Reading, Writing and Afghanistan

From Danger Room:

The American-led strategy in Afghanistan relies on training enough local forces to let the Afghans take over their own security. Right now, only 18% of those 243,000 cops and grunts have more than a Kindergarten-level ability to read. Which means they've got major trouble doing everything from keeping track of their gear to following a battle plan to getting paid, the general in charge of the NATO training effort says. In other words: if these local troops can't learn their ABCs, this war is stuck.