Report from Santa Fe; Greg Mortensen

Music Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelor's, master's and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for, 1-800-428-T-E-C-H. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, tell us New Mexico. I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is Greg Mortensen. Thank you for joining us. Hi, Lorraine. It's good to see you again. It's a pleasure to have you back here in New Mexico. Well, you are a humanitarian and an author of extraordinary books. I want to show our audience the best-selling book that's been on the New York Times bestseller list for three years, sold three million copies, published in 34 countries, three cups of tea. And what's the subtitle?

One man's mission to promote peace one school at a time. Originally it was one man's mission to fight terrorism. One man's to fight terrorism one school of time. And I pushed the publisher for a year and finally they changed it. And since that week they changed the subtitle. It's been a New York Times bestseller. But you tell us about hope and fear. And why that change was so important? Well, I think that fighting terrorism is based in fear, but promoting peace is based in hope. And the real enemy we all face is ignorance. And it's ignorance that retagread. And I think a real key is education, especially education for girls. Well, let's also talk about your new book, Chiss Out. It's called Stones into Schools and the subtitle. It's promoting peace with books, not bombs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the title is in honor of the Mujahideen. These are the freedom fighters. When I visited them, they point up to the mountains and said, do you see those boulders up there?

And it's very similar to New Mexico. And they say every stone is a Shahid or martyr who died fighting her enemies. So now we must turn those stones into schools. And even the militia and the Mujahideen are saying that they need to honor the sacrifice of those who've died fighting through education. And no greater honor there could be. But now, there's still more backgrounds. I said, because I want our audience to know really the remarkable things you've done. Just in the last couple of months, you've received the star of Pakistan, the highest civilian award that is given to anyone in Pakistan. You've been on, you've been the ABC News person of the week. Christiana Amampura on CNN did a wonderful piece on you. You've been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Thank you for taking the time to join us. Well, thanks. We have so much to learn from you. I, people need to understand your title. Three cups of tea. And I want to learn how that is really kind of one of your main principles

and something we all can use in our life. Well, an elderly village chief named Haji Ali. Once I was, this is my first school in Pakistan. I struggled for three years. And finally, one day he took me aside. So if you want to work here, you need three cups of tea. And he said, the first cup, you're a stranger. Second cup of guest. And third cup, you become family. And for a family, we're prepared to even die. And what he didn't mean, just drinking tea and having peace. But he meant that we have to build relationships. Mm-hmm. And so, can you give us the short version? Because I want everyone to read your book. It is like an adventure story. It is just thrilling about the obstacles you overcome and the challenges that you've had and your dedication. But give us a short version of how you were wandering down from K2 and ended up in Korphe. Well, in 1993, I went to climb K2 in Pakistan and honor my sister, Krista, who had died from severe epilepsy. Krista was very special.

So I wanted to honor her in a special way. I went to K2. I didn't quite make it to the top. I felt very disappointed. And I ended up stumbling five days later into a little village called Korphe. And in that village, I saw 84 children sitting in the dirt during their school lessons. And although I'd seen, I grew up in Africa for 15 years. So although I'd seen a lot of poverty in Africa, when I saw those kids and a young girl named Chocho said, can you help us build a school? I made a rash promise. This is in 1993 that I'd build them a school. And that's pretty much what I've been doing the last 17 years now. But you had nothing. And you didn't know how to build a school. You were working part-time as an ER nurse and you were, for some time, living in your car, you were really, this was like a dream for you, a passion. And yet, look what you've accomplished. How many schools have you now built? Well, now we have 131 schools. We're also running 60 more schools in refugee camps and areas of conflict and war.

