Radicalisation through education in Afghanistan: A critical inquiry and implications

Abstract

This article scrutinises radicalisation through education (i.e., the system of formal schooling of all children), emphasising how education is/was being utilised to radicalise young people in Afghanistan. It reports the views, perceptions, experiences, and insights on how violence has left education prone to interferences by a range of Islamist-extremist armed and socio-cultural groups in Afghanistan. These groups include the Taliban, Hizb-ul-Tahrir, Jamiat-e-Eslah, and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) militias. The article investigates how these groups influenced many aspects of community life, including education amid a state fragility in the 2001 – 2021 years. It analyses the tensions, negotiations, and compromises associated with how state, non-state, and anti-state actors competed for control over education, including both formal institutions, as well as social and cultural discourses about learning. The article argues that the infiltration of educational spaces by these groups was strategic and constituted a systematic indoctrination of education processes with their political and religious ideologies with a view to shaping new generations of the Afghanistan citizens.