Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald

Reprinted with permission

March 23, 2002, Saturday MIDLANDS EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE: UNO's Afghan textbooks face criticism
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
As world relief organizations celebrate the opening of Afghanistan's schools
today, some are grumbling about the quality of textbooks provided by the
University of Nebraska at Omaha.
An alliance of the United Nations Children's Fund, 24 private agencies and
70 Afghan educators worked from 1998 through last year, developing new materials
for Afghan schools.
New books were needed because no existing materials for Afghan elementary
schools provided "a quality program that is easily delivered with minimal
support," education consultant Andrea Rugh and UNICEF project officer Ellen van
Kalmthout wrote in a 2000 report for UNICEF and Save the Children.
That report and a 1999 World Bank report with similar criticism did not name
UNO, which developed the textbooks used most widely in Afghanistan. In an
interview this week, however, Rugh specifically criticized the UNO books.
"It's too difficult for children to learn with these kinds of materials,"
she said. "They're just pedagogically very weak."
UNICEF spokesman Alfred Ironside did not criticize the UNO books but said
the alliance wanted to develop materials that were "more progressive."
The UNICEF alliance thought in January that its program had the support of
the interim Afghan Ministry of Education. Then UNO surprised the other agencies
by getting $ 6.5 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development and
winning the favor of the interim government for new editions of the UNO books.
When schools open today, UNO's books will provide the primary curriculum,
while UNICEF books will be used as supplemental materials.
Thomas Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies,
concedes that criticism of the old UNO materials was valid but says the new
books have removed objectionable material and improved the educational quality.
"People just keep harking back to the old stuff without looking at the new
stuff," Gouttierre said by satellite telephone from Kabul, the Afghan capital.
He said the criticism reflected "jealousy and rivalry" by other agencies.

Some educators said they wanted to review the new UNO books, but could not
get copies yet. UNO faced a demanding deadline to deliver the books in time for
today's school opening.
"I've been eager to see the latest revision," said Dan Batchelder, executive
director of the International Foundation of Hope, which has two schools in Kabul
and has used some previous UNO books. He hoped UNO would provide English
translations "for those of us in the West to take a critical look."
Both sides describe their own materials as developed by Afghans and the
others as the product of outsiders.
The Ministry of Education worked with UNO in updating the books, Gouttierre
noted. "They have a sense of ownership and authorship of this curriculum," he
said. "The Afghans are saying this is an Afghan curriculum by Afghans for
Afghans."
Ironside said his alliance "was very much an effort led by Afghan educators
based in Afghanistan and their own desire to develop an Afghan curriculum."
From 1986 to 1994, UNO received USAID grants to provide teacher training and
textbooks for schools in Afghanistan and in refugee camps. UNO was to provide
educational expertise but Afghan rebels fighting the Soviets would control the
content.
The texts reflected Afghanistan's violent situation and the Islamic
extremism of the rebel leaders. Math problems counted rifles or dead Soviet
soldiers, while reading texts covered jihad and other religious themes.
UNO's proposal for this year's grant called for the university to work with
the Ministry of Education to update the books and remove inappropriate content.
Rugh said she had not seen the revised UNO books, but said, "It's hard to
believe that you could take out enough objectionable material and have anything
left in the books."
Beyond the militaristic and religious tone, Rugh said, educators wanted new
books because the UNO materials just didn't teach well. "They lend themselves
to rote learning methods because of the way they are organized," Rugh said.
"Problem-solving and analytic skills are not developed at all."
Rugh said students using the UNO materials would memorize words or whole
paragraphs but "couldn't read independently."
Gouttierre acknowledged that early UNO materials relied heavily on rote