And we've actually had our best year this year. We've been able to expand into significant, you know, Taliban areas. We've been able to put schools in very remote areas. And I think the reason is because of the relationships. And it's a key to anybody working over there to listen and build relationships and to respect the elders and put the elders in charge. Well, we'll come to that very importantly, how it applies to our current situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But some of the adventures you have, and this is like a spell-binding book, you were kidnapped and you were able to negotiate your way out of that. Fatwas were issued against you. That's an addictive banishment, horrible thing. We all know Salman Rushdie had fatwas and has had to live in hiding. Both Ashia and the Sunni put out fatwas against you and tell our audience how that was all resolved. Well, I've received two fatwas. And the first, but basically both of them

were banishing me from the country. The second was more severe because I was helping girls go to school. So I asked Saeed Abbas-Rizvi, he had Shia clergy in Pakistan. And he, eventually, a disposition came from Kolm Iran, which is where the council of Ayatollah is. So that's the highest. The Sharia court. The highest Islamic court. The highest Islamic court. And they said what this man is doing is in the highest principles of Islam. So we give our blessings in our support. So which was the first time that a ruling had come down, saying that education is part of the Islamic faith and tradition. Now, that was one kind of obstacle that you had, almost life-threatening in some ways. But you had the obstacles of the very, very mountains that you love so much. And tell us what happened when you finally got the money for the first school to go back to the village and it helped you so much. You had cement, you had wood,

you had plywood. What happened when you went to tell them that it was almost here? Well, when I got back to Kourfe in 94, I was feeling pretty accomplished. And as you mentioned. But when I got there with the village chief Haji Ali, he first greeted me, Asalaamu alaikum, peace be with you. And then he shook his head, and he said a balty word called chisely. Now, in the Midwest, the best translation of chisely is what the heck, because I come back. And he said, if we're going to really build a school, we have to build a bridge first. And I hadn't really thought of that. There's no phone there, there's no postal system, so there was no communication. So I had to raise $10,000 more. I went back in 95. We finally got a bridge built. And then we could start building the school. But it took three years to get the first school built. And this is not a bridge like you'd find in America. This is a bridge over a raging river of thousands of feet below you. And what was the actual bridge constructed out? It was, it's a suspension bridge.

It's held by five, eight hundred pound steel cables that they carried 18 miles up the mountain trails. You can imagine an Albuquerque or Santa Fe. These are on big wooden spools, and they carry these loads. It was a tremendous engineering feat. And once I got that done, I realized that they were serious. They could get a school built. And then finally, three years later, I was still plugging away. And basically, I was doing something you call micromanagement. I had my receipts and records. And I was determined to get the school built. And Haji Ali said, he pulled me aside. He said, if you really want to get a school built, you have to sit down and let us do the work. And then the school got built in six weeks. And it's the real basis of our work. We provide the skill labor, the materials, and most important teacher training. But the community has to provide free land and free wood. And then free or subsidized manual labor. Maybe five thousand days of free manual labor to get the school built.

And that what that does is ensures a local buy-in. And also it keeps the Taliban from attacking our schools because of community so fiercely devoted to the community school. Well, let's skip ahead a little bit because in the SWAT province, there have been the Taliban. This is like immediately, recently. Right now, they have destroyed 260 schools. But only one of your schools, the organization you founded is called the Central Aja Institute. And you have built so many schools, but only one of your schools there was threatened. Tell us the story of what happened. Well, this is a good memory. It's a village, two hours south of Kabul. There was quite a few Taliban there. They came in a year in 2007, 14 Taliban, they attacked the school, they beat up the night watchman. And the next day they said, if anybody comes to school, we're going to kill you. Now, the headmaster, he got on his bicycle, he peddled, I think it's about 23 miles.

He notified the local militial leader, his name is Commandant Fahim. And he's kind of a shady guy, I guess you'd say, or say 50-50, but he also has two daughters in school, which is the key. And so he rounded up 120 men. He attacked the Taliban. He killed two of them. Now, three of them are in prison. And he has now appointed 12 uskar, which are militiamen, to guard the school 24 hours a day. And their orders are, if anybody harms any student or a girl or a teacher, you just shoot them. Now, that's not how I would run a school, but that's how their community is running the school. And the Taliban have never been back to that school in two and a half years. And it was discovered what was the impulse behind this? What was the motivation? How had these men chosen your school? Well, they had gotten $3,000 from the local mullah to shut the school down, because his enrollment and his madrasa, which is like an extremist school, was dropping plummeting. And so he gave the Taliban $3,000 to destroy and shut our school down.

