Required Reading - Three Cups of Tea, and Stones Into Schools

UPDATE: Looks like this was a scam, and Mortensen is a liar.  The original post is below.

General Petraeus wants you to read these books. If you reported to him, you'd already have read them, because they're mandatory reading for his staff. Also for Special Forces They think they're the key to winning the War on Terror.

I think they're right. Usually I post "Recommended" reading. These books are different. This war, more than any in the past, is about winning the "Hearts and Minds" of poor people in remote, rural parts of the Muslim world- like the people in Kandahar and Waziristan. Greg Mortenson has cracked the code of how to do that.

Mortenson's journey started on K2, the second highest mountain in the world. He almost died there, in a failed attempt to climb to the peak. He was taken in and nursed back to health by the people in a village at the foot of K2, in the Hindu Kush. The village was desperately poor, and Mortenson wanted to do something to help pay them back. What he did - that was different from what Battalions of NGO "experts" do - was ask them what they wanted.

Build us a school, they said.

And so a self-described "climbing bum" learned how to fund raise, how to organize local talent, and most importantly how to get village elders to support the effort to build schools (because that's what they wanted). It's a amazing journey, that has built over 140 schools in the most rural parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, including a school in Mullah Omar's home village. A school that educates girls, with the full support of the village elders.

The two books are very different, but really should be read together. The first (Three Cups of Tea) is about Mortenson's escape from death on K2, his struggle to raise money for the school (and then the struggle to raise money for a bridge that had to be built before the school could be). It's about his learning what would become the foundation for his program described in the second book.

Stones into Schools describes how Mortenson build a local organization of fiercely dedicated supporters that turned that first school into a blueprint for enabling local self-help:

• Buy-in from the local political leaders.
• Locally donated land for the school.
• Local free labor by the villagers to build the school.
• Agreement that girls as well as boys would be educated, in equal numbers.

It's also about how he kept working in Pakistan and Afghanistan during and after 9/11, how he survived a kidnapping and two fatwas (he got countermanding fatwas from higher authority, including from the Shiite holy city of Q'om), and how he became the go-to guy for the U.S. Military while still keeping his independence from them.

He's done this because he thinks differently than other people:

Most NGOs, for all sorts of well-justified reasons, prefer to establish a base of operations in a region that enjoys favorable access to resources and communications, and only then will these organizations gradually expand into the harder areas. It's a sensible way to proceed. The problem, however, is that if you work in a way that is incremental and controlled, it can sometimes take a lifetime to get to the people who need your help the most. What is far more difficult - and sometimes more dangerous - is to start at the end of the road and work your way back. And for better or worse, that's exactly what we do.

So there's your reading assignment. If you buy the books, the money goes to building more schools, but you can also find the books at your local library (it's almost certain that you'll have to put your name on a waiting list). If you keep your eyes peeled, you might find that Mortenson comes to a town near yours to give a talk, and you can (like me) pick up an autographed copy.

Here's Mortenson at East Carolina University, 4 Match 2010 - Part 1. It starts out slowly, but by 15 minutes in you'll find yourself mesmerized:




Greg Mortenson at East Carolina University, 4 Match 2010 - Part 2:



You can also try some of these (copied from the end of Stones Into Schools):

1. Visit www.stonesintoschools.com for more information. The Amazon links above not only donate all the proceeds to Mortenson's organization, they donate 7% of all your order (i.e. the total from all your books).

2. Suggest these books to a friend.

3. Write about it (like this blog post).

4. Look at www.penniesforpeace.org that's raised three h7undred million pennies so far. A school in Afghanistan can get a pencil for a penny. Maybe the schools in your town can join.

5. Donate to Mortenson's organization, the Central Asia Institute.

So there you have it, your assignment from General Petraeus (via me). Git 'r done.