Decisions over three cups of tea
Humanitarian Greg Mortenson is still a man on a mission but he’s had to develop diplomatic skills as well. Nowadays, wherever he speaks for his nonprofit Central Asia Institute, he must address the most pressing issues facing this country: What is our mission in Afghanistan and should we commit more troops to the effort?
As a man of peace for the past 16 years promoting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mortenson is now pressed to take sides in a war that is increasingly unpopular both here and there. Should we, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal requested and President Obama is considering, send 40,000 more troops to the country and, if so, what will be their mission?
Speaking to a crowd of about 2,000 at Montana State University in Bozeman last week, Mortenson said, “We shouldn’t abandon our commitment to the Afghan people. But I’m not going to tell you what to do.”
The part of McChrystal’s plan he supports is that 18,000 of the requested troops would be trainers-nurses, farming and education experts-people who could help build the country.
“Traditional Afghan tribal leaders, the Shura, say they don’t need fire power, they need brain power,” he said. “But they also beg Americans, ‘Please don’t bomb civilians.’”
Mortenson worries that if military forces pull out, it would probably mean using more high-altitude drones and long-distance bombing, which ends up killing innocent people.
The author (with journalist David Oliver Relin) of the enormously successful “Three Cups of Tea” says military personnel need to understand the culture. The book is now required reading for U. S. military leaders.
However, as a first-time author, Mortenson had several disputes with the publisher at Viking Penguin. The first chapter chronicles the former mountaineer’s disastrous descent from K2 and how people in the remote village of Korphe nursed him back to health.
It was titled “Failure.” You can’t have the first chapter called Failure, he was told. He won that argument. But the publishers insisted on the subtitle: “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations . . . One School at a Time.” Mortenson said he wasn’t fighting terrorists, he was building schools and the subtitle should reflect that with the words Build Peace instead of Fight Terrorism. The hardcover edition includes the publisher’s choice. It sold slowly. So Mortenson got the change he wanted for the trade paperback edition, which spent more than 140 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
In January of last year, as Pakistan mourned the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, I wrote that Greg Mortenson was the most likely nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. Local columnist and former U.S. Foreign Service member Marjorie Smith wrote of her fellow Bozeman resident, “While his nation (and ours) sends its military across the world in a futile effort to conquer terrorists, Mortenson sends teachers, books and pencils in hopes of helping peace evolve, organically.”
President Obama was awarded the prize probably for his willingness to listen to foreign leaders who disagree with us rather than for accomplished peace agreements. But Mortenson has made more actual progress. Of course, he’s been at it for 16 years.
“Even though Afghanistan has been on America’s backburner for six years, a lot of progress has been made,” he said. “Imagine what might be done if we really devoted three to five years effort to building up the country.”
At the height of the Taliban regime’s power there were only 800,000 Afghan children in school, most of them boys, he said. Today, there are 8.4 million children attending school and more than 2.5 million are girls. He added that a major road-building program is about 70 percent complete, a central banking system has been set up, district courts have been created and the number of women filing claims for land is skyrocketing,
Central Asia Institute has established 131 schools since the first one he promised to the Shura of Korphe. And he’s learned a great deal about fundraising since he received his first check from Tom Brokaw.
This fall, he donated 5,500 copies of his book to all students in the Bozeman Public Schools and spoke to school groups that donated coins to his Pennies for Peace program.
“Around the world, 120 million children cannot go to school because of slavery, poverty, discrimination and religious extremism, and 78 million of them are girls,” he said. Then he asked: “When you grow up, what do you want that number to be?”
“Zero!” was the resounding answer.
But along with enthusiasm, Mortenson said, he’s received hate mail from people who claim public schools are “sending money to help the children of terrorists.” He attributes this to a lack of understanding that comes only through personal connections.
Educating girls is the most important thing we can do to fight poverty, he said. It reduces infant mortality, dampens the population explosion and improves the quality of life for the community. “Educating girls means they’re less likely to let their sons go on violent jihad. It’s the thing the Taliban fears more than bullets.”
With luck, Obama will weigh Mortenson’s message with advice from the military. There’s always risk, but real balance could be the result.