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Afghanistan

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Armed forces.

Regular army officers are trained in a military school in Kabul. There is a small air force, with bases at Bagram and Shindand. A secret police force was organized in the late 1970s.

Education.

Education is free at all levels, and elementary education is officially compulsory wherever it is provided by the state. Nonetheless, fewer than one-fourth of all Afghan children attend school. There are primary schools throughout the country but secondary schools only in the provincial and in some district centres. Less than one-fourth of the population is literate. Kabul University was founded in 1946 by the incorporation of a number of faculties, the oldest of which is the faculty of medicine, established in 1932. The University of Nangarhar was formed in Jalalabad in 1963.

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