learning. He said UNO's books evolved from materials used by other universities
in USAID projects that began in the 1950s. In the early 1990s, he said, UNO was
updating the materials to change to a "competency-based" program in which
students would master one skill before moving on to the next.
UNO lost its funding before it fully implemented the new program, but the
current textbooks use the new methods, he said.
Distressed about the decline of education under the Taliban and the quality
of UNO's old materials, officials of UNICEF and private agencies developed a
strategy for Afghan education in 1998. Key groups in the effort included the
Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, the Swedish Committee for
Afghanistan and the International Rescue Committee.
The Afghan teachers in the group included several educated in UNO programs.
Ironside said Afghanistan's interim Ministry of Education reacted positively
to the proposal to use the materials developed by the UNICEF alliance.
UNO sent Salaam Azimi to Kabul in early January to prepare for UNO's
possible involvement in Afghan education. Azimi, former president of the
University of Kabul, was the initial choice to be interim education minister but
turned the job down.
After Azimi went to Kabul, Rugh said, "all of a sudden letters started
coming out from the Education Ministry saying UNO materials had to be used."
Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, is a longtime friend of
Gouttierre and has visited Omaha. Karzai and USAID announced the grant to UNO on
Jan. 29 during the Afghan leader's visit to Washington.
Azimi declined interview requests last week when he was back in Omaha.
Gouttierre said Azimi lends credibility to UNO's program. "He's the most
respected educator in the country."
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
April 30, 2002, Tuesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
HEADLINE: UNO students, faculty question Afghan books
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
University of Nebraska at Omaha faculty and students asked contentious
questions Monday about the content of textbooks the school has published for

Afghan schools.
Doug Paterson, a dramatic arts professor, interrupted a presentation by
Thomas Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies, at a forum
on the situation in Afghanistan. Paterson demanded that Gouttierre address
criticisms of UNO's books by other organizations involved in Afghan education.
"You act like you have something to hide," criminal justice professor Sam
Walker said.
Gouttierre ended his planned presentation and spent most of the rest of the
forum fielding questions about the controversy over UNO's books.
He said he would place copies of all the textbooks in the UNO library. He
noted that UNO printed the books under deadline pressure to make them available
for the March 23 start of school in Afghanistan.
Other groups developed alternative books for Afghan schools and have
criticized the UNO books.
Gouttierre said much of the criticism focuses on the militaristic content of
books published by UNO before 1989. UNO's contract with the U.S. Agency for
International Development specified that Afghans would control the content of
the books, he said.
At the time, Afghan rebels were in a decadelong war with the Soviet Union,
he said, and the books reflected their "militaristic and anti-Soviet" feelings.
UNO officials "were always encouraging the Afghans and the State Department
to move away" from the warlike tone in the books, Gouttierre said.
Officials of Afghanistan's interim Ministry of Education approved the new
textbooks, which have removed all the offensive material, Gouttierre said.
"We did not write or edit these textbooks," he said. "We worked with the
Afghans to help them get these books to the children."
Walker said the argument that UNO isn't responsible because it didn't write
the textbooks "just doesn't fly. It's our money, and we are responsible."
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
February 5, 2002, Tuesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE:

Working to replace guns with schoolbooks

UNO begins to resurrect the Afghan educational system by printing books and
recruiting teachers.
By Stephen Buttry and Michael O'Connor
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERS
Textbooks need updating. Teachers need training. Schools need rebuilding.
The textbook printing plant needs paper and ink. Never mind the desks. They can
wait.
With classes starting in Afghanistan in less than two months, the University
of Nebraska at Omaha is undertaking the overwhelming tasks of printing textbooks
and training teachers for a nation that is going back to school.
"I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the challenges," said
Thomas Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies. "We're
trying to pick up something that hasn't been done for so long."
Last week the U.S. Agency for International Development approved a $ 6.5
million grant for UNO to provide books and training for Afghanistan's interim
government to resume schooling in a nation that has been devastated by war and
illiteracy.
"To rebuild a nation the first priority is education," said UNO research
assistant Mohammad Basheer.
UNO officials never gave up hope that they would return to Afghanistan. The
university's last USAID contract ended in 1994. A short-lived education program
funded by an oil company ended three years ago.
But UNO never closed its textbook publishing operation in Peshawar,
Pakistan. Gouttierre raised money privately to keep it open, so UNO would be
ready for the challenge it faces now. The Pakistan operation still has printing
plates for textbooks at all grade levels and many subjects in the Pashto and
Dari languages.
That left UNO uniquely positioned to meet today's challenge, said Chris
Brown, who is helping oversee USAID's Afghan efforts. "Without the dedication
and perseverance of the University of Nebraska, Afghanistan would not have a
curriculum available to be resurrected."
Since the Soviet invasion in 1979, Afghanistan's schools have been
disrupted, distorted or discarded because of war and religious extremism.
"The teens, 20s and 30s, they have been deprived of education, and their
concentration was on fighting," said Raheem Yaseer, one of at least four UNO

