Education is key in Afghanistan

Seekena Yacoobi, an educational advocate with Afghan Institute of Learning, is fighting to change America’s foreign policy towards Afghanistan in hopes of making education a more prominent issue, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday.

Sixty percent of Afghan society is illiterate and more than half of all Afghan children don’t attend school. Yacoobi says that the military war in Afghanistan is doomed to fail unless there’s also a war on illiteracy. She recognizes the threat embodied by the resurgent Taliban, but says that this doesn’t minimize the importance of education or the need to give more aid to the education system, even if it means cutting military expenditures.

The Afghan Institute of Learning is a leading organization in promoting and providing education in Afghanistan, helping 350,000 Afghan girls and women through classes in health, finances, voting and other topics.

“I’ve been doing this for 17 years, first in the refugee camps, then in the Taliban underground, and now inside Afghanistan. I can see the impact. I can see the change in society,” Yacoobi says.

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