Bush & the Media Cover up the Jihad Schoolbook Scandal
By Jared Israel
[Posted 9 April 2002]
=======================================
Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal?
Or perhaps I should say, "Have you heard about the Afghan Jihad schoolbook scandal that's waiting to happen?"
Because it has been almost unreported in the Western media that the US government shipped - and continues to ship - millions of Islamist (that's short for Islamic fundamentalist) textbooks into Afghanistan.
Only one English-speaking newspaper we could find has investigated this issue: the Washington Post. The story appeared March 23rd. (1)
Washington Post investigators report that, during the past twenty years, the US has spent millions of dollars producing fanatical schoolbooks, which were then distributed in Afghanistan.
"The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then [i.e., since the violent destruction of the Afghan secular government in the early 1990s] as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books..." -- Washington Post, 23 March 2002 (1)
According to the Post, the U.S. is now "...wrestling with the unintended consequences of its successful strategy of stirring Islamic fervor to fight communism."
So the books made up the core curriculum in Afghan schools. And what were the unintended consequences? The Post reports that, according to unnamed officials, the schoolbooks "steeped a generation in [Islamist] violence."
How could this result have been unintended? Did they expect that having fundamentalist schoolbooks in the core curriculum would produce moderate Muslims?
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Let's be reasonable
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Nobody with normal intelligence could expect to distribute millions of violent Islamist schoolbooks without influencing school children towards violent Islamism. Therefore one would assume that the unnamed US officials who, we are told, are distressed at these "unintended consequences" must previously have been unaware of the Islamist content of the schoolbooks.
But surely someone was aware. The US government can't write, edit, print and ship millions of violent, Muslim fundamentalist primers into Afghanistan without somebody in high places (in the US government) approving those primers.
So if the books weren't supposed to be Islamist, that is, if their fanatical content contradicted US policy in Afghanistan, shouldn't the mass media and top politicians, such as President George Bush, now be calling for an investigation? Shouldn't they be demanding to know the identity of the official or officials who subverted the *intended* US policy by flooding Afghanistan with jihad primers?
Indeed, considering the disastrous consequences, shouldn't US officials and the media be questioning the very practice of violating the sovereignty of other countries by distributing millions of Islamic fundamentalist schoolbooks?
Yet after a thorough Internet search we could find no evidence that any mainstream Western newspaper, with the exception of the Washington Post, or any TV station or government leader has questioned - let alone denounced - sending fundamentalist schoolbooks to Afghanistan.
Quite the contrary.
For example, here's what the Boston Globe (owned by the NY Times) wrote about the old textbooks:
"Those schoolbooks that still exist are pro-Taliban screeds and deemed unusable."
-- Boston Globe, March 17, 2002 (1A)
This is implicitly misleading. How could Elizabeth Neuffer, who wrote this article, and who is the Globe's UN Bureau Chief, not know that these schoolbooks were made in USA? Was the UN also involved in distributing the Islamist books? Perhaps instead of hiding US complicity, she should do some investigative reporting!
Other newspapers went further, lying more elaborately about US involvement. Here is the Daily Telegraph from Sydney, Australia:
[Daily Telegraph Excerpt starts here]
"AFGHAN children ran, skipped and dawdled to their classrooms like pupils everywhere yesterday for the start of a new school year -- with girls and women teachers back in class and subjects like math replacing the Islamic dogma of the Taliban.
"In a symbolic break from a war-scarred past, children opened new textbooks written by Afghan scholars based at universities in the US.
"There are even pictures of people -- images banned by the fundamentalist Taliban."
- The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), March 25, 2002 (1B)
[Daily Telegraph Excerpt ends here]
By beginning the article with the irrelevant but cheery image, "Afghan children ran, skipped and dawdled, etc.," the Telegraph prepares us for an upbeat news experience. We are not disappointed. In the new schoolbooks, we are told:
"There are even pictures of people -- images banned by the fundamentalist Taliban."
This creates the impression that the Taliban were responsible for the bad old texts. Good thing we invaded Afghanistan and brought US influence to bear!
Unfortunately, as the Washington Post investigators reported:
"Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code." -- Washington Post, March 23, 2002
Other than their objections to the human face, the Taliban were perfectly happy with the US-produced primers.
Next, as if presenting evidence of a sea change, the Telegraph tells us great news: Afghan children now have new schoolbooks "written by Afghan scholars based at universities in the US."
Similarly, an article five weeks earlier in the Omaha World-Herald declares that, "Afghanistan stands at least a chance of hauling a modern, healthy society up out of the ashes of war and oppression," partly because University of Nebraska at Omaha "officials and staffers" will be "cranking up their presses in neighboring Pakistan" to churn out schoolbooks, all funded by "a $ 6.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development [AID]." (1C)
Neither newspaper mentions the fact that the bad *old* schoolbooks "were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies." -- Washington Post, March 23, 2002)
What about the US government? Have any US congressmen demanded an investigation to find out who in the US government was involved in the production of jihad primers that "steeped a generation in [Islamist] violence"?
No they have not.
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/jihad.htm
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