SHOW: Fresh Air | February 07 2002
SHOW: Fresh Air | by Terry Gross, host

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Greg Mortenson, first went to Pakistan to climb K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. He didn’t make it to the top, but he fell in love with the region. He returned in 1993 with a different goal: to start schools in Pakistan, with an emphasis on educating girls. He founded the Central Asia Institute, which has built 22 schools and created 11 schools without buildings. Some of his schools are in Afghan refugee camps. The institute has also created two dozen potable water projects and five women’s vocational training programs. To set up these programs, Mortenson has worked closely with religious and tribal leaders. He now divides his time between Pakistan and his home in Montana.

He started building schools for girls one year before the Taliban began its insurgence. In 1996, the Taliban took over Afghanistan and made it illegal for girls to go to school. Mortenson says that even before the Taliban, educational options were shutting down in the region. He blames that largely on cuts in aid from the US.

Mr. GREG MORTENSON (Central Asia Institute): In 1989, after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, the aid to Afghanistan dropped from $850 million down to about $170 million in one year.

There also was the Larry Pressler amendment in ‘89 which banned the sale of 20F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan. With that, the US was worried that the F-16s could carry nuclear bombs that Pakistan had been working on. With that, there were a lot of tag-alongs, or add-ons, to the sanctions in the amendment that was tied to debt repayment and loans that Pakistan had defaulted on.

The World Bank funding dropped with more sanctions. Hundreds of schools closed down in the tribal belts in western Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. There were tens of thousands of boys who had aspired to improve their lives through education, and they ended up joining religious madrassahs or the Islamic schools, which predominantly are funded by Saudi Arabian Wahhabi. Wahhabi is the most strict sect of Sunni Muslims. And so just as the sanctions and schools were getting closed down, there was the opportunity of more and more madrassahs opening up, and students began to go to school at madrassahs, which became fertile recruiting grounds for the Taliban.

Over 80,000 boys who have gone through madrassahs joined the Taliban at one time or another. Ironically, it was the terrorist groups who recognized the value of, i.e., education, more than the development agencies, and what we were working–and we started back then is to provide education, community-based education, which is a deterrent to this stagnant–boys who have nothing to do, and also a long-term solution as far as giving them hope and opportunity.

GROSS: Do you see it as paradoxical that American sanctions that withheld certain aid money helped close down the schools, which helped build the power of the madrassahs, the religious schools?

Mr. MORTENSON: Right. If you draw that out on a chart, it’s very interesting. It almost happened at the same time, and one thing evolved into another. And even today–I met some Taliban when I was in Pakistan in October last year, and without exception–this is about 10 different Taliban–they said they would never join the Taliban if they had a job. When somebody signs up for the Taliban, they got a $300 bonus. They went to three weeks of training, then they got an assignment for six months. When they got done, they would get a $200 bonus.

If they had had education or if they had had economic–some type of incentive or a job, all the ones I talked to, at least, said they would never join the Taliban.

GROSS: What made you think of starting schools for girls, as opposed to schools for boys?

Mr. MORTENSON: I met a very old professor in New Delhi. His name is Pritpal Singh. He was one of the senior statisticians with the United Nations, and he basically drew out a chart to show me that fifth-grade level girls’ education is the single most important thing you can do to literally improve the quality of a society in that part of the world. And the chart really got me motivated to work on girls’ education.

GROSS: What’s the theory behind that? Why does girls’ education improve the society?

Mr. MORTENSON: Well, basically, by having literacy and educating girls to that level, they have a greater awareness about hygiene and sanitation, and they can read different charts and diagrams, and they also have a better understanding about family planning and hygiene that seems to be more instilled. And also, there’s the old saying as these societies are changing, most of the boys and men leave the villages, especially the educated ones, but the women stay behind, and they’re the essence of the community, so when you educate a girl in the village, that will remain in the village and that value of education will go to the next generation.

GROSS: The Taliban banned education for girls. So I imagine that over the years that you’ve been building schools in Pakistan, that you’ve had Islamic leaders tell you that girls really shouldn’t receive an education. Has that happened much where you were told that?

Mr. MORTENSON: Initially my third year there I’d completed the first school, and I was looking at other options in some remote areas. But I met resistance from the village mullahs or the sharifs or the religious head leaders in each village. And most of all it was about that they were the only literate person in the village and they could issue edicts or it gave them a lot of power. So I contacted Said Abas Resvi(ph), who’s the head Islamic leader in northern Pakistan. He’s a Shiite Muslim under the auspices of the Iranian ayatollahs. We wrote a letter to Kholm, Iran, to the council of ayatollahs. And about nine months later, we got a letter back.

