Greg Mortenson

Thirteen years ago, Greg Mortenson stumbled from the glacial slopes of Pakistan’s K2 into a village where 84 children scratched school lessons in the sand with sticks.

The moment marked the beginning of the life’s work of this onetime “dirtbag climber” who has built schools in some of the most volatile parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Chronicled in the New York Times best-seller he coauthored with David Oliver Relin, “Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism…One School at a Time,” Mortenson will open the Taos Mountain Film Festival with a slide show about his work Friday.

The son of missionaries, Mortenson grew up on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, where his father founded a teaching hospital and his mother started a school.

His youngest sister

Christa died from severe epilepsy at 23. To honor her unbroken spirit in the face of debilitating illness, he decided to climb the second-highest mountain in the world. But after 78 days and a chaotic descent among gaping crevasses, the former U.S. Army medic emerged confused and emaciated in a tiny Pakistani village called Korphe, where the villagers nursed Mortenson back to health.

The remote area was too poor to afford the dollar-a-day salary to hire a teacher. The literacy rate was only 2 to 3 percent. One in three children died before the age of 1. But the children’s fierce determination to learn despite such crushing circumstances reminded him of Christa.

Turnaround

At the time, Mortenson was living out of his burnt-out Buick. He sold everything he owned – mainly his climbing equipment. His luck turned when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wis., donated $623 in pennies, inspiring adults to take him more seriously.

Today, Mortenson has built 55 schools for 24,000 students in the breeding grounds of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

“You can drop bombs, build roads or hand out condoms,” Mortenson said in a telephone interview from his home in Bozeman, Mont. “But until the girls are educated, society won’t change.”

Numerous global academic studies show that educating girls slashes infant mortality, levels population explosions and dramatically boosts the quality of health and life itself, Mortenson said. Educated men often leave a community to find a job. Educated women pass what they learn on to their kids.

“When a young man goes on jihad, we often perceive it as holy war,” he continued. “But it can also be a noble quest like going to school. He needs to go to his mother before he goes on jihad. If he doesn’t, it’s very disgraceful or shameful. The women who were educated refused to let their sons go to the Taliban, to the slaughterhouse.”

Mortenson’s work has often pitted him against the extremist mullahs. He’s survived two fatwahs and an eight-day kidnapping. After Sept. 11, irate Americans sent him hate mail for helping Muslim children.

But in the rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, he’s gained the trust of Islamic leaders, military commanders and tribal chiefs.

“It takes three cups of tea to do business,” he said of his book title. “First, you’re a stranger; the second cup, you’re a friend. By the third, you’re family. In a tribal society, you become nena watay, which means ‘the right of refuge.’ It’s the same thing Osama bin Laden is under. Once you befriend them, they’ll protect you with their life.”

Four of his female students are now in medical school. He’ll return to the area to build four more schools in November.

Unfulfilled promises

He says the slowness of Afghanistan reconstruction has contributed to a resurgence of the Taliban. The number of children in school has plunged by 150,000. The opium crop has skyrocketed by 60 percent, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, providing some $2 billion in revenue, more than all of the international relief agencies combined.

“I see it as a lack of commitment to the people and the rebuilding of the country,” Mortenson said. “These are things we’ve already promised them.

We’ve only sent 50 to 60 percent of the money we promised to Afghanistan. Teachers aren’t getting paid and health care and immunizations aren’t getting done.”

The combined literacy rate of both Pakistan and Afghanistan is 22 to 28 percent. For rural families, it’s more like 2 or 3 percent. Combine these figures with last year’s earthquake in Pakistan and the situation is desperate, Mortenson said. The quake killed 74,000, destroying 9,000 schools.

Billowing tents have sprouted in refugee camps run by terrorist organizations. One is being operated by Dr. Amir Aziz, bin Laden’s London trained former personal physician.

“In every camp, you’ll see a huge tent where there is a extremist madrassa, and they teach a violent form of Islam,” Mortenson said. “Because of U.S. law, I can’t even go and talk in these camps. So we’ve created a viral incubator for terrorism.”

For more information about Mortenson and his work, contact the Central Asia Institute at www.ikat.org.

If you go:

WHAT: Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea,” opens the Taos Mountain Film Festival with a talk and slide show.

WHEN: 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 6

WHERE: Old County Courthouse, Taos

HOW MUCH: Tickets $10; includes two films. Contact (505) 751-3658.

(c) 2006 Albuquerque Journal. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.