Kabul University Library Gets 20,000 U.S. Books

The United States gave 20,000 books to Kabul University on Saturday, shifting a collection that had been housed in the U.S. cultural center here to the university’s newly refurbished library.

The collection, which includes reference books, works of American literature and college texts on physics, biology and English grammar, was transferred days before the new school year, which will begin Saturday.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the collection should help the university as it rebuilds its foundations and faculty after two decades of war and years of Taliban rule.

Before being ousted by U.S. forces and Afghan fighters last year, the Taliban ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist, imposing a strict form of Islam and barring women and girls from school.

Crocker said the books weren’t designed to dictate to the Afghans how they should educate their students.

“It’s to try to help provide the tools so that the Afghans can once again think for themselves,” he told a ceremony inaugurating the library’s new “American Corner.”

The Afghan minister of higher education, Sharif Faez, said the new U.S. books would be put to good use. Library staff members have already purged old Russian and Arab texts from the library’s own collection that were filled with damaging “old ideologies,” he said.

“Our university will be in the front line in the fight against extremism, against terrorism, against those who want to turn our universities into their ideological and extremist fields,” he said.

The collection had belonged to the American Cultural Center in Kabul, which is now closed.