Greg Mortenson

Greg Mortenson’s advice is sought by world leaders and America’s top generals as they lead the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Few other Americans can offer his unique perspectives on one of Earth’s most volatile regions. The University of South Dakota graduate has twice been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and has just released his second book, “Stones into Schools.” The book, like his earlier one, “Three Cups of Tea,” is a best-seller on the New York Times book list.

He will speak Nov. 16 at the Visalia Convention Center. Tickets go on sale today.

The struggle in Afghanistan, Mortenson says, isn’t about flexing America’s military might.

It’s about listening, he says, about teaching and, when asked, about extending a helping hand. Sixteen years of building schools and relationships in the most desolate reaches of Afghanistan and Pakistan have taught him that. And now many in positions of influence across America are starting to see it, too.
A chance encounter

Mortenson’s own decision to improve education and literacy in Central Asia was born of a chance encounter with a village in Pakistan in 1993.

At the time, he had a sister, Christa, who was an epileptic. She died of a massive seizure in July 1992. To honor her memory, Mortenson, an avid climber, resolved to take an amber necklace of Christa’s to the summit of Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain on earth.

“It’s a mountaineer’s mountain, one of the most dangerous,” Mortenson, 52, explained. “I thought it would be an awesome thing … to dedicate that climb to my sister.”

But after weeks above 16,000 feet, oxygen deprived and his body struggling against the high altitude, Mortenson headed down the mountain. He stopped in his descent in a little village, Korphe, to recover from his emaciation and exhaustion.

During his 10-day recovery, he met a little girl, Cho Cho, 9 years old and handicapped. He watched her writing with a stick in the dirt, along with the other children of the village. They had no classrooms, and their teacher was gone half the week because they couldn’t afford his daily $1 salary.

So to repay the villagers’ kindness to him, Mortenson promised to return one day and build them a school.

Back in America, he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, asking for help in building the school. He got one response, a $100 check from Tom Brokaw.

“My daughter has always said, ‘It’s outrageous that you get credit just because of that $100,’ ” Brokaw said, chuckling. “I can’t remember exactly if I’d been given a heads-up about Greg. We have a couple of mutual friends. He was a climber and had Midwestern roots. I thought it was a good idea.”

In 1994, Mortenson founded Pennies for Peace, engaging schoolchildren to donate their spare change to help pay for his first school. The children responded with 62,400 pennies.
Village gives the land and the labor

Since then, through his Montana-based Central Asia Institute he co-founded, Mortenson has built or established 49 schools in Afghanistan and 82 schools in Pakistan, mainly for girls. His budget has grown to $3.5 million annually, funded 94 percent through private donations, such as Pennies for Peace, and the other 6 percent through corporations and foundations. He relies on a group he calls “the Dirty Dozen” to oversee his school building and management efforts.

It costs about $50,000 to establish a school, Mortenson said. Roughly $15,000 to $25,000 pays for the brick and mortar, supplies and furniture.

Then there’s teacher training and support. The village then must provide land and labor.

“If they want a school in their village, that providing of land and labor ensures the buy-in,” Mortenson said. “That’s one of the reasons the Taliban haven’t destroyed any of our schools. The community has such a fierce support for the school.”

That’s important to note, Mortenson said, when you consider that the Taliban have bombed, destroyed or shut down more than 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and more than 850 schools in Pakistan, 90 percent of which were girls schools.
Educated women can destroy the Taliban

Mortenson has come to understand that very well. He has seen that when girls are educated, health improves, infant mortality drops and overpopulation falls.

Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s education system has changed dramatically, with far more girls now being educated. In 2000, when the Taliban was in power and education for girls was discouraged, there were 800,000 schoolchildren in Afghanistan, almost all of them boys. Today, he said, there are 8.4 million students in school, and 2.5 million of them are girls.

When those girls learn to read and write, their mothers very carefully unfold the newspapers used to wrap meat and vegetables in the market and ask their daughters to read the news to them, Mortenson said.

“To finally hear the news, those mothers can get involved in political issues, or can understand about exploitation of women,” he said.

When women are educated, they are less likely to encourage their sons to get into the Taliban or extremist groups, he said.

“The Taliban, their primary recruiting ground is illiterate, impoverished society,” Mortenson said. “Most educated women will refuse to allow their sons to join the Taliban.”

That’s the message he has shared with military leaders such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and Gen. David Petraeus, former commander in Iraq.
The way forward

The inroads are made, Mortenson said, when America builds relationships with village elders in Afghanistan — people he calls “shura” — who have risen in their communities to positions of respect and leadership.

“We have to put the elders back in charge,” he said. “And we must learn that we have to talk with and get to know each other before decisions are made.

“The elders tell me, their No. 1 complaint is, ‘Don’t bomb and kill our civilians.’ If there is any way we antagonize people, it’s when we bomb or kill civilians. The shura say, ‘If you don’t like someone, we’ll go and kill them ourselves.’ ”

For his 16 years of building schools and peace in Central Asia, Mortenson has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2008 and 2009. Last year, he received Pakistan’s highest civil award, the Sitarae-Pakistan, or “Star of Pakistan.”

(c) 2010 The Visalia Times-Delta

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