Pakistan to honor Mortenson

Chronicle staff reports

The Pakistan government announced Friday that Greg Mortenson will receive its civilian award, the Sitara-e-Pakistan or The Star of Pakistan, in an Islamabad ceremony in March.

Mortenson, director of the Bozeman-based nonprofit Central Asia Institute, has spent the past 15 years building schools, particularly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Civil Awards were established March 19, 1957, following the proclamation of Pakistan as an independent republic on March 23, 1956. According to the Constitution of Pakistan 1973, along with the Decorations Act 1975, the president of Pakistan confers civil awards in recognition of gallantry or distinction.

The Pakistan government has conferred the Sitara-e-Pakistan on less than a handful of foreigners.

Mortenson has worked in remote communities of Pakistan and Afghanistan since 1993, to set up schools, and education and literacy programs. As of July, he had established more than 75 schools that provide education to more than 28,000 students.

“It is an honor and humbling to receive this award,” Mortenson said in an e-mail from Edinburgh, where he is speaking during a stopover on his return to the United States from a month-long field visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“It really represents and belongs to the millions of determined children and communities who aspire to hope through education,” he said.

Mortenson is co-author of “Three Cups of Tea,” which has been a New York Times bestseller for 79 weeks, and has been published in 18 other countries. The book chronicles his decision and tumultuous efforts to build a school in the region after a failed attempt to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, in the Karakoram Range in northern Pakistan.

He has been honored numerous times for his work, including receiving one of the inaugural national awards for citizen diplomacy from the U.S. Center for Citizen Diplomacy in February.

Shortly after the diplomacy award was announced, Mortenson told the Chronicle that he’d received enough honors n and it was the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan who made his work possible.

“The credit and this (diplomacy) award should go to the incredible, amazing and dedicated communities of Pakistan and Afghanistan, who have the courage to seek out education and literacy, sometimes while even risking their lives.”

Also this year, Mortenson received an honorary doctorate degree from Montana State University during the May commencement ceremonies. The university selected his book as its first freshmen read project in 2007.

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