officials going to Afghanistan. "They know guns and they know bullets. They know
the brands of tanks and other weapons. They don't know literacy or arithmetic."
Gouttierre, Yaseer and Basheer will go to Afghanistan to oversee the
operation, which will mostly use Afghan master teacher trainers, many of them
trained by UNO under earlier programs. Salaam Azimi, a UNO official who used to
be president of the University of Kabul, has been shuttling between Kabul and
Peshawar for the past month, laying the groundwork for the UNO program.
In addition to the Peshawar operation, UNO will have an office in Kabul at
the ministry of education.
Before getting the USAID grant, UNO began work to update its textbooks and
teacher training materials.
The existing materials were developed by the mujahideen rebels who were
fighting the Soviets in 1986, when UNO's program started. The texts include
anti-Soviet rhetoric, war- oriented content and gender references consistent
with the Islamic extremism of some mujahideen leaders.
Azimi has worked with the new education minister and other education
officials to remove the harsh rhetoric and make the materials appropriate for
today's moderate government.
The books will have new covers, opening from the left, as Dari and Pashto
read from right to left. The books' back covers will contain anti-drug messages,
in hope of steering Afghan farmers away from cultivation of opium poppies.
UNO faces logistical challenges in printing and distributing the books. The
printing plant in Peshawar needs to find suppliers to sell enough paper and ink
to print 8 million textbooks, as well as kits for teachers. But it can't buy the
materials and start printing until UNO's grant money makes it through the
bureaucracy and reaches Pakistan.
"As soon as we get a truck's worth printed, we'll get them going to Kabul,"
Gouttierre said.
Though some bridges are out on the road from Peshawar to Kabul, "people
manage to get through if security is OK," Yaseer said.
The United Nations also is supplying some textbooks for Afghan schools.
Even before the money arrives, UNO is hiring teacher trainers and preparing
to present workshops to train teachers. "In a sense we're telling people work in
February and at the end of the month you'll get your first month's pay,"
Gouttierre said.

UNO advertised in Afghanistan for prospective teachers and has books full of
names of Afghans wanting to be trained.
Gouttierre said it may take 10 years "just to get Afghanistan back to the
point that it was when the Soviets invaded the country in 1979."
Basheer, who grew up in Kabul, remembers that in the 1960s and early 1970s
even the smallest villages had schools filled with books and other supplies. He
said many Afghans remember those days, too, and are hungry for education.
An old Afghan saying, he said, translates roughly, "An illiterate person is
blind."
However daunting the task that UNO and Afghanistan face, Brown said, "Nothing
could make a bigger difference than to make it possible for kids to go back to
school."
UNO program for Afghanistan
U.S. Agency for International Development grant: $ 6.5 million
Books to be printed: 8 million
Teachers to be trained: 4,000
Anticipated students served: 750,000
School starts: March 23
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
February 6, 2002, Wednesday MIDLANDS EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE:
Toning down Taliban lessons
New books for Afghan schools, printed by UNO, will feature less religious fervor
and more gender equality.
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
The science and math textbooks and grade-school readers that the University
of Nebraska at Omaha is printing in Pakistan represent an advanced lesson in
international relations.
U.S. taxpayers will pay about 50 cents to produce each of the textbooks

