Afghan textbooks focused on promoting peace: Writers

PESHAWAR (Pajhwok): Senior Afghan researchers and writers deny anti-Pakistan content is being taught in Afghan school textbooks.

No such stuff as fuelled tensions with neighbouring countries was included in syllabus at any level, the scholars told a Pakistani newspaper.

Speaking to Dawn, they insisted Afghan textbooks were focused on preaching peace, universal human values and good relations with neighbours.

Lal Bacha Azmoon, advisor to President Ashraf Ghani on culture, suggested Kabul and Islamabad should encourage exchanges of academicians and literati.

Such contacts, he believed, would curb negative propaganda and pave the ground for further cementing cooperative bilateral relations.

“Many of my colleagues and I have been in Pakistan for several decades. How can we encourage academicians to teach our children to grow up with hate against our immediate neighbours including Pakistan?” he asked.

Noted intellectual Prof Asif Sameem said no effort to create rifts between peoples living across the Durand Line, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, tribal districts and Balochistan had strong social, historical and cultural bonds.

“No one can find even a single line (against Pakistan) in our textbooks at any level. Sour relations should not trickle down to our academic institutions,” he said.

Habibullah Rafi, another scholar, said Afghan academicians and literati were never in the habit of fanning hate against Pakistan.

“Yes, at political level, the exhibition of harsh and unfriendly attitude … is a fact but making it part of school textbooks has never been in the imagination of our academics…”

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