Afghanistan today stands in the midst of one of the most difficult historical transitions: a passage from the world of tribe and primitiveness toward a civic and modern society. This transition is not built by politics or economics alone. As the experience of neighboring countries has shown, every lasting change begins from a single point: universal education and a shared culture. Without it, the roots of civilization dry up, and no branch or fruit endures.
According to UNESCO statistics, by 2022, more than 4 million Afghan children had been left out of education, nearly two-thirds of them girls. The illiteracy rate among adults is still above 55 percent, and this itself is a sign that illiteracy is not merely an individual problem; it is a chain that paralyzes society’s movement. For the country’s policymakers, this should be the first warning: no economic, legal, or cultural reform will endure without the root of education. If only this truth had been properly understood in the past decades.
Today, the Taliban are dealing with education systematically: closing girls’ schools, restricting universities, removing modern sciences, and replacing them with a tribal and ideological interpretation of religion. This is not merely a domestic choice; it is the same colonial pattern of “manufactured ignorance” that for centuries has been used to keep nations weak. Neo-colonialism knows that a society without education easily turns into raw manpower and a consumer market, a society producing cheap workers. By reproducing this very policy, the Taliban are, in fact, agents of an intellectual colonization: preventing the formation of an aware citizen so that Afghanistan remains in a cycle of dependency, tribalism, ignorance, and poverty, and does not grow.
Our neighboring countries understood the value of education earlier and, in every period, even in these recent years, applied practical modern solutions. In 2020, Pakistan launched the “TeleSchool” television network so that even in crisis and closure, primary education would not be interrupted. In India, textbooks were equipped with QR codes so that with one scan,n students could access videos and offline exercises for the same lesson. Tajikistan also revised its curriculum and, instead of memorization, focused on core competencies such as reading and arithmetic. These experiences showed that even in conditions of poverty and crisis, one can keep the path of education open with simple but intelligent tools.
Afghanistan, too, can pass through this dead end with small but purposeful steps. Education in Afghanistan starts with primary education. Primary education must become accessible and safe, even if it is held in the corners of homes as community-based classes. Content should be short, simple, standardized, and bilingual so that it reaches children through radio, television, or memory cards and small booklets. Most important of all, educational values must be transmitted alongside instruction: equality of girls and boys, respect for classmates of every ethnicity and color, free inquiry, and experiencing language as a bridge of understanding, not a ground for discord. If these values are internalized from the beginning, the first ring of citizenship takes shape in the child’s mind. Education without upbringing is incomplete, and upbringing without education is fruitless; the two are like two wings that only together can lift the human being and society to the flight of civilization.
The middle stage, from grade seven to nine, must be the phase of transition from child to adolescent. At this age, general sciences should be accompanied by moral and social upbringing. Just as in Iran and Turkey, students choose their path for the future at the end of ninth grade; Afghanistan also needs to define two educational branches at the end of this stage: the general education path and the skills path. This simple but fundamental decision can save the teenager from confusion and dropping out.
The high-school stage, from grade ten to twelve, is where knowledge must be linked to practice. The student either prepares for university or steps onto the path of technical education and apprenticeship. In neighboring countries, technical and vocational schools in fields such as industrial and modern agriculture, electricity and mechanics, food industries, and information technology prepare young people for the labor market. In Iran, since the 1990s, technical and vocational schools have played a pivotal role in connecting education to industry, and in Turkey, a network of skills education has been formed in cooperation with factories and workshops. In Afghanistan, this link was never built, and if it was built, it was not connected to essential sectors. If the country can create this dual structure, the teenager will not only stay in school but will be ready, with skills or knowledge, to build the future of himself and the country.
In this regard, the Nour Peace Foundation, based in the Netherlands, has designed a continuous e-learning structure that is to be implemented soon. This program fills major gaps in secondary education (grades seven to twelve) and, by creating a continuous digital pathway aligned with international standards, allows adolescents to make up their educational setbacks through intensive remedial courses, return to the path of study, and gain access to accredited higher education or technical education, which for now is in the field of information technology education, without being pushed into fundamentalist schools or extremist environments. Nour is not merely an emergency program; it is a strategic framework that makes possible the transition from tribal isolation to civic participation.
In no society does higher education make sense on its own; when primary and secondary education are weak, the university also breathes in a vacuum. In the past twenty years, Afghanistan did not neglect quantity, but connection. Its universities grew, but their links to skills, the labor market, and the real needs of society were severed. The result was a large generation of unemployed graduates who were connected neither to industry nor to research.
To move past this dead end, Afghanistan must learn from the experience of countries that traversed the path of transition with realism. In Germany and Switzerland, higher education is divided into two paths: research universities for theoretical science, and applied centers that connect education to industry. The student spends half of the week at university and the other half in a workshop, factory, or company. The result is that the graduate has not only studied but learned to work.
