Greg Mortenson

From transcript:

Along with 30,000 more troops the president’s new Afghanistan strategy also calls for what he referred to as a civilian surge, a tripling of the number of people on the ground that are trying to help build infrastructure and lead to a lasting peace.

Greg Mortenson has spent a lot of time building schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He’s also the co-founder of the Central Asia Institute and has a new book, this picks up where the bestseller “Three Cups of Tea” left off, I guess you could say, “Stones into Schools: Promoting peace with books, not bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

And Greg, it’s our pleasure to have you with us this morning.

GREG MORTENSON, AUTHOR, “STONES INTO SCHOOLS”: Thank you, Kiran.

CHETRY: I’m sure you were listening closely last night when the president laid out this new strategy for Afghanistan. You are somebody that is extremely familiar with the country and has an opinion about what it’s going to take to be a success. What did you think of what the president proposed?

MORTENSON: Well, unfortunately I was giving a talk last night so I’m going to have to catch up, what I did I like catch up a little this morning. The surge, a lot of it is based on McChrystal report.

One thing that I have great respect for the military; General McChrystal and the military met extensively with the tribal elders. And unfortunately, I think that the decision made by our government, the missing component is that the elders, the Shiras (ph) weren’t involved in that decision.

I think their voice needs to be heard. This is not the central government; these are the tribal elders who over thousands of years have had power there.

The other thing that is important to consider is there’s a lot of good things happening in Afghanistan. In 2000 there were 800,000 children in school. Today there are 8.5 million children in school including 2.5 million females.

There is a central banking system. There is an Eisenhower air road building program. Many of these things happened while we were busy off in Iraq and Afghanistan was on the back seat.

So, I do think there will be some things happening, unfortunately it’s going — the tension, the violence will escalate…

CHETRY: Right.

MORTENSON: … more U.S. soldiers will be killed but I do think there needs — absolutely needs to be an emphasis so that every child can go to school. If you educate a girl you educate a community. And I really think the long term solution needs to focus on education.

CHETRY: You know, when you talk about education, there are some key women’s groups especially for Afghanistan that say we don’t want to go backwards in terms of progress. They are very concerned that if we do outline an exit strategy and let’s say we do start a drawdown in 2011 that Afghanistan is going to fall right back into a pattern that we saw under the Taliban in which women and girls were subject to violence and were held down in society.

How do we make sure that doesn’t happen? You mentioned the progress made and of course more needs to be done, to get education and to be able to have both sexes in Afghanistan, boys and girls, feel safe and be able to be part of their community.

MORTENSON: Well, it’s — if you have the relationships, you don’t necessarily sometimes have to have foreign military troops. So the elders were ensured that the schools are safe, Thomas Friedman you had on earlier, we were just speaking about that. He has visited our schools. The — though, when we set up our schools we give the skilled labor, the materials, and obviously the teacher training but the community has to give free land, free resources and free (INAUDIBLE) so what that does is it get as local buy-in.

And one of the main problems I see is that the U.S. we’re too busy just throwing money at problems. You have to get reciprocal agreements from the country, from the provinces and get the local buy- in. And unless that happens, you don’t really get the viability or sustainable of a project like a school.

CHETRY: Well, we saw one report, in fact, where one of our correspondents was there as the military leaders our U.S. troops were going there to talk to tribal elders. And in one of the cases there was still a fear of the Taliban, a fear that he would be — there would be repercussions, that he would be killed if he appeared to be cooperating with U.S. forces.

How do we make a dent in that? I understand that we are going to be bringing a surge of troops in and are going to be able to protect some of these areas more. But is that enough?

MORTENSON: Well, I think, if the local Shira (ph) the elders are involved they will protect the school with their life. One of our schools, we’ve only had one school attacked by the Taliban. The local Shira got together, they came in and they killed two Taliban and they now appointed 12 guards there. And their orders are if anybody harms any girl, any teacher, just shoot them. You know that’s not how we run a school but because of the local buy-in they are willing to protect the school with their lives.

And again, I think it’s about we have to listen more, we have to build relationships and we have to have respect.

We are there to serve the good people of the country, but their voice does need to be heard and especially I think the children need to have that right to go to school.

CHETRY: And for people sitting at home saying we are facing a terrible situation here in our own country, we have a jobless rate now above 10 percent in double digits, we have so many people struggling, homes foreclosing.

Why should I care about what’s going on thousands of miles away in Afghanistan? And why should my money and resources that’s coming out of my local community and our troops go over there?

MORTENSON: Well, the world is a global community. I think we can spend 99 pennies here in the U.S., 99 workers can stay here, but one penny out of one dollar could go overseas and one person per hundred and just even with that small formula I really think a big difference could be made. You know just one percent.

I have two children, my kids go to school and we struggle with funding especially in public schools. But I do think at least some, one percent I think is a key, that we’d have a good formula and… CHETRY: Keep it in perspective, right?

MORTENSON: … yes the perspective.

CHETRY: Well, we see how much difference just you as one person had been able to make in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan, building more than 130 schools to date.

It’s great to have you with us, Greg. Thanks so much.

MORTENSON: Thank you so much.

CHETRY: And again you can check out his new book, Greg Mortenson, author of “Stones into Schools” and it’s — your first book required reading for people dealing with the counter insurgency, so a lot of good stuff here.

Thanks Greg.

MORTENSON: Well, thank you very much. Thanks.

(c) CNN Most News in the Morning 2009

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