Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Worldview: The lesson jihadis
fear most
In the remote reaches of Pakistan, former mountain
climber Greg Mortenson is besting extremists by building schools.
By Trudy Rubin
But on my trip there last month, I saw an antidote to this
nightmare, a route out of this trap - if
Mortenson got lost 15 years ago descending from K-2, and
promised to build a school for the villagers who rescued and nursed him. His
formula for countering extremism is summed up in the title of his best-selling
book: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's
After building his first school, Mortenson set up the
Central Asia Institute (www.ikat.org) to build schools in
This vacuum is often filled by Islamic schools, or madrassas, some of which have become notorious training
grounds for jihadis. In 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf introduced a
program to broaden the curriculum for about 10,000 madrassas
with their 1.7 million students. Religious parties protested, and the program
was shelved.
My trip with Mortenson made clear that schools can be built
for a pittance, with community involvement, and the madrassa
problem addressed, if the will exists to finesse political and bureaucratic
hurdles. That will is clearly lacking in
Yet I saw how a dedicated nongovernmental institute with
Pakistani staff can succeed despite governmental failures. "I see
education as the thing least invested in, that can bring
the most change," Mortenson told me in the
Our trip took us up the narrow, crowded mountain road to Muzaffarabad, capital of Azad Kashmir, the
Pakistan-controlled part of contested Kashmir, set against lofty peaks, where
for years Pakistani and foreign jihadis trained to
cross the dividing line with
Muzaffarabad, a one- main-road
town in a deep valley, still bears the scars of the terrible 2005 earthquake
that galvanized world attention and a massive
We drove an hour farther down a bumpy dirt road into the
The dedicated headmistress, Saeeda
Shabir, recalled emotionally how, months later,
despite international media attention, not a single Pakistani government
official had visited or offered to help the school rebuild.
Then in September 2006, Sarfraz Khan, the
Central Asia Institute's operations director, arrived, having first hiked the
And - in the key to Mortenson's method - Patika
townspeople were enlisted to contribute labor, haul water, mix mortar; the
school was finished in one month. Mortenson says that any school project is
assessed on how much villagers are willing to contribute to its success.
Today, neat one-story basic classrooms with blue trim
surround a courtyard; on one side is an open shelter where young students, too
traumatized by the earthquake to study inside, take their lessons. In the
middle of the shelter is a small, fenced-in site with seven graves of girls
whose bodies were never claimed; no doubt their entire families died.
Most important, Mortenson rebuilt the Patika
school and two others in nearby villages, for a total
of $54,000. He has now built seven schools in the
"We can build an eight-room school for $25,000, so 40
schools can be built for $1 million," he told me in Patika.
"One Tomahawk Missile costs $840,000."
Mortenson's institute also provides funds to train and pay
teachers (until the government can take over their salaries), and pays for
books and uniforms. He is hoping to build science and computer labs at the
By contrast, the boys' secondary school in Patika is still in several tents and tin shelters. The Pakistani
government, which spends only 2.5 percent of its budget on education, seems
unable to construct schools. Schools that do get built often lack teachers and
are known as "ghost schools."
Religious organizations fill the vacuum. In the earthquake's
aftermath, Mortenson says, Islamic charities, some with terrorist ties, rushed
to Muzaffarabad, setting up clinics - and madrassas, which offer food to students.
"In some families, they are attracted to madrassas by food because the government provides no services,"
says Shawkat Ali, a former teacher at the Patika girls school. Ali is
pressing for more schools in the valley. "If poor families don't go to madrassas, where will they go?"
The
Yet nothing could be more important in the long-term
struggle to redirect alienated youngsters away from jihad and into productive
lives. Mortenson has shown how it can be done for a pittance, involving
communities to boot.
As we rattled back down the mountainside, Mortenson spoke of
another educational passion: He has focused on building girls' schools because
girls' education lifts the whole community. Male literacy is supposedly 63
percent in
"If you really want society to improve, you educate the women," he told me intensely.
"We can drop bombs, hand out condoms, put in
electricity, but you won't see change without girls' education. I have seen
profound change in the villages when girls learn to read and write."
Mortenson has persuaded religious leaders to endorse girls'
education and believes it is also a key to undercutting religious militancy
among boys. His words made me recall the passionate outburst of a young
teacher, Fawzia Naseer, at
a school rebuilt by the institute in Balseri village
just beyond Patika.
"Every woman here is fond of education," Naseer told me eagerly; she herself is struggling to get a
law degree, commuting to Muzaffarabad. "Women
can improve, they can teach the children, they can handle domestic problems
better, they can make a business or work with an
organization."
This from a woman who is still living in a
post-earthquake tent and studying by candlelight.
As Mortenson said, the cost of one Tomahawk Missile could
pay for almost 40 schools - if the
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/columnists/20080113_Worldview__The_lesson_jihadis_fear.html
Contact columnist Trudy Rubin at 215-854-5823 or
trubin@phillynews.com.
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