I was called into the middle of a mosque in a kind of inner sanctum. Eight mullahs were there, very imposing. And they brought me this red, velvet box. I thought this was it. I’m going to get kicked out of the country. Instead, Said Abas opened the box and inside was a letter in the ornate Persian Farsi script which basically said that they have reviewed my request. In the holy Koran, there’s nothing that prohibits education. In fact, it encourages education for both our, quote, “brothers and sisters,” and, furthermore, that me as an infidel had not only their approval but their blessings; the work that I was doing was in the highest principles of Islam.

And after we got that letter, basically within a few weeks, we’ve got dozens of proposals and now we can’t keep up with the demand. We have requests for over a hundred girl schools in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

GROSS: Where were you on September 11th?

Mr. MORTENSON: I was in Zutcon Village(ph) in Charposen Valley(ph). It’s on the Afghan-Pakistan border in the extreme north of Pakistan. It took about eight hours for the word of the incident to get to me via jeep, porter, donkey, mule. These are illiterate people. They told me that a village had been bombed in New York and 50,000 people had been killed. These are people who hadn’t seen a skyscraper or an airplane. And immediately I noticed there was an outpouring of sympathy. I met with Islamic leaders in prayer sessions and they, without exception, told me that this was not in accordance with Islam and that these were terrorists. Village army commanders, village chiefs, children, women–they embraced me. Little old ladies brought me eggs in sympathy to bring back to New York to give to the widows who had died in the World Trade Center. And what I saw and felt over the next two months certainly didn’t reflect what I saw in the press when I came back here to the States.

GROSS: Well, when you were told that a village in New York was bombed and 50,000 people died, what did you think and how did you find out what had actually happened?

Mr. MORTENSON: At first it was hard to believe, and there was also a great–they told me that the US would begin a massive retaliation and also the Taliban would begin attacking villagers. So there was some panic and fear. I wasn’t able to talk to–this was a place without electricity, telephone, fax or radio, TV. So I sent a message to go get my satellite telephone. It took a couple days to reach me, and there I got to talk to my wife and get more kind of accurate information. But what I immediately saw was just a really outpouring of sympathy.

GROSS: My guest is Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute which builds schools for girls in Pakistan and in Afghan refugee camps. We’ll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: My guest is Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute, which builds schools for girls in Pakistan, including in Afghan refugee camps. What you’ve described on a whole is a very positive reaction to your work, but I know in 1996, you were kidnapped while you were working in Pakistan. What happened?

Mr. MORTENSON: I was visiting a water project in the tribal areas which is near Khowst in Afghanistan where the US bombed in 1998 in August. And I got actually involved in a tribal dispute. And 2 AM eight men armed came into my room. They blindfolded me, took me out. They were all armed. And they brought me–and walked down a hill in a pickup. We went to another place two hours away, and I was held in confinement for eight days. They treated me well. However, I didn’t know if I was going to get killed. I didn’t know what had happened, if I was being held for ransom. And I noticed on the third day I got really depressed. So I thought I have to survive this. I had just gotten married and my wife was six months pregnant. The first thing I did is ask them for a Koran. And they brought me a Koran. And then, of course, I asked for somebody to translate or read it for me. And the second thing I did on the fifth day was to tell them that I had a firstborn son coming very soon, although I knew I had a daughter coming. And in that society, the birth of a firstborn is a very important event.

On the eighth day, they again wrapped up my head with a turban, took me down the path. We went in a pickup and down to a clearing about 5 AM. And just as the sun’s coming up, I was in this place with about 200 armed warriors. And they had been fighting for over eight days. And they had used me kind of as a bargaining chip and their dispute was over and they released me to a barrage of gunfire in the air and they were all hugging each other. It was a very strange event, but I learned from that time on to really acknowledge the traditions, their ancient tribal codes.

The Pashto, who dominate that area, have three things in their code of conduct. One is nanawati, which is the rite of refuge or hospitality. If you ask them for permission to come in their society, they will give you their hospitality, refuge. The second is kerat, is that all the community will be involved in decisions, and the third, puksto(ph), which means hospitality, and they’ll give you incredible hospitality. I had gone there without being invited, and had I perhaps first sought the permission of the tribal chief, I doubt the kidnapping would have happened.

GROSS: How did you feel about lying and and saying that you were expecting a son when you knew you were having a daughter?

Mr. MORTENSON: Well, I knew the difference, and at that point, all I wanted to do was survive and get home, so I felt it was OK to lie a little bit, but in the end, I’ve gone back and talked to the people there, and they somewhat knew that I might not be telling the truth, but that I was trying to kind of understand their code and what’s important to them, to see across the cross-cultural barriers.

GROSS: So you went back to say, among other things, it wasn’t really a son, it was a daughter?

Mr. MORTENSON: Yeah, and I brought pictures, and they invited me back, ironically, and now they’re asking for help in the area since the Taliban have left the area.

GROSS: Why did you go back?

