Peace Pundit

Three Cups of Tea tells how Greg Mortenson found his “calling” building schools in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was written by a partnership between Mortenson and professional writer David Oliver Relin. Briefly:

After serving in the US Army as a medic, and getting degrees in nursing and chemistry, Mortenson still was not sure what he wanted to do with his life. He joined an expedition to climb K2, the world’s second highest peak, but did not reach the top due to the need to rescue other climbers his group encountered. On the way down, he got separated from his group and his porter, took a wrong turn, and found himself, exhausted, in the Pakistani mountain village of Korphe. The villagers there nursed him back to health.

To repay the villagers’ kindness, Mortenson promised to build a school for the village, since the Pakistani government had never done so. Back in the US, he initially had trouble raising the funds to build a school, but eventually convinced Jean Hoerni, a weathy Silicon Valley businessman, to help him. Together, they co-founded the Central Asian Institute (CAI).

However, building the school in Korphe turned out to take a few years, because first a bridge into the village had to be built to allow construction materials for the school to be brought there, not to mention that there were influential Pakistani warlords who wanted a school built in their villages first. Eventually, however, the school in Korphe was built.

Since then CAI has built over 78 schools, plus some wells, water conduits, and other public-works projects in the mountainous areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. It continues to do so to this day, despite threats from Taliban mullahs who disagree with educating girls, as well as hate mail from Americans who believe Mortenson is “helping the enemy” (i.e., Muslims).

Mortenson has shrugged all of these problems off, focusing tightly on his mission: building schools, educating girls as well as boys.

In one fascinating chapter of the book, Mortenson is approached by the US military and asked to provide information that could help the military identify targets in the mountain areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He refuses on the grounds that doing so would not only hurt his credibility with the mountain people, but also might make him a target of Taliban militants. The US military also offers him funding — secretly if he wants it that way. Despite the Central Asian Institute’s then-chronic lack of sufficient funding for all of its projects, he also refuses that offer for the same reasons.

The implications of that exchange are thought provoking. One could argue that the US military would be more effective in countering the Taliban and winning over the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan if, instead of waging war, it “waged peace” by using the Army Corps of Engineers to build public-works projects. For example, Spain’s NATO troops in Afghanistan mainly build water projects, and have a much better relationship with the Afghans — and much lower casualties — than the US troops have.

So the irony is, Mortenson has to refuse military support for what he is doing so that he can keep doing it, but if the US military were doing what he is doing — presumably on a much larger scale because of their greater funding — instead of what they are doing, the situation in the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan would be better for all concerned. It seems a bit like a Catch-22.

The only consolation is that important people in the US government have read or are reading Three Cups of Tea. Let’s hope that they learn something from it.

I like the book so much that I have bought dozens of copies and given them to friends, family, and others. I strongly recommend that you get it, read it, and give it to others.

Links to further information:

• Three Cups of Tea book website
• Greg Mortenson’s website
• Interview of Greg Mortenson
• Wikipedia entry on Greg Mortenson
• Wikipedia entry on Three Cups of Tea