Mortenson urges U.S. to keep commitment to rebuild Afghanistan

published on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 10:53 PM MST

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

As U.S. leaders debate whether to send 40,000 more troops to war in Afghanistan or pull out, Greg Mortenson says America shouldn’t abandon its commitment to help the people build better lives.

“After 9/11, we voted for war. We made a promise to the Afghan people,” Mortenson said Wednesday night, speaking to a crowd of about 2,000 community members at Montana State University’s Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. The crowd stood to applaud and honor Mortenson when he was introduced.

The author of the bestselling book “Three Cups of Tea” and winner of several humanitarian awards, Mortenson, who lives in Bozeman, has dedicated and risked his life to bring schools to remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“A lot of progress has been made” in Afghanistan thanks to foreign intervention, Mortenson said, even though Afghanistan has been on America’s back burner for six years. Imagine what might be done if we really devoted three to five years effort to building up the country, he said.

At the height of the Taliban regime there were only 800,000 Afghan children in school, most of them boys.

Today there are 8.4 million children attending school, and more than 2.5 million are girls, Mortenson said, “the greatest educational increase in history.” The goal is to get enrollment up to 13 million.

He said a major road-building program is about 70 percent complete. A central banking system has been set up. District courts have been created, and the number of women filing claims for land is skyrocketing.

On the other hand, Mortenson said the efforts are costing this country more than $42 billion a year, and hundreds of U.S. troops have been killed.

Now President Barack Obama is considering a recommendation from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to send 40,000 more troops.

“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Mortenson said, adding “I’m very disturbed” that the president and senators are holding closed, secret meetings. President George Bush did the same thing, he said. “You cannot run a democracy in secrecy.”

Mortenson spoke approvingly of part of McChrystal’s plan, saying that 18,000 of the 40,000 troops the general has requested would be training troops -- nurses, farming and education experts -- people who could help with nation-building.

Traditional Afghan tribal leaders, the shura, say “’We don’t need fire power, we need brain power,’” he said. They also beg America, “‘Please don’t bomb civilians.’”

The problem with pulling out U.S. military forces, Mortenson said, is that would mean using more high-altitude drones and long-distance bombing, which ends up killing civilians.

Mortenson also recounted the story of how he first came to build a school in a Pakistani village 16 years ago and how that mushroomed, the story told in “Three Cups of Tea.” That books has spent more than 140 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and has become required reading for U.S. military leaders.

His new book, “Stones into Schools,” set to be released Dec. 1, recounts the work Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute have done in the last three years.

Mortenson said educating children, especially girls, is the most important thing we can do to fight global poverty. He gave the example of Aziza, a young woman from Pakistan’s tribal areas, the first woman out of a population of 4,000 to get an education.

When she was in first grade, boys threw stones at her because she was a girl. In high school, teachers refused to teach her. Yet she managed to graduate at the top of her class and go on to get basic training in maternal health care.

As a result, Mortenson said, the death rate for women in childbirth in her valley has dropped from up to 20 a year to zero for the past nine years.

Educating girls to the fifth-grade level reduces infant mortality, dampens the population explosion and improves the basic quality of life of the community, he said. Educating girls means they’re less likely to let their sons go on violent jihad. Educating girls is the thing the Taliban fears more than bullets.

“We can drop bombs and build roads,” Mortenson said, “but unless we educate girls, society will never change.”

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com or 582-2633.

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