But obviously, they didn't succeed because of the community. Yeah, because again, this is what's so wonderful. Not only do you empower the school children in this country when you visit them and with your program pennies for peace, we'll talk about it in a minute. But you empower the communities, like you say, they get ownership of their community school. They've built it themselves. It's their daughters that are going. And let's talk about why girls. Well, let's talk about the importance of education. Like you say, books, not bombs. But why is it so particularly important in these cultures and worldwide to educate girls? Well, first, I believe education has to be our top national and international priority. There's 120 million children in the world today who can't go to school. But particularly, as you mentioned, girls, I think, really need to have that opportunity to go to school. Educating girls does many things. It reduces infant mortality, where we work one out of three children born,

dies before the age of one. It's just dramatic. The second thing is it reduces the population explosion. The single most effective way to reduce population without doing anything else, nothing controversial, is female literacy. It's been shown in many countries. It improves the quality of health. When girls learn how to read and write, they often teach their mother how to read and write. Boys, don't do that as much. Also, when people come home from the marketplace, and they have their meat or vegetables wrapped in newspaper, the mother will unfold the newspaper and ask her daughter to read the news to her. Also, when a woman has an education, this is quite important. She's much as likely to encourage her condone her son to get into terrorism or into violence. And I've seen that happen. To discourage her son. Because they do have to ask permission to go on jihad. They have to have their mom's permission. And as a mom who's been educated, knows that this is not the way to go.

It's not the way to go. I've met hundreds of men who have been disweighted from going to the Taliban. We also have four former Taliban teaching in our schools. And I've learned the most from them. Some people are a little leery of that in the States, but it's the same. I think if you want to start anti-smoking campaign in a town in New Mexico, I'm going to hire some ex-smokers to launch the campaign. And the interesting thing is that all of those men got out of the Taliban because their mothers told them we are doing is not a good thing. And I've learned a tremendous amount from these teachers who previously were former Taliban. You often quote an African proverb about educating boys versus educating girls. As a child, I grew up in Africa in Tanzania 15 years. And a proverb is, if you educate a boy, we educate an individual. But if we can educate a girl, we educate a community. And the more I do this, I truly convince that, you know, we can drop bombs, we can handle condoms,

we can build roads, we can put electricity. But if the girls are not educated, society will never, never change. Can you tell us a little bit about how many schools are just for girls and how many are mixed? And also there's been such an expansion, for example, in Afghanistan, and the number of educated students, tell us those figures, if you would. Well, that's the most exciting thing. In 2000, which is nine years ago, there were 800,000 mostly boys in school. Today, there are 8.5 million children in school, including... It's just phenomenal. 2.5 million of those are female. It's actually the greatest increase in school enrollment in any country in modern history. On the other side of that is the fact that the Taliban have bombed or burned or destroyed over 1,000 schools in Afghanistan and over 850 schools in Pakistan. And 90% of those schools that they've destroyed are pretty much girl schools.

And, you know, that kind of begs the question, why are they, you know, why a group of big bad men with collision costs? Why are they so terrified of little girls? And I think it's because they're greatest fear. It's not a bullet, but it's a pen. And, you know, they really fear if the girl goes up, gets an education, becomes a mother. The value of education goes on the community. Also, in the Hadith, which is kind of the teachings of Islam, it says in Arabic that the ink of a scholar is greater than the blood of a martyr. Meaning, you know, the pen is more powerful than a spider than a sword. And don't you say that one of the first lines is read what I can't quote the Quran? In the Quran, the first word of the revelation to Muhammad the Prophet. It's the first utterance of God or Allah is the word Iqra and Iqra means read. And the first two chapters implore that all people have a quest for knowledge. And the illiterate mullahs who are really, you know, terrified of education, they try to keep people illiterate.

But what I find is pretty much every woman nearly all the communities, there's a fierce desire for education and it's so exciting and inspiring and I feel, you know, that's the reason I do this is I don't go out and push schools. We just sit back and... They come to you, baby. Yes, yes. Well, in October 2005, was it ghastly earthquake. And we're there 86,000 civilians were killed. And many, many schools were just flattened. And so now you're helping reconstruct, you're having to build earthquake-proof schools. And this is in Azad Kashmir and Eastern Pakistan. It was devastating. Two and a eight, two point eight million people were displaced. And of those 86,000 people killed 18,000 were children in school. And most of the kids who died, they didn't have desks. And it was very tragic. We initially didn't plan to build schools there. We were going to put up temporary tent schools.