Mr. MORTENSON: I wanted some closure and also, I think they taught me a very important lesson. Most of the foreigners who get into trouble, it’s not seeing across the culture barrier, and I wanted to show them that I had learned and accepted their way, and also I basically–they invited me back, so I wanted to go there and get some closure on it.

GROSS: I imagine there’s things that you didn’t necessarily want to accept. I mean, I can see there must be a lot of dilemmas, working in Pakistan and working with Afghan refugees, because on the one hand, you want to respect and understand and often accept the culture. On the other hand, there are aspects of the culture that you don’t accept. For instance, you don’t accept those within the culture who think that girls shouldn’t be educated.

Mr. MORTENSON: Right. And it’s taken me several years. There’s a saying that you can rent an Afghan, but you can’t buy one, and basically, you need to win their hearts. Recently, with the military and a lot of the bigger news agencies, they’ve been handing out dollar bills like candy, and they’ve been able to glean support for our activities over there. But to win the hearts of the people, it really takes three cups of tea. The first cup of tea, in the first sitting, you’re a stranger. The second cup, you become a guest and the third cup, you become a family. The process takes several years. It’s kind of like the two-minute football drill or the 30-minute power lunch, American power lunch, really doesn’t work over there.

And so I’m here in DC. I was talking to some congressional committees about working over there. It’s an entirely different mind-set, and what they do is very significant to how long-term solutions will be. Another thing that I talked about was about the Afghan civilian deaths and casualties in the bombing campaign. Rumsfeld talked about that the American people wanted to know what had happened and the truth, and there have been probably around 4 to 5,000 Afghan civilian casualties.

If we could, as a country, acknowledge the casualties rather than discreetly disavow them or sweep them under the carpet, go to those people, maybe perhaps apologize, give them some compensation, maybe $100 or $200 per casualty. That would elevate the people who died in the campaign to a high status, to shahid(ph), where they would basically go straight to heaven, and if by doing that we would not only win their support but win their approval that they’ve been part of a campaign for the freedom of Afghanistan.

But by disavowing or denying the casualties, what’s happened has caused a schism and put up a wall instead of a bridge between us and the people there.

GROSS: I’m sure a lot of people have wondered, well, what are this guy’s motives? Is he really a spy, and the stuff about setting up schools is just a cover so he can infiltrate us? Why are you doing this?

Mr. MORTENSON: Well, one thing is, my sister, Krista(ph), she had severe epilepsy and she passed away in ‘92. Originally I went to Pakistan to climb K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, a year later to honor my sister’s memory. And I didn’t quite get to the top. I felt very disappointed and incomplete that I hadn’t summited. And when I went back into the villages and saw the children, I first realized that this was really a way that I could acknowledge Krista’s memory. And this sounds almost–How do I say this? And what about Krista that was really special was that she had a lot of determination and resilience, and despite her handicaps she inspired at least me, and many people she met. And I see that in the children that I work with.

Krista had always wanted to go to see the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa. On July 30th my mother was going to take her there. And she had packed her bags the previous night. My mother went down to get her at 6 in the morning, and she found Krista dead in her bed. So in many ways, I see the Field of Dreams that Krista was wanting to go to in the schools that I built. So I guess that’s what really motivates me.

GROSS: What’s the connection between your sister and schools?

Mr. MORTENSON: She had difficulty learning how to read and write, and everything was a challenge for her. And I see that over there with many children, just the obstacles that they overcome to get to education. The kids, some of them, walk five or 10 miles, 15 miles, to get to school. Many of them are hungry, but some of them have lost their parents, but they still really are dedicated to try and get their education, and they’ll do anything. And they’re very similar to what I knew in Krista.

GROSS: How well did you get to know people in that region when you were climbing K2?

Mr. MORTENSON: I first went in and I was very focused on the mountain, but coming out, there were some people that nursed me back to health, and I spent three weeks in the village. And I’ve gotten to know them very well. I know the names of probably at least half the students. I speak the languages, different ethnic languages there. And more than that, I’ve gotten to know different women in the villages over the years. I’ve found out that they’re up against great adversity.

GROSS: You said that after you’d climbed K2 that the villagers in that region of Pakistan nursed you back to health. Why did you need the nursing? What happened?

Mr. MORTENSON: Well, when you climb a high mountain–K2 is over 28,000 feet high–your body starts to deteriorate. I lost about 30 pounds. I was emotionally exhausted. It took a supreme effort to try and get to the top of the mountain, and I could barely make it back down the mountain, let alone carry my load of about 80 pounds, seven days back to the road where the jeep was and the nearest village. So the villagers, they carried my loads, they fed me their local payucha(ph), which is salt tea, and korba, their unleavened bread. And when I got–I could barely make it back to the village, and in that village was where they put blankets around me and gave me their local food, and just kind of incredible hospitality and I think, more than that, just cheered me up, because I was a little bit despondent at the time, mainly because I hadn’t made it to the top of the mountain.