through a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development. Afghan
educators will decide the content of the books.
The arrangement reflects the delicate balance Afghanistan's interim
government needs to maintain.
Afghanistan needs American help to resurrect its devastated education
system. Under the Taliban regime, girls could not attend school, schools taught
little more than religion, and fighting disrupted what little schooling
remained.
The new government needs to control its education system, though, or it
endangers its fragile hold on power.
"They don't want to be accused of trying to implement an American curriculum
like the Soviets used to do," explained UNO's Raheem Yaseer, who will leave for
Afghanistan next week to assist in the effort.
Before UNO's press in Peshawar, Pakistan, could start the task of printing
new textbooks, a committee of Afghan educators worked with UNO to review and
update the books the university used in an earlier USAID program from 1986 to
1994.
"We've been trying to tone it down and make it more neutral and scientific,"
Yaseer said.
Out come the math problems counting dead Soviet soldiers, a reflection of
the mujahideen rebels who shaped UNO's earlier Afghan curriculum.
Out come the references to jihad, a reflection of the mujahideen's Islamic
fervor.
Though UNO did not print school materials for the repressive Taliban regime,
the Afghan officials also checked the old textbooks for passages that don't
reflect the current government's view on gender roles.
Among those reviewing the textbook revisions is Sima Samar, deputy prime
minister and the highest-ranking woman in the interim government.
"Women are going to be represented in a far more equal fashion than they
have been for a long time in Afghanistan," said Thomas Gouttierre, director of
UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies. "I'm so excited that now we're going to be
involved in educating women."
Gouttierre said he has pushed Afghans toward greater equality for women
since going there as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. He was the first man

to coach women's sports and pushed for development of high school basketball for
girls.
As head of the Fulbright program in Afghanistan, Gouttierre sent the first
Afghan girls to the United States as exchange students.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, he said, Afghanistan was making progress
toward equality for women and girls. Women were doctors, teachers, professors
and government officials.
A 1973 coup and the 1979 Soviet invasion, followed by the growth of Islamic
extremism, pushed women into subservient roles and eventually pushed girls from
the schools altogether.
UNO's earlier USAID program included a gender equity program to train women
teachers for girls' schools. A short-lived program in the late 1990s included a
plan to train women teachers in a region the Taliban did not control.
UNO officials acknowledge that the content of textbooks the university
published for Afghan schools would not be acceptable in American schools.
"The content of the curriculum has always been determined by the Afghans,"
Gouttierre said.
Now the Afghan education ministry and UNO officials are in closer agreement
about the content of textbooks UNO is printing for distribution by the March 23
start of classes.
Religious content in textbooks will diminish but not disappear. "They
cannot do without it completely," Yaseer said.
He flipped through a ninth-grade reader to explain how it might change. An
Islamic creed on the front cover will come out. "It is not appropriate in a
schoolbook in normal circumstances."
The book will retain a traditional introduction offering "praise to God who
has blessed us with knowledge." To omit that would be offensive even to moderate
Muslims.
A biography of Mohammed will move from the reader to a theology text. A
couple of biographies of caliphs will move to a history book. A scathing
condemnation of communism comes out altogether. Several stories, poems and
proverbs stay in the reader, along with a grammar lesson.
Showing how times have changed, Yaseer held up an adult-literacy reader that
would be welcome in Afghanistan again. He noted that among the smiling faces on

the cover are a woman and a girl, with no veils to hide their smiles.
"This was never approved and would not have been used by the Taliban."
GRAPHIC: Color Photo/1 Raheem Yaseer of the University of Nebraska at Omaha with
books to be edited for today's Afghan students.; PHIL JOHNSON/THE
WORLD-HERALD/1sf
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
February 27, 2002, Wednesday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3B
HEADLINE:
UNO trains Afghan educators
The school's representatives are printing textbooks and helping teachers bone up.
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
The University of Nebraska at Omaha began a refresher course in Pakistan
this week for master teacher trainers who will fan out across Afghanistan to
train new teachers for Afghan schools.
As the teacher training starts, UNO's press in Peshawar, Pakistan, is
running late into the night printing textbooks for the schools, which open next
month.
"We are practically living in the press," said UNO's Raheem Yaseer in a
late-night telephone interview from Peshawar. "The job is so big, and the time
is so short."
UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies is helping Afghanistan's interim
government prepare for a new school year, which starts March 23. Years of civil
war and oppression by the Taliban nearly destroyed the nation's educational
system.
Under a contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development, UNO
published textbooks and trained teachers for Afghan schools and refugee camps
from 1986 to 1994.
A new $ 6.5 million USAID contract also calls for UNO to print textbooks and
teacher materials and train teachers for the new Afghan government.
Training started this week in Peshawar with 20 master teacher trainers, 10
men and 10 women. UNO trained those educators under the first USAID contract and
now is presenting a three-week refresher course.

