Illiteracy persists among Afghan troops despite $200M US-backed program
The US government has committed $200 million to a program teaching Afghan soldiers to read - but a new report shows more than half of them still may be illiterate. The report, released Tuesday from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, detailed numerous problems with the literacy program, which dates back to 2010. Poor tracking of recruits, inconsistent instruction and other factors have left military leaders unable to say how many soldiers can actually read and write, according to the study
The ability of soldiers to read and write enables them to understand intelligence, keep records, order fresh supplies, read maps, and participate in training crucial to their skills in the field. In the case of the police literacy is perhaps even more important since, ideally, they conduct investigations and make arrests that can lead to fair prosecutions.
Yet it appears that large sums of money have likely been wasted in Afghanistan trying to imbue basic literacy in police recruits due to shoddy contractor work, lax oversight and seemingly nonexistent tracking of recruits over time, according to a report released by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Many of the new recruits were sent into the field with no literacy training at all. "45 percent of police personnel recruited between July 2012 and February 2013 were sent directly to field checkpoints without receiving any literacy training," the report stated.
Without being able to read, it makes it difficult for soldiers to do all but the most basic tasks and to reach any level of professionalism, NATO and ISAF officials told the SIGAR investigators.
The NATO training mission reports that 298,526 soldiers and police have trained to some degree of literacy (224,826 reading at a first grade level and 73,700 at a third grade level) but that is well below the current authorized force of 352,000 (leaving 53,474 without any literacy training). That's well short of 100% literacy, the goal of the program.
In its official response, NATO Training Mission headquarters in Kabul concurred with many of the findings in the inspector general report. NATO said it would be training and graduating thousands of recruits in the months ahead, while overhauling the programs to better ensure recruits are attending and track their progress.
Voice of Russia, The Christian Science Monitor, The Daily Beast, FOX News
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