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Afghan children return to school

KABUL MARCH 23. Afghan children ran, skipped — and dawdled — to school today at the start of a new year with women teachers back in class and everyday subjects like maths replacing the Islamic dogma of the ousted Taliban.

In a symbolic break with Afghanistan's war-scarred past, primary and secondary school children opened new textbooks rushed to the country in recent days after they were written by Afghan scholars at U.S. universities.

There are even pictures of people — images banned by the Taliban who ruled Afghanistan from 1996 until blasted out of power in December by U.S.-led forces for harbouring Osama bin Laden, blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Nine-year-old Maryam, who as a girl would not have been able to attend school if the Taliban had still been in power, shyly chatted with new friends at her central Kabul primary school. ``I'm so excited,'' she said as she proudly adjusted her school scarf. Parents said they woke children early to brush their shoes, a somewhat vain attempt to send them to school looking perfectly smart after Kabul was hit by a hailstorm overnight.

``I'm very happy to be going to school so I can become a doctor or an engineer to serve my people,'' said 12-year-old Mohammed Rasul Bashir as he picked up his textbooks.

On the back covers were photographs of drug addicts and anti-drug slogans to discourage the use of narcotics in one of the world's leading opium producers.

``The Taliban were fanatics and had a serious problem with science and technology. They paid less attention to maths and sciences because they saw no need for doctors, engineers or economists,'' Abdulnabi Wahedi, a senior Education Ministry official, said earlier this week.

``They had their own agenda and tried to replace modern knowledge with their vision of Islamic learnings.'' ``We also teach about Islam, but with a view to modernism and progress,'' he said.

- Reuters

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