When a suicide-bomber blew a hole in the British Council’s headquarters in Kabul in August, it sparked a six-hour gun battle that left 12 people dead. As insurgents stormed the building, two female teachers employed by the British Council took shelter with a security guard in a “panic room”, where they endured the sounds of gunmen attempting to break through the reinforced door before they were rescued. The Taliban said the attack was intended to mark the anniversary of Afghanistan’s independence from Great Britain in 1919.
However, British Council insists that such terrifying violence, which threatens many ordinary Afghans every day, will not stop its educational programmes. One such project aims to build strategic leadership in Afghanistan’s universities, helping higher education to train professionals, build a business sector and provide the expertise to develop industries such as mining. Paul Smith, British Council director in Afghanistan, says the organisation’s “whole operation was blown to bits” in the attack. It is now housed in the British Embassy.
After the Taliban seized power in 1996 following a four-year civil war, the nation’s universities were “almost reduced to nil activity with just a handful of students — and of course all were men”, says Smith. “Over a period of about 10-15 years, just about all professionals with capability emigrated.”
That brain drain has created a severe skills shortage among university staff. “Less than 5 percent of faculty and lecturers in Afghan universities have doctoral degrees. Less than 25 percent have any kind of postgraduate degree at all,” he says. Another problem, adds Smith, is “outmoded curricula and syllabuses, with a real lack in some of the most critical subject areas: management skills and business studies”.
To help give strategic direction to the sector, the British Council has linked Afghan participants with experienced academics and managers in the UK, who will mentor them. The 25 participants, drawn from nine state universities and the ministry of higher education, are the lecturers and managers who are likely to be running the country’s universities in the near future, says Smith.
The three-year programme started at the beginning of the current financial year in April. Although the programme has less than £100,000(Rs.77 lakh) in funding to date, support is expected from organisations such as the World Bank.
Excerpted from Times Higher Education