When their training is finished, Yaseer said, the master teacher trainers
will move across Afghanistan, training teachers and other teacher trainers in
two-week workshops.
He said the UNO press has printed nearly 1 million textbooks since starting
earlier this month. Frequent power outages in Peshawar are hampering the
printing effort, but otherwise, Yaseer said, "things are moving smoothly."
UNO is trying to print about 4.5 million textbooks by March 10 for delivery
to Afghan schools by the March 23 start of classes. After the initial shipment,
the press will continue, printing about 8 million books for distribution through
the school year.
UNO will ship the textbooks into Afghanistan when it has enough to fill a
caravan of four or five trucks.
Transportation into and around Afghanistan is difficult. The war destroyed
or damaged many roads and bridges, and regular flight service has not been
restored. Yaseer has been trying for several days to get a flight to Kabul and
hopes to get on a U.N. flight today.
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
March 12, 2002, Tuesday MIDLANDS EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE: Tons of textbooks head to Afghanistan
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Trucks will start hauling about 700 tons of textbooks into Afghanistan on
Wednesday as the University of Nebraska at Omaha rushes to prepare for the
opening of Afghanistan's schools later this month.
"Our press is just going day and night," Thomas Gouttierre, director of
UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies, said in a telephone interview from
Peshawar, Pakistan.
The UNO press could not print fast enough to produce the 4.5 million books
needed by the March 23 opening of schools. So UNO's Peshawar printing manager,
Ahmad Shah Durani, arranged with nine other printing plants in Pakistan to help
with the project. Private presses in Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Lahore are
helping.
The presses have finished printing teacher kits and should finish this week
with the textbooks needed to open schools. More books will be printed and

shipped later.
Gouttierre met Monday in Islamabad, Pakistan, with officials from the United
Nations and the U.S. Agency for International Development to discuss the next
logistical challenge: transporting the books into Afghanistan. War has destroyed
roads in many of the rural areas that need the books.
UNO will ship about 40 truckloads by land to Kabul, the capital and largest
city in Afghanistan. Cargo planes will fly the rest of the books to outlying
areas.
The UNO project, funded by a $ 6.5 million grant from USAID, seeks to supply
books to 4,000 schools and kits to 30,000 teachers to serve about 1 million
Afghan children.
"Everyone is eager that the schools open on time," Gouttierre said.
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
March 17, 2002, Sunday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE: Afghans invited to open a book
Students' return to school Saturday in Afghanistan will cap a "whirlwind" week of
final preparations by UNO.
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
The invitation to school beckons Afghan children simply: "Open your books."
The University of Nebraska at Omaha issues the invitation this week, along
with Afghanistan's interim government and the United Nations Children's Fund, to
the children of a country where education became a casualty of war.
The books were developed and printed by UNO's Center for Afghanistan
Studies. UNO is training the teachers, who will use maps, multiplication tables,
science kits and storybooks produced by UNO.
UNO even provides classroom posters telling children how to recognize and
avoid land mines.
"Afghans are really excited about school starting," Thomas Gouttierre,
director of the UNO center, said last week in a satellite telephone interview
from the Afghan capital, Kabul. "I've never seen so much hope in the faces of
Afghans."

Gouttierre arrived in Kabul last week to oversee UNO's rush to get ready for
Saturday's first day of school. He met with Ministry of Education officials and
with Kabul officials to discuss plans for distributing books and training
teachers.
"The challenges are just immense," Gouttierre said. "It's going to be a
whirlwind here until the 23rd."
In the jargon of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the UNO
program is called America's Rapid Response to Education Needs in Afghanistan. In
promotional posters for this school-starved nation, the program goes by its more
inviting slogan, "Open your books."
UNO finished the posters last week, designed by a team of Afghans working at
UNO offices in Peshawar, Pakistan. In addition to the slogan, in the Afghan
languages of Dari and Pashto, the poster shows an Afghan boy and girl reading
inside an outline of the map of Afghanistan.
For the past 23 years, war and religious extremism have devastated education
in Afghanistan. In the few schools that operated under the Taliban since 1996,
the only textbook was the Koran and the only students older than 10 were boys.
"There were no schools during the Taliban regime, especially for females,"
said Parween Kakar, one of 10 women who joined 10 men for a two-week refresher
course for master teacher trainers at UNO's Instructional Materials Development
Center in Peshawar.
Despite efforts by U.N. refugee camps, underground home schools, previous
UNO projects and private agencies, only about one-fifth of children younger than
15 can read and write.
Kakar's teaching career illustrates the turmoil that Afghan education has
faced. She fled from Afghanistan 14 years ago. UNO trained her as a teacher in a
refugee camp in 1989 as part of a program to provide more women to teach Afghan
girls. She became a master teacher trainer, qualified to lead courses for other
teacher trainers.
In UNO's last Afghan education project in 1998, she went to Bamiyan, in
territory controlled by the Northern Alliance, to help train 20 women who would
provide some of the nation's rare schools for girls.
In a telephone interview from Peshawar, Kakar apologized for not speaking
fluent English, but clearly communicated her enthusiasm about the opening of
school: "To construct Afghanistan for a bright future, I am ready to work as
hard as I can."

