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Illiteracy undermines Afghan army
(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-09-15 10:59
'Functionally literate' To overcome the problem for the Afghan army, a private company, Pulau Electronics of Orlando, Fla., has been hired to run a program that aims to make 50 percent of the troops "functionally literate." "The target is for them to be able to write their name and their weapon's serial number," said Joe Meglan, 39, who works for Pulau. The main training effort takes place at the Kabul Military Training Center. The road to the training camp is littered with the rusting hulks of tanks destroyed during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, a reminder of the last superpower's failure to tame this war-torn land. There are 5,000 coalition trainers who work with both army and police. Some 256 teams work with the army and 85 with the police. More US troops President Barack Obama has ordered 4,000 additional US military trainers as part of his surge of 21,000 new US troops into the country. The training for recruits also has about half the number of mentors it needs from the coalition, said Lt. Col. Daniel Harmuth, 43, who runs the basic warrior training. In the meantime, illiterate soldiers in the army are scraping by. "Unfortunately all my friends and I cannot read," said soldier Rosey Khan, 19. "It is very bad, particularly during the fighting. They taught me a lot of things, but I've forgotten most of them. ... Even the officers cannot read." AP
  
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