The information technology (IT) revolution has finally reached Afghanistan. The country's first batch of IT students recently graduated from Kabul University with industry-standard certificates in computer networking skills.

Among the 17 graduates, six are women, heralding new hope that educational discrimination would finally end in Afghanistan. The UN-supervised, Cisco Systems-funded programme aims to train 200 students by the end of this year. Knut Ostby, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) deputy director for Afghanistan, thinks that the delay in the onset of the computer revolution could well turn out to be a boon. "It gives Afghanistan tremendous opportunities in terms of skipping a number of intermediate steps and going straight to the state-of-the-art technology of today,' he feels.