Taliban on a Teeter-Totter: How Schools Pacify Jihadists

By Nick Gier, Unfiltered 2-11-10

America has produced some prominent humanitarians, but Greg Mortenson, executive director of the Central Asia Institute (CAI), is one of the most remarkable.

Focusing on the education of girls, Mortenson has now built 131 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, paying the teachers and serving 58,000 students.

The Afghan Women’s Co-op, started by a CAI Afghan male staff person, has now been taken over by the women themselves and has spread to five provinces.

Mortenson observes that these women are “on fire,” and he realizes that there is now a second insurgency in Afghanistan: “a quiet revolution of female learning and liberation.”

One of Mortenson’s most frustrating experiences is persuading his female students’ families to allow them to go on for post-secondary education. In these very conservative Muslim families, it is rare that permission is granted immediately.

Some of the young women, however, have done remarkably well. There is Jahan Ali, granddaughter of the village chief who nursed Mortenson back to life after he lost his way coming down from a failed attempt on K-2, the second highest mountain in the world. After waiting nine years for permission to proceed, Ali has now completed a maternal care program.

There is also Shakila Khan, who will soon become, as Mortenson boasts, “the first locally educated female physician ever to emerge from Baltistan’s population of 300,000.”

Then there is Aziza Hussain, who finished a maternal health program and now his serving her home village. While she was growing up, about 20 women lost their lives in childbirth each year. Under Hussain’s care no mother has died in ten years.

Mortenson has won the admiration and respect of top military brass. His best-selling book "Three Cups of Tea" is now compulsory reading for all members of the Special Forces.

In 2009 Admiral Michael Mullen, head of the Joint Chiefs, made a special effort to attend the inauguration of Mortenson’s Pushgur Girls’ School in Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley. The school’s top student, a young woman fluent in Dari, Pasho, Urdu, Arabic, and English, translated Mullen’s address.

At the urging of his daughter, who reminded him of the obvious truth that all children need to play, Mortenson started installing playgrounds in all of his schools.

In Mortenson’s new book "Stones into Schools" he writes about how one day some Taliban fighters came to check out one of his schools. When the Taliban commander saw the playground, he ordered his men to lay down their weapons and play on the equipment.

When Mortenson invited them into the school, the leader declined saying: “No, we have seen enough. We would like to formally request that you come to our village [and] start building schools. But if you do, they must have playgrounds.” The Taliban agreed to this knowing full well that Mortenson always requires that girls must attend.

Yet another dramatic example of how a school pacified the Taliban is the village of Saw in a district that has recently experienced heavy American casualties. Colonel Chris Kolenda, the commanding officer, had read Three Cups of Tea and he proposed that Mortenson build a school in Saw.

When the school was finished, threatening notes from the Taliban were tacked to the school door each night. The notes warned that if any girl attended this school, it would burn it to the ground.

Instead of caving into the threats, the local mullah informed the Taliban that, as Mortenson relates, “if they dared to harm a single student or teacher, they would be committing an offense against Islam. To this day, the school has not been attacked or threatened once.”

With the image of Taliban fighters in my mind swinging and playing on a teeter-totter, I’m now convinced that we ought to stay the course in Afghanistan for the sake of the women and children.

Nick Gier taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years. Listen to or read all his columns at www.NickGier.com

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