The problem with Greg Mortenson, and with COIN


Nicholas Kristof revealing
his thoughtful expression

For another side of the Greg Mortenson story, let us consult global humanity maven Nicholas Kristof in the April 20 New York Times. Kristof’s bottom line is that notwithstanding Mortenson’s massive financial fraud (e.g., only 41 percent of the money he raised in 2009 went to building and running schools, while most of it went to promoting his books and paying for his personal travel), he has created schools and many individuals have benefited from them:

I’ve visited some of Greg’s schools in Afghanistan, and what I saw worked. Girls in his schools were thrilled to be getting an education. Women were learning vocational skills, such as sewing. Those schools felt like some of the happiest places in Afghanistan.

I also believe that Greg was profoundly right about some big things.

He was right about the need for American outreach in the Muslim world. He was right that building schools tends to promote stability more than dropping bombs. [Italics added.] He was right about the transformative power of education, especially girls’ education. He was right about the need to listen to local people—yes, over cup after cup after cup of tea—rather than just issue instructions.

Here is the little problem with this argument, as discussed by David French in an article I posted the other day:

The Taliban and al Qaeda are grotesquely evil. In regions they control, they will immediately kill anyone they perceive as a threat to their military or cultural domination. That is a fact. We can build 10,000 schools, but if the schools are not safe, if the curriculum is not countercultural (and often counter to their own faith), and if the education does not continue well into adulthood, then we are simply chasing after the wind. Nicholas Kristof points out that a school is cheaper than a Tomahawk missile, and this is true. But could anyone build a girls’ school in Taliban-held areas of Afghanistan before the Tomahawks? [Italics added.]

So, Kristof thinks U.S.-financed schools can replace U.S. bombs. But, as French points out, without U.S. bombs, the schools couldn’t exist for one instant. Now French supports the ongoing military efforts to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban. But it’s not clear whether he recognizes that such efforts are deeply crippled by the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy which, like Mortenson’s “three cups of tea” approach, assumes that the Afghans can become something other than what they are. Building schools and doing other nice things in Afghanistan, as nice as they may be, cannot turn a fiercely tribal, sharia Muslim country like Afghanistan into a liberal democracy, or, indeed, into any kind of society we would regard as humane. But the problem is that neither can COIN. And, as Diana West points out in her column I quoted in the previous entry, “three cups of tea” and COIN are two sides of the same coin:

Mortenson is not just another flim-flam artist who turned a good yarn into fool’s gold …

He’s also a Gandhilike guru to the Pentagon who preaches to top brass that “extremism” can be defeated by “education.” Mortenson’s Big Idea is teaching hearts and minds, and it slides neatly into any Pentagon PowerPoint on “population-centric COIN.” …

This, the Times wrote, showed the extent to which military leaders “have increasingly turned to Mortenson … to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground.”

And here’s another thought. What if, instead of building schools for girls in Muslim countries, we brought Muslim girls to the U.S. and let them attend school here? Wouldn’t that be better? In fact, it doesn’t save them from Islam. Consider the honor murder of 20-year-old Iraqi immigrant Noor Almaleki by her father who ran her over in an Arizona parking lot in December 2009, and many other such murders of Muslim females in the West by their sharia-following male relatives. If young Muslim females aren’t safe from the fierce Islamic law in America and the West, how can we possibly make them safe in Afghanistan?

So here is my bottom line:

• Building schools in Muslim countries will not save the Muslims from Islam.

• Waging “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency warfare in Muslim countries will not save the Muslims from Islam (but it will keep killing and maiming a lot of young Americans foolish enough to serve their country in such a self-sacrificial quest).

• And bringing Muslims to America will not save the Muslims from Islam (but it will Islamize and ruin America).

Conclusion: we cannot save the Muslims from Islam. We can only save ourselves from Islam. How? By separating Islam from ourselves, and confining it to its own part of the world.

And now Kristof’s column:

‘Three Cups of Tea,’ Spilled
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

One of the people I’ve enormously admired in recent years is Greg Mortenson. He’s a former mountain climber who, after a failed effort to climb the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, began building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

In person, Greg is modest, passionate and utterly disorganized. Once he showed up half-an-hour late for a speech, clumping along with just one shoe—and then kept his audience spellbound with his tale of building peace through schools.

Greg has spent chunks of time traipsing through Afghanistan and Pakistan, constructing schools in impossible places, and he works himself half to death. Instead of driving around in a white S.U.V. with a security detail, he wears local clothes and takes battered local cars to blend in. He justly berates himself for spending too much time on the road and not enough with his wife, Tara Bishop, and their children, Amira and Khyber.

I’ve counted Greg as a friend, had his family over at my house for lunch and extolled him in my column. He gave a blurb for my most recent book, “Half the Sky,” and I read his book “Three Cups of Tea” to my daughter. It’s indisputable that Greg has educated many thousands of children, and he has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

And now his life’s work is tottering after a “60 Minutes” exposé and an online booklet by Jon Krakauer, a onetime supporter. Greg is accused of many offenses: misstating how he got started building schools; lying about a dramatic kidnapping; exaggerating how many schools he has built and operates; and using his charity, the Central Asia Institute, “as his personal A.T.M.” The attorney general of Montana, where his charity is based, has opened an inquiry into the allegations.

I don’t know what to make of these accusations. Part of me wishes that all this journalistic energy had been directed instead to ferret out abuses by politicians who allocate government resources to campaign donors rather than to the neediest among us, but that’s not a real answer. The critics have raised serious questions that deserve better answers: we need to hold school-builders accountable as well as fat cats.

My inclination is to reserve judgment until we know more, for disorganization may explain more faults than dishonesty. I am deeply troubled that only 41 percent of the money raised in 2009 went to build schools, and Greg, by nature, is more of a founding visionary than the disciplined C.E.O. necessary to run a $20 million-a-year charity. On the other hand, I’m willing to give some benefit of the doubt to a man who has risked his life on behalf of some of the world’s most voiceless people.

I’ve visited some of Greg’s schools in Afghanistan, and what I saw worked. Girls in his schools were thrilled to be getting an education. Women were learning vocational skills, such as sewing. Those schools felt like some of the happiest places in Afghanistan.

I also believe that Greg was profoundly right about some big things.

He was right about the need for American outreach in the Muslim world. He was right that building schools tends to promote stability more than dropping bombs. He was right about the transformative power of education, especially girls’ education. He was right about the need to listen to local people—yes, over cup after cup after cup of tea—rather than just issue instructions.

I worry that scandals like this—or like the disputes about microfinance in India and Bangladesh—will leave Americans disillusioned and cynical. And it’s true that in their struggle to raise money, aid groups sometimes oversell how easy it is to get results. Helping people is more difficult than it seems, and no group of people bicker among themselves more viciously than humanitarians.

After my wife and I wrote “Half the Sky,” we decided not to start our own foundation or aid organization but simply to use our book and Web site to point readers to other aid groups—partly because giving away money effectively is such difficult and uncertain work.

The furor over Greg’s work breaks my heart. And the greatest loss will be felt not by those of us whose hero is discredited, nor even by Greg himself, but by countless children in Afghanistan who now won’t get an education after all. But let’s not forget that even if all the allegations turn out to be true, Greg has still built more schools and transformed more children’s lives than you or I ever will.

As we sift the truth of these allegations, let’s not allow this uproar to obscure that larger message of the possibility of change. Greg’s books may or may not have been fictionalized, but there’s nothing imaginary about the way some of his American donors and Afghan villagers were able to put aside their differences and prejudices and cooperate to build schools—and a better world.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 30, 2011 10:07 AM | Send