DATE=04/09/2002

TYPE=EDITORIAL

NUMBER=0-09812

TITLE=EDITORIAL: HEALING OVER HATE

INTERNET=Yes

CONTENT=THIS EDITORIAL IS BEING RELEASED FOR USE BY ALL SERVICES.

Anncr: Next, an editorial expressing the policies of the United States Government:

Voice: Books, T-shirts, tapes, and other propaganda materials of al-Qaida terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden are going out of fashion in places like Peshawar, Pakistan. After the savage al-Qaida terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed thousands, books extolling bin Laden were in high demand. "They sold like hot cakes," said a clerk in a Peshawar bookshop. But the collapse of the terrorist regime in Afghanistan has changed that. "Business is very bad," the shop owner told a Western news reporter. "People are not asking for those books."

Al-Qaida propaganda is no longer being imported into Afghanistan. Instead, Pakistani printers are hard-pressed to meet demands for school textbooks. "My business is flourishing," said Naveed Akhtar, a Peshawar book publisher. Six weeks ago, he received an order from education authorities in Afghanistan for two-hundred-fifty thousand primary school textbooks. The books will replace those distributed by the Taleban to the few children -- all boys -- deemed worthy of getting any sort of education. Gone are the incitements to religious hatred and extremism. Illustrations of Kalashnikov rifles and cartridges will no longer be used in math books to teach children how to count.

The new textbooks are urgently needed. Under the benighted rule of the Taleban, almost an entire generation of boys have been raised with little education. For girls, there was no education except for a lucky few taught in secret by courageous Afghan women like Dr. Sima Samar, now Afghanistan's minister for women. Cleansed of the Taleban regime, Afghanistan re-opened its schools on March 23rd. To assist its education efforts, the U-S is funding twenty teams of educators to help train thousands of Afghan teachers. The U-S is also sending school supplies of all kinds. Four-million textbooks have already arrived in Afghanistan. Six million more are on the way.

Bin Laden and his deceased, captured, or fugitive colleagues left a legacy of hatred and misery that will take years for the people of Afghanistan to erase. But they seem determined to do just that.

Voice: Anncr: That was an editorial expressing the policies of the United States Government. If you have a comment, please write to Editorials, V-O-A, Washington, D-C, 20237, U-S-A. You may also comment at www-dot-ibb-dot-gov-slash-editorials, or fax us at (202) 619-1043.