It only takes a moment’s glance at the headlines to realize that the Middle East is in chaos. The debates raging across the United States and Europe about what to do with refugees streaming out of the region remind us that the conflict there is a global issue.
From the nearly five-year-old conflict in Syria, or the 3 million-plus displaced people in Iraq due to the rise of the Islamic State, to another 1.6 million in Yemen, and the list could keep going on, the humanitarian toll is staggering.
Yet, too often overlooked in these conflicts is the havoc wars wreak on children and basic education. Right now more than 13 million children — 40 percent of the 34 million children — are out of school as a result of the conflicts plaguing the region.
According to a UNICEF report titled “Education Under Fire,” there are some 9,000 schools across the Middle East that are unusable because they have been destroyed, damaged, used to shelter displaced people or taken over by military or armed groups.
The lack of education is one of the primary drivers of emigration out of the region. As I’ve talked with parents and youth in Iraq, Lebanon, and Turkey, education is one of the first things on their mind.
Sitting in the Chaldean Cultural Center in Dohuk, Iraq, I asked a father — a former electronics store owner — whether he and his family would stay in Iraq. He looked at his teenage son and answered, “What life would there be for him here in Iraq? There are no opportunities. It is for his sake that we need to leave.”
Looking to the future and seeing no opportunities, no education for their children, this is what leads a family to leave the region. It is what compels a father to risk putting his young children into the hands of human traffickers to make the dangerous journey towards opportunity.
For those families who stay in the region, the next generation of Iraqi and Syrian youth, every day out of school adds to a lost generation. Many Syrian students are now in their fourth year out of school — an entire high school career lost to conflict.
What will this mean for the future of Syria? Where are the doctors who will repair the medical system? Who will be the engineers who rebuild demolished cities? Where are the politicians who will represent their people?
Every day we are seeing the future get on a boat to leave the country. What are they leaving behind? A region where extremism is taking root.
Education is not just a casualty of extremism; it is also the battleground where the war with extremism will be won.
If you want to see this, you only have to look at the extremists themselves to realize that they understand the power of education. In the recently leaked Principles in the Administration of the Islamic State, education featured prominently in the state building activities.
“Education is the foundation upon which Islamic society is built,” Chapter 8 opens, “and it is the division that makes the Muslims differ in their lives from the rest of the paths of disbelief.”
What does this distinctive education look like?
“In school, the books don’t have math problems that ask you what two plus two is; the math problem is always two guns plus two guns equals what,” says Tim Ramadan, a pseudonym of one of the writers of Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently. “And the creative writing exercise is about a boy whose father carries out a suicide bombing.”
This indoctrination is working. It is how they are training a new generation of jihadist fighters.
How do you stop this?
You ensure that the Islamic State is not the only one providing education in Iraq and Syria. You ensure that families have the option to go to schools that teach peace building and principles of human dignity, alongside of literacy and math, music and art.
Yet, even as education increases in importance, the amount of aid money directed towards education is decreasing.
Education is the missing piece to fixing the refugee crisis. It is key to stopping it before it even starts. So let’s get kids back in school now!
Jeremy P. Barker (@jaybark7) is a co-founder and Director of Operations in Iraq for EDGE Institute. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