Enthusiasm about a new school year is so strong that half of the country
couldn't wait for its traditional starting time in September. Afghanistan
normally operates in two school years, starting in March for the mountainous
areas where winter is too cold for school and in September for the lower
altitudes.
Afghanistan's interim Ministry of Education initially planned to launch its
schools in two phases, each region at its normal starting time. However,
everyone wanted school going right away, Gouttierre said, so the government
plans to open all classes this month.
Some schools already have been holding classes. "The schools are opening
everywhere they can," he said. "They have kids going to makeshift schools."
He visited a girls secondary school in Kabul that was flattened. "They'll
sit outside on chairs," Gouttierre said.
The United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, is providing hundreds of
tents and portable toilets for temporary classrooms.
For a nation with few school buildings and fewer class rolls, the March
startup required a sprint. The interim government turns 3 months old this week.
UNO won its USAID grant to help less than two months ago.
The $ 6.5million grant is less than the Millard Public Schools spends in a
year to run its principals' offices and less than half what the Omaha Public
Schools pays its janitors and secretaries.
UNICEF and private relief agencies are helping with such things as paper,
pencils, blackboards, school bags and more textbooks.
UNO has been waiting for this opportunity. In 1994, USAID stopped funding
for a UNO program that developed curriculum, trained teachers and printed
textbooks for schools in Afghanistan and in refugee camps in Pakistan.
Except for a brief project funded by an oil company in 1997 and 1998, UNO
has not been active in Afghan education for eight years. But the university
kept its offset press and office in Peshawar and kept the printing plates for
its textbooks.
After the Ministry of Education approved changes to update the books, UNO
started printing, hoping to finish more than 6 million books to distribute by
the start of school. Trucks started hauling the first of the books to Kabul on
Thursday.
Gouttierre said in an interview today from Kabul that skirmishes had shut

down some roads, delaying shipment of some books.

"That's just what we don't need," he said. "Some of the books have made it
into Kabul, and more are expected today."
The first air shipment of 16 tons of books reached the northern city of
Mazar-e Sharif Saturday. Another 200 tons is waiting at the airport in Pakistan.
The earlier projects also gave UNO a corps of trained teachers, nearly 4,000
who took the four-week program for teachers and more than 200 who took one of
two courses for teacher trainers.
"Many are in Afghanistan today, where they can be recruited, given refresher
training and teaching materials, and assigned to schools," UNO said in its plan
for the USAID grant.
Some teachers, though, will start classes this week with "little more
training than those they are teaching," Gouttierre said.
In the coming year, Kakar and other trainers will provide refresher courses
to experienced teachers and give new teachers their initial training.
Regardless of how well-prepared they are, Afghans will receive an enormous
boost just to get children into the schools and know they are learning,
Gouttierre said. "Then we'll work with the teachers."
The teachers' first chore will be to determine what the students know and
don't know.
In effect, many teen-agers will be entering first grade. But educators won't
want to teach them along with 6-year-olds who should be entering first grade.
Other teen-agers have attended schools in refugee camps.
Gouttierre thinks students will be grouped and taught according to age, with
remedial teaching as needed.
Another challenge is forecasting how many students to expect. UNO's
proposal planned for 1.5 million students through 12th grade. More recently,
UNICEF has predicted 1.5 million students just in elementary grades.
Gouttierre says forecasts are unreliable in a country that hasn't conducted
a census since 1972. A 1999 estimate said two-thirds of the nation's school-age
children and more than 90 percent of the girls didn't attend classes.
Abdullah Amini, owner of Afghani Kabob restaurant in Omaha, said his brother
reported 1,800 girls signing up for the first grade in the western Afghanistan

city of Farah, where the brother lives.

