It is natural that every night ends into a day; even if the night is a very dark and lengthy one, it has to end into a day – this can never be stopped. Same is the case with human society; it has to change; it has to evolve and it has to experience new ideas and developments. Those who strive to stop such changes, ultimately have to give up, as changes are inevitable.

One of the factors that are responsible for making these changes possible and easy to understand is education. It is education that guarantees smooth evolution of the society and welcomes the new ideas and processes. The nations of the world that have given importance to education and have made efforts to develop their education systems on the basis of modern and scientific systems have been able to earn extraordinary development and fame. At the same time they have acquired myriad of facilities of life for their people and have made them capable of living their lives with dignity and honor.

However, the nations that have opposed education have, in fact, blocked their own way to success. They are the ones who have actually themselves have tied their feet and hands with the ropes and are not able to move ahead even though they need to do so. At the same time, they are the ones who have blindfolded themselves and think that there isn’t anything around them to see. They are, in short, in the process of fooling their own selves.

Ultimately, they are the ones who would be greatly influenced by the negative impacts of all such behavior. Though they think that they are performing some great service to their nations by keeping it unpolluted and unaffected by the germs of education, in reality, they are bounding and isolating themselves and letting themselves decay instead of being active part of the real world that demands progress, growth and modern education.

Afghanistan is one of the countries that are highly influenced by such people who intend to block all the ways to advancement and modernization. Blinded by religious extremism and obsolete tribal values, they are always ready to oppose any sort of efforts that are dedicated to disseminate education to the people of Afghanistan, as they know that the modern education that has been spread in the country to a certain level may encourage evolution and modern changes.

Taliban are among the same kind of people. They have been trying to eliminate all the efforts that are targeted at spreading modern education in Afghanistan. They, still, live in the era that is ancient and obsolete, but they are not capable of realizing this fact. They, as a matter of fact, strive to obstruct the rising sun, which is impossible, as sun has to rise some day and show its light to the people. And, the people have to follow the light of the sun as walking in dark would never help them and show them their destination.

With the rise of Taliban in 1996, the decline of modern education system, which was already in a pathetic condition, started. Taliban banned the female education and promulgated the madressah system of education. In almost all the madressahs the curriculum contained the Arabic recitation, without translation and further elaboration of the perspective of Quranic Verses. The students were confined to a single approach towards education and that was the Clergy approach, which depended on an extremist elucidation of Islam and Islamic concepts. Investigation and research were banned strictly, and students called as Talibs were not allowed to question their teachers. Rather, they were asked to blindly follow what the Clergy approach had to offer them. The basic purpose of education was thus non-existent in the so called education systems of Taliban. They were more like training camps for generating cadre for terrorist groups.

Taliban, today as well, have been making different sorts of efforts to discourage the growth of modern education in Afghanistan in some way or the other. There have been incidents when they have bombed schools, killed the guiltless students and teachers, poisoned the students and even thrown acid on the faces of innocents girls who go to school. In a very recent incident (on Saturday, March 08), Taliban militants shot dead three teachers in Shahrak district of western Ghor province, while they abducted another. Sibghatullah Akbari, director provincial education department, told Pajhwok Afghan News Taliban killed the teachers when they were on their way back to homes after appearing in the capacity building test. Akbari condemned the incident in strongest terms and asked the government to adopt measures to prevent the killing of innocent and defenseless educators.  Reports show that during this year, Mohammad Masoom, an officer of the Tewra district education department was killed in an explosion while two other teachers of this district were killed by unidentified gunmen. 

Such a scenario is really tragic and the government must make efforts to launch practical measures to curb the situation. Condemning the incident alone would not be sufficient to discourage such ruthless activities and would in the long run deprive the people of Afghanistan from better opportunities to get education.

At present time, nothing is so urgently required for our nation as modern education – Education that should be based on up to date information, analysis and developments in different fields of knowledge and must be aided with modern technology; education that can give the coming generation of Afghanistan an outlook other than extremism. And all these have to be provided to the people of Afghanistan without charging them much, as majority of the people are already suffering severely under the reign of deteriorated socio-economic situation.