How do you defeat your perceived “enemy”? Use bombs, grenades and drones? Substitute the bombs with books? Or, have a mix of both? Greg Mortenson, a humanitarian worker and author of two best-selling books, has demonstrated the power of books, and education, even in the highly violence-ridden worlds of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mortenson is finding admirers in unlikely places. In the words of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff: “What Greg understands better than most—and what he practices more than anyone else I know—is the simple truth that all of us are better off when all of us have the opportunity to learn, especially our children. By helping them learn and grow, he’s shaping the very future of a region and giving hope to an entire generation.”
Mortenson’s Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan was released on December 1, 2009. Over the past sixteen years, Greg Mortenson, through his nonprofit Central Asia Institute (CAI), has worked to promote peace through education by establishing more than 130 schools, most of them for girls, in remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Mortenson, the mountaineer-turned-school builder from Montana, was recently nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. As President Barack Obama, who won a Nobel peace prize, pledged another 30,000 US troops Dec. 1 to root out terrorists in Afghanistan, Mortenson is suggesting that effort must go hand in hand with another: Grass-roots education, writes the CSM.
“The cause of religious extremism and distortion of the writings of the Koran is ignorance, illiteracy, and joblessness, he says. They all can be blunted by education. But classrooms can only rise if the local population has a stake in their success.
“Adm. Mike Mullen, President Obama’s handpicked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, found a copy of Three Cups of Tea awaiting him on his nightstand. It had been placed there by his wife, Deborah. Three Cups of Tea also reached the hands of Gen. David Petraeus, leader of the US Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who recently requested 40,000 additional troops. It is required reading for US officers in the region.
“Mullen and Petraeus summoned Mortenson to meetings at the Pentagon, and he used maps to give them a virtual tour of the country, pointing out some areas that have been virtually impenetrable to US ground forces, telling them the names of shuras and mullahs they needed to contact.
” ‘Many of the elders I know are really angry at the Americans,’ Mortenson says. ‘It has less to do with our presence and more to do with the huge outcries caused by drones and bombers attacking suspected Taliban hangouts but killing a lot of innocent people’.”
Now let us see some book reviews… Says Trudy Rubin in The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Sometimes the acts of one individual can illuminate how to confront a foreign-policy dilemma more clearly than the prattle of politicians. Such is the case with Greg Mortenson, whose work gives insights into an essential element of fighting terrorism.”
Thomas L. Friedman wrote The New York Times: “This week . . . I watched Greg Mortenson, the famed author of Three Cups of Tea, open one of his schools for girls in this remote Afghan village in the Hindu Kush mountains. I must say, after witnessing the delight in the faces of those little Afghan girls crowded three to a desk waiting to learn, I found it very hard to write, ‘Let’s just get out of here’.”
“Mortenson co-wrote the wildly successful Three Cups of Tea, recounting his efforts to build a single school in the isolated village of Korphe perched at the foot of the Karakoram Mountains.
“What followed was a series of school-building projects that continue to spread through the region. At the time of the new book’s printing, some 131 schools, many primarily for girls, had been built in Afghanistan and Pakistan, serving nearly 58,000 children (of which 40,000 are girls)…”
Moni Basu of the CNN wrote: “The importance of education, especially for girls, does not escape the Afghan people nor humanitarian agencies trying to improve their living conditions. That’s why the World Bank partnered with CARE to investigate how education can succeed amid increasing violent attacks on Afghan schools.
“Knowledge on Fire, CARE’s education report released Monday, found that community-based schools are the most viable in beleaguered Afghanistan.
” ‘Education-related violence is an alarming trend in Afghanistan,’ said Helene Gayle, president of CARE. ‘But this study suggests that an approach of building support for education at the local level can reduce the risks of attacks’.” More here…
Swaraaj Chauhan describes his two-decade-long stint as a full-time journalist as eventful, purposeful, and full of joy and excitement. In 1993 he could foresee a different work culture appearing on the horizon, and decided to devote full time to teaching journalism (also, partly, with a desire to give back to the community from where he had enriched himself so much.)
Alongside, he worked for about a year in 1993 for the US State Department’s SPAN magazine, a nearly five-decade-old art and culture monthly magazine promoting US-India relations. It gave him an excellent opportunity to learn about things American, plus the pleasure of playing tennis in the lavish American embassy compound in the heart of New Delhi.
In !995 he joined WWF-India as a full-time media and environment education consultant and worked there for five years travelling a great deal, including to Husum in Germany as a part of the international team to formulate WWF’s Eco-tourism policy.
He taught journalism to honors students in a college affiliated to the University of Delhi, as also at the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication where he lectured on “Development Journalism” to mid-career journalists/Information officers from the SAARC, African, East European and Latin American countries, for eight years.
In 2004 the BBC World Service Trust (BBC WST) selected him as a Trainer/Mentor for India under a European Union project. In 2008/09 He completed another European Union-funded project for the BBC WST related to Disaster Management and media coverage in two eastern States in India — West Bengal and Orissa.
Last year, he spent a couple of months in Australia and enjoyed trekking, and also taught for a while at the University of South Australia.
Recently, he was appointed as a Member of the Board of Studies at Chitkara University in Chandigarh, a beautiful city in North India designed by the famous Swiss/French architect Le Corbusier. He also teaches undergraduate and postgraduate students there.
He loves trekking, especially in the hills, and never misses an opportunity to play a game of tennis. The Western and Indian classical music are always within his reach for instant relaxation.
And last, but not least, is his firm belief in the power of the positive thought to heal oneself and others.