But in the most distant valley, which is called Nilem Valley, we saw that there was absolutely no help there. So now we've established 24 schools, again, in the most distant area. And again, the Roman has been skyrocketing there and young woman named Fosia. She just passed her bar exams last year. She was the one who told you why desks were important. Yeah, she's the first female attorney out of 4.5 million people. So many wonderful things have happened there. Well, let's look at our United States strategy in Afghanistan. General Patrius often quotes you, especially in terms of dealing with the elders. And Admiral Mullins is a fan of yours. Most of the soldiers of the military who go in to counter insurgency in this area are required to read your work. And so what is your take on our new position in Afghanistan? Well, I think in the military, especially in the military, I've seen a tremendous learning curve.

I really think our troops, and especially the commanders, they really get it. It's about relationships, listening, and also about respect. The part of this strategy is that we've been deploying for an operating basis, and the primary man, these are in very remote outposts. But their primary mandate is they have to build relationships. And in many ways, I think our military is ahead of the state department and our political leaders. And it simply has to do with, they've been going over there and listening and learning from the people. Our top three military commanders have been in Afghanistan for 3,000 times in the last 15 months. Unfortunately, Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have only been over in Holbrook. They've only been over there once in the last, you know, since Obama was in president. And even though Afghanistan is our top priority, we haven't really been dialoguing and interacting with the people. And that was one of my concerns is that the decision to deploy troops was made in secrecy behind closed doors.

We're sitting here in the capital in Santa Fe. And I just walked by the Senate room. I really think that there should have been testimony on Capitol Hill that people should have been called to talk about it, make it a public decision. The other thing that I think it's important to know is 8,000 of the 22,000 troops deployed in Afghanistan, they were trainer troops. And a third of the 30,000 troops are also trainer troops. And what the Shura, or the elders in Afghanistan, what they're saying is we don't need firepower, but we need brainpower. And so, trainer troops, to me, include their dentists, their veterinarians, their hydrologists, engineers, nurses, doctors, most of them are national guard and reservist, even from New Mexico. So, those are the kind of people that they're really asking for. And the other hand, my concern is with the surge or more troops deployed there.

We're going to have a lot more casualties. The violence is going to escalate. The Taliban want more troops to come there. It gives them more targets. And so, I'm very concerned that, you know, even if you ask General Patreas, or Admiral Mollin, or Comandon Conway is the Marine Corps commander, they will all tell you, you know, right to your face that there's no military solution in Afghanistan. It's got to be a much broader solution. And that encompasses, you know, humanitarian aid and mostly education. And even our military commanders are very aware of the fact there's no military solution in that country. Well, ask the British or ask the Russians. It's called the graveyard of empires. But you've been actually there more than any other westerner, practically. And it's just, you know, simply lots of tea drinking, talking, we have to deal with a lot of shady people. This year, we put the first girls high school in Uras-Gon province in Afghanistan.

Actually, in a kind of an interesting way, our goal, this is the home of Molo Mar in Uras-Gon province. It's in southern Afghanistan. Several of the elders in Uras-Gon, they asked to visit one of our schools this year. So we invited them there. These are black turban men with, you know, big beers, pretty fierce looking. So we invited them to a school in Charocia Valley. And when they got there, they saw the giant playground. And so they put down their weapons. And for an hour and a half, they went on the swings and slides, and they had a glorious time playing. And when they got down, I said, you know, let's get serious now. We need to talk to the headmaster and look at the curriculum. They said, no, no, we're totally satisfied. We want a girls high school in Uras-Gon province, but you have to come and meet us. So I went there in September. We had a giant Jurga, which is like a meeting. And they said, we're ready to give free land, free labor. And so now construction has started on the school. You know, of course, the playground got built first, but you know, sometimes play is,

