Afghan Boys Learn 3 R’s: Rifles, Rockets, Religion

The Abu-Hanifa school has few textbooks or pencils. It does have dummy automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and even its youngest pupils work with them.

The school, with an enrollment of more than 1,000 boys, is one of dozens operated by Afghan guerrilla groups to teach youths the fundamentals of the Islamic religious faith and to train them to fight Afghanistan’s Soviet-supported Communist government.

“I want my country to be free. I want Islam to rule my country,” said Nazir Ahmad, 13.

Before coming to the school two years ago, Ahmad said, he spent three years as a courier for the Islamic guerrillas in Herat Province in western Afghanistan. When government troops attacked his village, he picked up a rifle and fired back, he said.

The Afghan Education Committee, a private agency that provides educational assistance to refugees living in Pakistan, estimates that nearly 45,000 students, 94% of them male, are being educated in schools funded by resistance groups.

At each school, the boys receive some rudimentary military training.

Several days a week, Abu-Hanifa students march double-time from their school on the northern outskirts of Peshawar to a nearby field for training. Dressed in green combat fatigues and armed with wooden weapons, they learn basic firing positions and how to take cover.

At the nearby Mujahid high school, also supported by guerrilla groups, military science is the most popular course, said Shah Alam Rafat, the principal. From a typical graduating class of 45 students, about 30 will go to Afghanistan to fight.

The students are taught secular subjects, such as mathematics and science, in addition to Islamic religious courses. Military training is restricted to one hour a week. But as at Abu-Hanifa school, all instruction is aimed at preparing the student for the war.