In the Netherlands and Finland, the system of Universities of Applied Sciences was formed with the same goal: higher education that produces skills instead of producing diplomas. At the end of each semester, the student must carry out a real project in cooperation with an industrial or social institution.
In Turkey and Iran, a similar path was followed. From the 1370s (1990s) onward, Iran established scientific-applied universities alongside theoretical universities so that industry and higher education would not remain separated. Turkey, by creating “two-year higher schools” and associate-degree centers, was able to build a bridge between school, market, and university.
Afghanistan can draw inspiration from these models to rebuild its higher education. First, two educational paths must be defined from the end of ninth grade: the general knowledge path for continuing studies and the skills path for entry into the labor market. At the university level, two parallel branches must also take shape: limited but deep research universities for producing knowledge and thought; and applied universities for training specialists in fields such as industrial electricity, mechanics, food industries, modern agriculture, renewable energies, and water management.
Applied universities must have a structure that is simple yet transparent: two-year and four-year programs with mandatory internships and real projects in industry. The degree must not be a symbol of status (something common in Afghanistan), but a certificate of skill, something an employer can trust. Cooperation with the private sector, provincial councils, and international organizations can launch this model on a pilot basis in several provinces.
Alongside this, Afghanistan needs to create provincial centers of skills and innovation, places between university, industry, and society. These centers can operate in strategic areas such as water management, small-scale solar energy, the cold chain of agricultural products, and mining. Europe’s experience with CoVE programs has shown that such clusters both create employment and produce local knowledge.
But higher education is not only for producing a technical workforce. The country equally needs people who can analyze the phenomena of the world and generate new understanding. The university must be a place where knowledge is produced and where the Afghan youth learns to understand the world, critique it, and, on that basis, devise a plan for action. Research in Afghanistan must come out of the state of repetitive theses and address the understanding and solution of society’s real problems: water, soil, energy, poverty, migration, and cultural coexistence.
The model experienced at the American University of Afghanistan was a clear example of linking education with the world. Dr. Sharif Fayez founded this university with the aim of familiarizing Afghan students with international academic standards and analytical skills. If national policy had followed the same path, today Afghanistan’s universities could have trained both specialized manpower and creative researchers.
Now Afghanistan’s urgent need is to create a system that has real continuity from school to university. School must build character and the foundation of literacy; high school must identify talents for choosing the path of skill or knowledge; and the university must turn that talent into real capability, whether in practical work or in analysis and understanding. Only then will higher education, in the true sense of the word, be not a consumer of global knowledge but a producer of local understanding; and this is the very point from which development, independence, and civilization arise.
But education is not confined to the classroom and books alone. Culture is the second and complementary part of this root. Without a shared culture, education will be merely an individual skill, not a tool of nation-building. Collective memory, a common language, and cultural industries are precisely what take nations beyond the tribe. In past decades, Iran linked its literacy campaign to illiterate families so that child and parent learned simultaneously. Tajikistan created networks of local libraries and family storytelling programs to turn the culture of reading into a social habit. Afghanistan, too, can take steps through small cultural projects, from mobile libraries to school theater and cinema, initiatives with low cost but great social effect.
In today’s critical situation, emergency education and online/offline education have special importance. Radio and television models have shown that even in areas without the internet, the path of learning can be kept open. The Nour Peace Foundation’s project is built exactly on this pillar: short and standardized content for grades seven to twelve, offline distribution on memory cards, a low-bandwidth learning system, and the training of digital teachers. If this model is integrated into national policy, Afghanistan can achieve educational resilience, such that even in political or security crises, the next generation is not deprived of education.
Afghanistan’s policymakers must take several lessons from these experiences. First, programs must focus on “resilience for the future” rather than “return to the past”; that is, models that continue under any political or security scenario. Second, all content must be designed bilingually so that linguistic and ethnic gaps turn into bridges, not walls. Third, the participation of the private sector and society must be recognized, but only on the basis of accountability and real results. Fourth, indicators must be simple, practical, and quarterly so that rapid monitoring is possible.
If this path is followed, primary education will be ensured through community-based classes and educational media; left-behind adolescents will return through intensive courses; middle and higher education will be connected to accredited universities through online and offline bridges; and shared culture will be revived through small but continuous projects. The tree of Afghanistan’s civilization will bear fruit only in this case: when its roots, education, and culture, are watered. And this is the very solution that can draw the country out of the circle of tribalism and politicization and guide it toward a civil, stable, and citizen-centered society.
You can read the Persian version of this article here:
بخش سوم – درخت مدنیت؛ ریشه آموزش و فرهنگ، گذار افغانستان از تاریکی به مدنیت
You can read other parts of this article here:
Part I: Introduction to the Tree of Civility: Afghanistan’s Unfinished Transition
Part II: Introduction to the Tree of Civility: Afghanistan’s Unfinished Transition