and you think about it, you know, those men as child, they never had a chance to play. They were working. They were forced to become fighters at a young age. And so, you know, even play as a way to help swayed people to get an education. You know, when I hear stories like that, I can see how satisfying and how gratifying it is to you. But if you can look back over the long, sweat, 16-year process that this has been, what is it in you that you were able to reach so deep and to make sacrifice, sacrifice of your personal life, later on sacrifice of your family? What happened to you that you could reach down deep and make this happen? And how can we do it? Well, I have a quote in my bathroom mirror. It says, when your heart speaks, take good notes. And I've learned from elders in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's very important that we develop our intuition more. And I think that's what drives me. The other thing that's really, let's say, the driving force, is I've learned from my father and Haji Ali,

General Petraeus, that I need to listen more. And so I ask women in rural areas, what do you want? I want to help you, but how can I really help you? And you think they'd say, I want a good husband, I want a big house, I want prosperity, but nope. What they say, just two simple things. We don't want our babies to die. We want our children to go to school. And of all the things that really drive me is that great satisfaction that I'm able to help those women in both of those respects. And as I mentioned before, female literacy is a number one way to reduce infant mortality. So we're trying to address that as best as we can. One of your interviews was with an NPR program called Ordinary Opres. And ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And so I once interviewed Jody Williams, who did the Landline campaign. She was just walking home, someone gave her a flyer. She sat down at her kitchen table and said, well, this isn't right. And in five years, her organization had pretty much banned landmines

except we didn't under the last administration sign under that maybe we will. So how will you encourage the ordinary person who's just feeling disturbed about something? This isn't right. What can I do? How can you encourage them to make a difference in the world? Well, I've visited, as I mentioned earlier, 200 schools a year. I really think there's a phenomenon going on this country and it's called Community Service, or Service Learning, or Civic Engagement. Most schools now have some component of service learning. A U.S. News and World Report came out three years ago. And so the 1970, a third of college graduates want to go out and make a difference in the world. And then by 1990, it dropped to 18%. But today it's 50%. And I've met hundreds of kids. I don't have time for this to tell you all about them, but they're just doing incredible things. These are 11-year-olds, 13-year-olds. Oh, building soccer fields in Johannesburg, a 12-year-old. I mean, these are just... It's a guy named Zach from Tampa, his Little Red Wagon Foundation.

Next year he's going to walk from Tampa to Los Angeles with his Red Wagon. And I know he's going to raise a million dollars to bring awareness to homeless kids in the U.S. And he's only 11, he'll be 12 next summer. It's called Little Red Wagon Foundation. And he's just one of hundreds. Well, you do go, you have programs in schools called pennies for peace. And this is how you got your first money for your first school. Was kids collected what, 62,000 pennies? And it was your first big check. And so, people can go online to penniesforpeaceisit.org or threecapsiftee.com where stones into schools. And your organization is called a Central Asian Institute. And we just have a minute I want to show our books again. This is threecapsiftee, your phenomenal first book, Bessiller, and a wonderful read. And the new one that's just come out, stones into schools. So, do you have a last word of advice for us? Well, there's a proverb quoted by many kids

in the mountain villages. They say, when it is dark, you can see the stars. They watch the constantly, they sleep on the roof a lot at night. And what it means is when things are not going so well, the star still shines bright. And also, the best lessons I learned in my life were by failure and making mistakes. That's what the first chapter in threecapsiftee is. And the last chapter in stones into school, the word failure. The publisher did want me to write that word. But I know I insisted on it because we all make mistakes. And most of all, you know, we can't live in fear. We have to live in hope. And I think also that every single child in this world and all adults, they can make a difference. Well, thank you for bringing your starlight to us in New Mexico. We've followed you from afar. Please promise you'll come back the next time you're here. Our guest today is Greg Mortensen, humanitarian and author. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks so much. And I'm, thank you. I'm Lorraine Mills. I want to thank you our audience for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. We'll see you next week. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by a grant from New Mexico Tech on the frontier of science and engineering education. For bachelors, masters and PhD degrees, New Mexico Tech is the college you've been looking for. 1-800-428-T-E-C-H. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico.