Hungarian Assistance for Schools in Kabul

For several years now, in the area of responsibility of the KAIA, the Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) cell has been in contact with the Fresta Nejaht Orphanage, the only institution in the region taking care of orphaned children regardless of their sex, tribal or religious affiliations. The ruined building of the institution is home to 120 children, who receive there daylong education and instruction.

In contrast to other educational institutions, the orphanage itself provides food for the children, therefore – in order to fulfill the children’s food needs for the next two months – it has received from the Hungarian contingent 1.6 tons of staple food including flour, rice, sugar, salt and cooking-oil within a humanitarian aid mission launched earlier. The orphanage also functions as a school, so the children attending it have received school equipment packages too, as assistance for the school year which started in August.

Another site, the Sardar Mohammed Daud Khan Secondary School (whose eponym is the first president of Afghanistan) is located in downtown Kabul. Here there was limited access to the sanitary units due to water shortage. To improve the situation, the HDF KAIA FPC drilled a 50-meter deep well, installed a 1000-liter water tank and fitted in accessories like taps and pipework within an infrastructural development project. The school is attended by 6400 children and is chosen by many villagers in the area of Kabul, so through the children, the support is provided for a wide social group, and so indirectly contributes to the security of international coalition forces working at KAIA, including the Hungarian soldiers.

By local traditions, the members of the delegation were first invited to a tea party. In what followed, on behalf of the Afghan Ministry of Education, Dr. Mansour, the recently appointed director-general in charge of the Kabul schools arrived to participate in the handover ceremony. While having a conversation with Col. Zoltán Apáti, the commander of the HDF KAIA FPC-2, he told us that he had already met the Hungarian troops several times in his previous position in Baghlan Province. There he got to know the work of the Provincial Reconstruction Team operated by the Hungarian Defence Forces, and on his first official visit to a school in Kabul, he was pleased to see again the familiar uniforms.

Only the first four classes of the institution function as a coeducational school for boys and girls, whereas the eight higher classes serve as a girls’ school only. Girls in Afghanistan are supposed to learn handicraft at a young age, and the delegation was introduced to some pieces made by the students. Using the funds available to the CIMIC cell, the Hungarian soldiers distributed a large amount of school equipment packages among the children in need, which included some 500 schoolbags as well as 1800 A/4 and 900 A/5 format notebooks.

On the same day, the Hungarian soldiers also visited a school in Khawaja Rawash District, which is located in a distance of a couple of 100 meters from a gate of the airport and has already received support in the form of tents. In earlier years, they had installed here a water tank too and handed it over for use to improve the system of water supply, as a solution to a problem of poorly planned construction.