KABUL (SW): Based on a research conducted by Afghanistan Research Evaluation Unit (AREU) on the political activities at high schools in the country, it indicated that groups and parties like the Hezbe Tahrir and Jamiayat Islah are busy brainwashing the youth.
The research assessed and covered 136 schools in 18 provinces of the country.
Dr.Antonio Giustozzi and Ali Ahmad Ali, the two researchers who carried out this research said that they interviewed 28 teachers and 403 students and asked questions about the growing activities of fundamental and religious parties and groups at their schools.
Touching on the activities of these two religious parties, Antonio Giustozzi said that these two parties constantly and steadily promote and preach extremist thoughts in different ways at high schools in Afghanistan.
He added that the first strategy of Jamiat Islah is to recruit school teachers in their ranks so that they can easily instill their extremist thoughts into the minds of the students and can easily brainwash them.
Ali Ahmad Ali, another researcher, said that these parties are currently present in almost all high schools across the country and they are supported and supported by Islamic extremists from European countries like France, Belgium and the UK.
He said that fighting in Kunduz province showed that these groups don't represent any specific group or ethnicity and they brainwash the youth without involving themselves into factional, ethnicity or linguistic clashes.
He mentioned said that the government has strictly banned political activities in schools since the bitter memory of politicized schools back in 1980s and 1990s still haunt our people.
According to these researchers, politicization and extremism in Afghanistan's schools are far worse than it was in the 80s and 90s and if the government failed to counter it, the country might witness a large number of youth who will even spare their whole lives to institutionalize their extremist interpretations of the religion.
This research was carried out in Zabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Ghazni, Paktia, Logar, Wardak, Kabul, Kapisa, Parwan, Takhar, Kunduz, Baghlan, Badakhshan, Balkh, Herat, Kunar, Laghman and Nangarhar provinces. Out of all these, Takhar and Kunduz stand out as the two provinces with the most extremist schools students.
It is worth mentioning that in Takhar and Kunduz province girls’ students have also fallen prey to the extremist thoughts.
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