"They don't have any room, any place to put all those girls," Amini said.
"People are so happy school is starting again."
As printers assembled books and administrators arranged for trucks and
airplanes to deliver them, Gouttierre marveled at the tasks that remained. But
he was confident that students across Afghanistan would be opening their books
Saturday.
"No matter where I go, people are very cheerfully, very
enthusiastically going about their work. These people want their kids to have an
education."
UNO's Afghan education projects
Estimates for 2002
Cost: $ 6.5 million
Textbooks planned: 9.7 million
Average book: 60 to 120 pages, paperback
Teachers to train: 30,000
In the 1980s and '90s
Textbooks produced: More than 2 million
Teachers trained: 3,072 men, 638 women
Teacher trainers trained: 82 men, 41 women
Master teacher trainers trained: 71 men, 9 women
Teacher kits
UNO produced 7,500 teacher kits in each of Afghanistan's primary languages.
Dari and Pashto. Produced in Peshawar, Pakistan, at a cost of about $ 10 each,
the kits include.:
Instructional charts and maps
Math and language boards

Cloth world globe

Scientific kits
Anti-narcotic and land mine awareness posters
Small slate boards
Cloth storybooks
Writing materials
How to help
UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies seeks private donations to supplement
its $ 6.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Companies with Pakistani connections could directly donate computers. Otherwise,
cash donations are encouraged to UNO can buy equipment in Pakistan rather than
pay shipping costs. For information, call (402) 554-2376.

GRAPHIC: Color Photos/2 Ehsan Ullah binds history books in Peshawar, Pakistan,
ahead of Saturday's opening of school in Afghanistan. "Afghans are really
excited about school starting," said Thomas Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center
for Afghanistan Studies, which developed and printed the textbooks. Textbooks
for Afghan children are sorted in Pakistan before shipment.; THE ASSOCIATED
PRESS/2
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
March 23, 2002, Saturday MIDLANDS EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A
HEADLINE: Schools to open with books from UNO
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Afghan children will start school today, opening textbooks printed in the
nick of time by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
"It looks like we're going to deliver more books than the 4 million that
President Bush promised," UNO's Thomas Gouttierre said Friday by satellite
telephone from Kabul, the Afghan capital.
UNO's press in Peshawar, Pakistan, and contract printers in Pakistan had
produced nearly 5.2 million books by Friday for first- through sixth-graders,

but Gouttierre wasn't sure all would be delivered in time for school to open.
Though some schools already were operating, today is the first day of
nationwide school under Afghanistan's interim government. War with the Soviet
Union, civil war and the severe restrictions of the Taliban regime disrupted and
devastated much of the nation's education system.
The production and delivery of the books required a "remarkable cooperative
effort" involving facilities, vehicles and workers of more than a half-dozen
agencies, said Gouttierre, director of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies.
UNO developed and revised the textbooks, working with Afghanistan's interim
Ministry of Education and financed by $ 6.5 million from the U.S. Agency for
International Development. While waiting to arrange transportation, UNO stored
the books at a United Nations Children's Fund warehouse in Nowshera, Pakistan.
Trucks of the World Food Program hauled books to Kabul and Jalalabad in
eastern Afghanistan. Because the war destroyed roads and bridges, UNO used
private cargo carriers to fly books to Kandahar in the south, Herat in the west
and Mazar-e Sharif in the north.
About 172,000 books awaited delivery Friday to Feyzabad in the northeast,
because the airport was closed for repairs.
"As soon as the airport is finished, we'll be able to get all those delivered
in one day," Gouttiere said.
With Afghanistan's crippled communications system, he did not know how
extensive the delivery was, but "they're getting out to the rural areas as
well."
From Kabul and the other major cities, troops of the International Security
Assistance Force, the 17-nation United Nations peacekeeping force, used military
trucks to deliver the books to smaller cities such as Samangan, Baghlan, Balkh,
Qalat, Lashkar Gah and Tarin Kot.
In addition to the books, relief agencies are delivering notebooks, paper
and other supplies sent by U.S. school districts and international relief
programs.
Afghan children were enthusiastic at registration sites that Gouttierre
visited Thursday.
"They are just so eager," he said. "They're really embracing this concept,
especially the girls."

