Greg Mortenson

Blackhawk helicopters carrying some high-ranking visitors landed in Afghanistan’s remote Panjshir Valley on a hot summer day last week to join Greg Mortenson, his Central Asia Institute staff and local village leaders for the dedication of a girls’ elementary school.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other military commanders and international media, including New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, flew in for the official opening of the Pushgur Girls School. Friedman is expected to write about the visit in his column in today’s New York Times.

Mullen took time to greet the students individually, talk with them and give them gifts of notebooks, pens and accessories from his wife Deb, Mortenson, of Bozeman, said via e-mail. The top U.S. military commander also presented each student with a golden Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman’s medallion, which is usually reserved for dignitaries, heads of state and other VIPs.

Mortenson, who has spent 16 years building schools and promoting education in remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, said he has met with Mullen several times, at Mullen’s invitation, “to consult on new approaches to strategic policy for Afghanistan,” and last year invited him to visit a CAI girls’ school.

“I did not initially believe his visit would even happen, as he is so busy, and military commanders never visit a small NGO in the field,” wrote Mortenson, who served voluntarily in the U.S. Army in the 1970s. “But he is a man of his word, and by golly, he showed up on Wednesday, and his inspirational visit deeply touched the people here.”

CAI has built a handful of schools in the Panjshir Valley, northeast of Kabul, in recent years. This is the area where Shah Ahmed Massoud, “Lion of the Panjshir” and former leader of the Northern Alliance, which fought Taliban rule, lived and is buried. Massoud was killed on Sept. 9, 2001, just two days before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Pushgar school already has 312 girls and 45 boys enrolled, Mortenson said in an e-mail interview Saturday. CAI’s schools have contributed to the dramatic increase in school enrollment in Afghanistan since the late days of the Taliban regimen from 800,000 students in 2000, to more than 8 million students today, including more than 2.5 million females.

But the Taliban have also bombed, burned or destroyed over 600 mostly girls’ schools since 2007. Only one of CAI’s schools has ever been attacked by the Taliban, the Lalander School, in 2007. No students or teachers were hurt.

Mullen’s visit is symbolic of Mortenson’s rising profile in the region and the world.

But it also symbolizes the U.S. military’s shifting emphasis in Afghanistan, Mortenson said.

In the first years of U.S. war in Afghanistan, Mortenson was fairly critical of the military. He called Pentagon leaders “laptop warriors” in his book, “Three Cups of Tea,” referring to the lack of “boots on the ground,” he said Saturday. He was “mostly deeply disturbed about (then Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld’s rapid exit out of Afghanistan” and the shift to the war in Iraq.

“But today that has changed significantly,” he said. “There has been a significant shift and huge learning curve in the U.S. military the last two to three years. The military is deploying more of what I call ‘brain-power,’ or trainers, instead of firepower, infantry or artillery, and puts a big effort into to helping the people get back on their feet.

“Many of our senior officers and NCO enlisted have been in Afghanistan two, three or four times and really get it – that in order to succeed we need to build relationships, put the elders back in charge, and that our primary role is to serve the good people of Afghanistan. In many ways, I think the military is way ahead of the State Department and our political leaders in building relationships,” he said.

As for the difference between using education to promote peace and using troops to win the war, Mortenson said he and Mullen are really not so far apart.

“Admiral Mullen is a great listener, a pragmatist and a huge confidence- and capacity-builder in people,” he said. “Even he says himself that there is no ‘kinetic,’ or firepower, victory in Afghanistan, it’s about ‘akinetic’ force, meaning to help the people.

“Mullen agreed with me when I told him ‘We can drop bombs, hand out condoms, build roads, or put in electricity, but until the girls are educated a society won’t change,’” Mortenson said.

Mullen told Mortenson that Wednesday’s visit to Panjshir had been one of the best days of his life, and that he would like to return soon to open more girls’ schools in Afghanistan, Mortenson said.

In addition to his work for the Times, Friedman is the author of several books, including “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” He accompanied Mullen on a blitz visit to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. His column can be read online at nytimes.com.

(c) Bozeman Daily Chronicle 2009

http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2009/07/19/news/10mullen.txt