| Greg Mortenson
A MOUNTAINEER SETS POTENTIAL TERRORISTS ON A DIFFERENT PATH.
“Most of Al Qaeda’s foot soldiers are illiterate,”
says Greg Mortenson, the founder of an NGO called the Central
Asia Institute (CAI), which builds schools and potable water
systems in the tribal borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“They come from impoverished areas and have no other
options.” That’s why, on September 11, 2001, when
Mortenson was in Pakistan’s remote Charpufan Valley
commemorating a newly completed water project and he heard
of the terror attacks, he didn’t flee the area; he knew
that suddenly his work was more important then ever. “The
mullahs don’t fear guns,” he says. “They
fear the pen. They know that education will disempower the
recruiting for terrorists.”
A former army medic from Montana, Mortenson first fell in
love with the lawless region on a 1993 climbing trip to K2.
After 78 days above 16,000 feet (having turned back just shy
of the summit) Mortenson had lost 20 percent of his body mass,
and on his trek back to civilization he wandered far off trail
and collapsed from dehydration. He was nursed back to health
by locals, and when he felt healthy enough he asked how he
could repay them. A man led him to a makeshift school in a
dusty field, where about 80 children were scribbling in the
dirt. “It was my eureka moment,” Mortenson says.
Since that day Mortenson and his institute have built 53
schools (more than any other organization), providing the
only alternative to madrassas that teach radical Islam and
breed terror. Understandably, the work has not been without
risk; more than 30 aid workers from various groups have been
killed in the past 18 months alone. Mortenson himself has
been kidnapped and ambushed several times by Kalashnikov-wielding
jihadis; on the most recent occasion he escaped by diving
beneath a pile of rancid goatskins in the bed of a passing
truck. But it’s all worth it to him: This year the new
schools will educate 24,000 children.
Funding for the CAI comes from all over: Muslim, Jewish,
and Christian groups, members of the U.S. military, philanthropists,
women’s groups, climbers such as Jon Krakauer, author
of Into Thin Air. They all have one thing in common: a belief
that the key to eradicating terrorism is not just to kill
terrorists but to prevent people from becoming terrorists
in the first place. In fact, if you were to pore over the
CAI’s financials you’d fine only one conspicuous
omission: the U.S. government. Mortenson likes to point out
that if the funds to build just one Tomahawk missile (about
$840,000) were diverted to the CAI, he could build and operate
50 more schools. Fast-forward two decades and those schools
would have provided nearly 100,000 kids with educations.
“This is how we are going to win hearts and minds,”
says Colorado congressman Mark Udall, who has climbed in the
rejoin and who has donated money to the CAI. “This is
how we’re going to have to win the war against terrorism.”
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