Experts throughout the massive aid community in Afghanistan agree that education is vital for development. Education shapes the quality of productivity, products, and services. Education informs citizens of the roles that they must play so that good governance may thrive. Education molds the quality of leadership. Yet, despite the rhetoric, the education sector is perennially underfunded; typically, it receives scarcely 10% of what is provided to other sectors.
The Emerging Afghan Media: Beyond the Stereotyping of Women?
Originally posted December 2009
For the past 30 or more years, media content in Afghanistan mostly has been controlled by the central government and its supporters. During this period, as throughout the 20th century, the most important and widely available forms of media have been national radio and television. However, rural perspectives and the realities of rural life have been conspicuously absent from most media content. Moreover, because of traditionally rigid gender roles, Afghan women have had very limited or almost no access to media and information sources.
Women's Agency in Afghanistan: From Survivors to Agents of Change
Originally posted December 2009
Often, policy debates on the empowerment of women in Afghanistan are impaired by the historic backlashes against radical top-down reforms and women’s emancipation (e.g., unseating kings) or by the assumption that the male-dominated culture makes it nearly impossible to create space for the advancement of women’s rights. As a result, the effort to develop a cohesive strategy for enhancing women’s participation in the reconstruction agenda is hampered.
This Opinion first appeared on CNN.com on April 20, 2012
The six-point peace plan for Syria proposed by Kofi Annan is doomed to fail for one simple reason: Neither President Bashar al-Assad nor the government opposition is interested in making it work.
The NGO people drive around in big white cars, live in our cities’ best houses and receive high salaries, though most of them would be jobless in their own country. They come here for two, three hours, and we tell them what they need to hear. They express empathy with our difficult situation, and then they get back into their air-conditioned four wheel drives and race off leaving us behind in a cloud of dust. Often they are never seen again. —Farmers in rural Kunduz Province, 2006
Rebuilding Afghanistan: Practical Measures for Improving the Economy
Originally posted December 2009
It is a difficult task to suggest a specific recipe for the improvement of the economy of any failed state. The case of Afghanistan presents even more challenges.
Orientalism's Persistence in Mass Culture and Foreign Policy
Originally posted September 2009
Edward W. Said’s widow, Mariam, tells me that his books are still selling well. The academic community has been transformed, and the field of literary criticism has been revolutionized as a result of his legacy. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) has in recent years elected a series of presidents reflecting non-orientalist approaches. At the last MESA annual meeting in Washington, DC in November 2008 a plenary session was devoted to Said’s work. The large hall was packed.
