by Azmat Haroon
Himmatullah at 14 years of age can neither write nor count. He stands shy in a class of some 20 children from age nine to 15, who are still learning to read and write alphabets.
The young boy is one of the many children from Afghanistan living in Qatar who have never been to school.
Thirty years of war have affected the Afghan diaspora in many ways, at the heart of which, unfortunately, lies education.
The number of Afghan nationals in Qatar – those with the Afghani passport, is about 2,500. There are also those who have Pakistani passports and are in the midst of exchanging their passports for Afghan ones.
“There are 3,500 to 4000 Afghans in Qatar,” Khaled Ahmad Zekriya, the ambassador of Afghanistan, told The Peninsula.
Although many of them have lived here for over two decades, and are reasonably well-off, there has been a lack of continuity in their lives, which has affected children the most.
“We have to understand that this is a manifestation of what’s going on in Afghanistan. Most of the members of our community have a number of problems,” Zekriya said, explaining the lack of education in the Afghan community.
“The number one problem is the exchange of Pakistani passports. In order for you to enroll your kids in schools, you need a proper ID and many are still on the waiting list,” he said, adding that returning to their homeland remains a priority for Afghans.
The close-knit community has also developed a lack of trust for the private and community schools here over the years.
“Afghan community has always felt that they don’t have a proper venue to send their children. There seems to be a lack of trust when sending children to schools here,” the envoy said in presence of some 20 Afghan elders who sat down to discuss the issue at the Study and Education Success Center recently.
The centre, which is a coaching facility run by Zahur Ahmed Sheriff and his wife, caters to some 40 Afghan children.
Afghan school
In a crucial step, the Afghan community is gearing to launch the first Afghan school in Qatar.
The embassy has reached an agreement with Sheriff and plans to convert the Study and Education Success Center into an Afghan school.
“This will be the beginning of an Afghan school,” said Zekriya, adding that the agreement has so far only been verbal.
“We have put forth a number of ideas; once we get a license we will go ahead. We need to find moral and financial incentives,” said the envoy.
The couple, who initially began teaching children at home, had set up the centre with their savings.
The Afghanistan government also has an allocated budget for the Afghan community that resides outside Afghanistan, which Zekriya believes will materialise when the embassy here gets the Afghan Minister of Education or the Deputy Minister of Education involved in the project.
“The Afghan community is also very prosperous here, as most of them are in construction business. They will support us as well,” he said.
Although the centre also caters to Pakistani, Sudanese and some Qatari children, the large majority are from Afghanistan.
“We were shocked at the number of children we came across in our own area who had never once gone to school,” Sheriff said.
As soon as the word got out about Sheriff and his wife Shaista Shaheen helping children in the neighbourhood, many Pushto-speaking children- especially girls, called on the couple for tuitions.
One of the gravest issues faced by these children is that because they are overage, schools in Qatar refuse to take them in regular classes, explains Sheriff.
Given the need and demand, they set up a centre where children- irrespective of their age, came to learn.
“We prepare these children for schooling, thereafter they can go to regular classes as per their ages,” Sheriff said.
The envoy stressed that the embassy does not seek any benefits for it with this project.
“The assistance to the school will be without any obligation, except one request, that the sole focus should on the education of all the children, including the Afghans. All we want is certain aspects of our curriculum.”
The curriculum
Many elders stressed that they want to bring up their children in an environment that would be conducive to their culture.
They feel that three primary things need to be incorporated into the curriculum of the school: Pushto, Dari (languages spoken in Afghanistan) as well as the history and geography of the country.
“The community will look at the curriculum, and make some modifications, and ensure Afghan language, history, geography, as well as lessons on Afghan traditions in the curriculum,” the envoy said, while translating what one of the elders of the community had said.
“We call for support for the new Afghan school from embassy and community because it is an important step. Other schools do not accept our children because of their age. Here (the coaching centre), they are accepting everyone. We were sending children to Pakistani or Indian schools because we did not have an Afghan school. But now we want the Afghan school to be formally recognized by the Afghan Ministry of Education,” said Haji Sahab, a well-known Afghan in Qatar.
Another challenge that lies ahead of the Afghan community is the issue of sending girls to school.
Shaheen, along with Bilquees(one of the teachers at the centre) expressed particular concern about a tendency to not send girls to school among Afghans.
“We came across many pushto-speaking girls who were about to get married and they were eager to learn something before they started their new lives,” said Shaheen.
Many times, Shaheen and Bilquees had to call the mothers and fathers of these young girls to convince them to send their daughters to the institute.
The elders, meanwhile, said that members of their community will send girls to school if the Afghan school is built.
