‘Infidels are our enemy’: Afghan fighters cherish old American schoolbooks

Amid debate about Western-funded education programs, Taliban still use anti-Russian texts funded by US.

Millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars helped fan religious conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to a major new study, and even money spent since 9/11 may have stoked tensions.

The conventional wisdom that building schools in a conflict zone helps promote peace and stability is called into question by New York University professor Dana Burde, whose findings make sobering reading for donors as reconstruction of Afghanistan enters a crucial period.

“Aid education may not always have the influence that we think,” she said. “Although there are dramatic and positive results of current support to education in Afghanistan today, this was not always the case.”

Promoting violence — in the form of jihad against the Soviet invaders and their local proxies — was the goal of the U.S.-funded education effort in the 1980s and early ’90s. Textbooks such as “The Alphabet of Jihad Literacy,” funded by the U.S. and published by the University of Nebraska at Omaha, came out at a time when the CIA was channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to mujahedeen fighters to resist the Soviet occupation.


http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/7/afghan-fighters-americantextbooks.html