GROSS: Greg Mortenson is the founder of the Central Asia Institute, which builds schools for girls in Pakistan, including in Afghan refugee camps. He’ll be back in the second half of the show.

I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: Coming up, we call Zimbabwe and talk with journalist Andrew Meldrum. A new law makes it illegal to criticize the president, Robert Mugabe, and thegovernment is cracking down on the press. The minister of information recently accused Meldrum of being a liar and traitor. Also, we continue our conversation with Greg Mortenson.

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GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross, back with Greg Mortenson. In 1993, he founded the Central Asia Institute, which has created schools in Pakistan with an emphasis on educating girls. He works closely with tribal and religious leaders in the region. He divides his time between Pakistan and his home in Montana.

Now you grew up in Tanzania, near Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is the highest mountain in Africa. Your father founded the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center. Was your father a missionary?

Mr. MORTENSON: They went over as teachers for four years. After that, my father decided to build a hospital there in northern Tanzania. He set up the Good Samaritan Foundation. I would say they were perhaps missionaries, but more than that, they were involved in just helping with education and health care in East Africa.

GROSS: What was it like for you to be the white kid of American descent growing up in Africa?

Mr. MORTENSON: It was actually a marvelous time we had. I learned the local language, Swahili. We could run around in the coffee plantations. It was when the game parks were just getting set up. So it was just post-colonial and new democracies. People were excited. It was a wonderful time. And perhaps my main challenge was coming back here and trying to fit into this culture. And I’ve always felt, kind of, going back between different cultures and not knowing really where is home, but I feel it’s been a very unique privilege.

Ironically, after September 11th, not once in Afghanistan or Pakistan was I either harmed or threatened or even really pushed in any rhetoric. Ironically, when I came back to the States in early November, I received a pile of hate mail and some threats. And that was–really threw me for a loop, because I wasn’t expecting that when I came back here to the States.

GROSS: Who was threatening you?

Mr. MORTENSON: They were Americans, and they called me a traitor. Other people were saying that I was worse than the enemy because I was an American, quote, “helping the enemy.” And I’m gone several months a year, so with my family here in the States it caused me some concern. I think most of it’s based out of ignorance and the hatred. People don’t really know who the enemy is, so they want to lash out with somebody that’s physically viable. However, I think in many ways, the enemy is our own ignorance and also that we need to accept we’re part of a global society. Some solutions I feel would also be important are bilingual education and being able to have cross-cultural exchanges between business groups or educators so that we can see ourselves in those other countries.

GROSS: You first went to Pakistan to climb K2. When you were growing up near Mt. Kilimanjaro, did you climb that mountain?

Mr. MORTENSON: Yeah, I climbed it when I was age 11. I barely made it up to the top. I was gagging and puking all the way to the top. And I went back there last year in January 2000, 28 years later, and again I climbed up to the top. I wanted to get up to the true summit. And it was about the same thing, I was–barely made it up to the top. But it was a good–it felt–it was a closure for me. Also, my father, when he came back to the States—this was in ‘73–he passed away just a couple years later. And we often wonder if he wasn’t very happy here. And so I feel I’m much–my reward also is being able to live in different countries and work with different groups of people.

GROSS: Just curious. When you were a kid, if you gagged and puked your way up the mountain, why would you want to do it again?

Mr. MORTENSON: Well, I thought–it was something–I hadn’t quite reached the summit the first time around, and I really thought I wanted to get up to the summit. And it’s rather strange because I haven’t climbed very much recently, and my work and my family is what I spend my time with. But I wanted to go back. I noticed things hadn’t changed much. I got to see my father’s hospital. I got to the top of the mountain. And it was just–I guess to climb a mountain is something–it’s hard to explain, but getting up to the top is not the main thing but it’s the experience, the people and just the joy of being up there and the high slopes and looking over and seeing the land below it. It’s a very rewarding experience.

GROSS: When are you going back?

Mr. MORTENSON: March the 8th, I’ll be going…

GROSS: Are you looking forward to it, or are you a little worried about it?

Mr. MORTENSON: Actually, I’m very excited. This is a very dynamic time. This is a beginning. There’s new hope. People are very determined. The refugees will be coming back from the camps to their homes. Some of them have been gone for 10 or 20 years. There’s excitement in the air. There’s also restlessness and there’s some uncertainty about the future. But for me, it’s a very exciting time.

GROSS: Well, I wish you good luck. And I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. MORTENSON: Thanks, Terry. I really appreciate it.

GROSS:Greg Mortenson is the founder of the Central Asia Institute.

Coming up, we call Zimbabwe and talk with journalist Andrew Meldrum. The government is cracking down on the press, and he has been accused of being a liar and traitor. This is FRESH AIR.

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