books produced by UNO since 1989 have been revised by the Afghan Ministry of Education and approved by USAID, United Nations Children’s Fund, Save the Children, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and similar agencies, he said.

Nebraskans for Peace President Mark Vasina could not be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.

But a letter published in the group’s April newsletter said he was not satisfied with Hawks’ response and will continue to press for a university policy change.

“Such a policy should … prohibit university involvement in militant, religious and gender-based propaganda at home or abroad – whether targeted at children or adults,” he wrote.





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Story Source: Daily Nebraskan

This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Afghanistan

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