The Taliban did not allow girls in school past age 10.
UNO's promotional "Open Your Books" banners have been popular with schools.
"We can't churn them out quickly enough," he said.
Afghan officials still are unsure how many students will show up for classes
today. The latest estimate is 1.5 million.
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
March 24, 2002, Sunday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 11A
HEADLINE: Afghanistan's schools reopen
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Azadi freedom rang from every mountainside and classroom of Afghanistan
on Saturday as Afghans celebrated their nation's return to school.
"People feel like they have their country back," said Thomas Gouttierre,
director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies at the University of Nebraska at
Omaha. "Everyone had smiles on their faces."
Over the past few weeks, UNO printed and worked with other agencies to
distribute 5.2 million elementary school textbooks. Gouttierre said most were
delivered to classrooms by opening day.
"It was more books than anyone expected, and that created a sense of
elation," he said from Kabul via satellite telephone.
Afghanistan's school system virtually collapsed in the turmoil of the past
30 years, including a war with the Soviet Union and civil war. When the Taliban
were in power from 1996 to 2001, girls were not allowed to go to school after
age 10 and boys in official schools studied only an extremist version of Islam.
Some girls studied secretly in home schools.
Gouttierre and UNO officials Salaam Azimi and Raheem Yaseer sat behind the
ambassadors at a celebration ceremony at Amani High School in Kabul. The
auditorium was filled with the Ministry of Education's "Back to School" banners
and UNO's "Open Your Books" banners.
U.S. and U.N. officials spoke, as well as Afghan leaders.
"It was really a festive occasion," Gouttierre said, recounting that interim

leader Hamid Karzai called Saturday the best day in the interim government's
three-month tenure.
GRAPHIC: B&W Photo/1 An Afghan girl takes notes Saturday during language lessons
at a school in Mazar-e Sharif.; THE ASSOCIATED PRESS/1
Copyright 2002 Omaha World-Herald
Reprinted with permission
March 28, 2002, Thursday SUNRISE EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 5A;
HEADLINE: Afghan leader to UNO: Keep helping
By Stephen Buttry
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's interim leader, told University of Nebraska at
Omaha officials Wednesday that he hoped they would continue working on education
projects in his country.
"He was really appreciative of the book campaign," said UNO's Thomas
Gouttierre after a meeting with Karzai in Kabul.
Karzai said he would talk soon with President Bush and would tell him last
Saturday's start of the school year, with textbooks provided by UNO, was the
best thing to happen during the interim government's three months in power.
Earlier, the UNO officials met with Akbar Popal, president of Kabul
University, who also talked of future projects.
Gouttierre, head of UNO's Center for Afghanistan Studies, and two Afghan
natives working in the UNO program, Raheem Yaseer and Salaam Azimi, met with
Karzai for about an hour.
"It was kind of an emotional meeting," Gouttierre said. "He's an old
friend."
Karzai had asked Azimi, former president of Kabul University, to be
Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan. But Gouttierre persuaded him to let Azimi
remain in his job as UNO's chief of party for its Afghan operations.
"Karzai agreed that Azimi's greatest contribution would come in the field of
education," Gouttierre said.
The meeting took place just after Karzai returned from Nahrin, the northern
city devastated by a Monday earthquake.
"He said all around the city had just burst into bloom," Gouttierre said.

"It was green with buds and colorful with blossoms. And here was that terrible
destruction."
The quake awakened Gouttierre, who had gone to bed early Monday. "All of a
sudden the bed was moving," he recalled.
Gouttierre and Popal, who studied agriculture at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, discussed student exchanges, which "he wants more than
anything else," Gouttierre said. He said he would start raising funds for the
exchanges after returning to Omaha.
Gouttierre planned to leave Kabul Thursday and spend about a week in
Pakistan, where UNO continues printing textbooks, with the help of a $ 6.5
million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.