Lately, I have been reading Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time. At a mere $8.95 from Powell’s Books, I cannot recommend the book highly enough. It’s the story of a remarkably big-hearted and eccentric man who nearly died during his descent from K2 and stumbled into a remote Pakistani village that changed the entire course of his life. He somewhat impulsively promised to build a school for the village in gratitude for their nursing him back to health. He not only built them a school, he began building schools all over the northeast of Pakistan. He focused on building schools that teach a secular curriculum and he emphasized educating girls. Yet, he soon discovered that his efforts were being greatly outpaced by Saudi-funded school-building. The Saudis poured millions of dollars into funding Wahhabi madrassas all throughout Pakistan, including in the remotest mountainous valleys along the border with Afghanistan.
The Saudi influence is really at the heart of the Taliban movement and of the current difficulties that the Pakistani government is having with radical insurgency. Today, the government claims to have retaken the city of Mingora in the Swat Valley. Swat Valley used to be a prime vacation spot for outdoorsmen, but now it is a battleground. It didn’t have to be this way. How did this happen?
It happened because it was easier for the Pakistani government to let the Saudis fund their education budget than for them to do it themselves. Slowly, but surely, the youth of northern Pakistan were radicalized and readied for martyrdom. That might have worked for Pakistan as long as the young mujahideen could be sent to Kashmir or Afghanistan or Chechnya, but now they are being sent south towards the capital, Islamabad.
It is a bitter irony that the least modern, tolerant brand of Islam is controlled and exported by the nation that has both physical control of Mecca and Medina, and control of the largest oil reserves on the planet. No single big-hearted, eccentric American ever stood a chance in a competition with the House of Saud for the hearts and minds of the impressionable youth of upland Pakistan. The United States government probably knows that the real battle in the so-called war on terror is over who will provide the lion’s share of education funding for Pakistan. But, even though we can build six schools for the price of one drone-delivered missile, the schools can’t create one American job while the missile can sustain several.
I truly believe that there are simple solutions available to us that can lesson the threat of terrorism at a low cost, but our government doesn’t seem interested. Let’s help Pakistan educate their youth. Let’s start with that.
I wonder how many people could have been educated for the price of the nukes the Pakistanis chose to build. What a waste.
Governments cannot build schools in other countries without being suspect, which is why Saudi aid in Pakistan is so instructive. Folks have good reason to be suspect.
Even foreign nationals working for non-governmental organizations (NGO’s), such as described in Three Cups of Tea, are not without suspicion and must take a long time to establish their credentials.
Adding to the complications is the debate over what constitutes a good education for the population. The Saudi view is theocratic, western views are scientific, other views might have to do with traditional culture. Indeed we see this conflict in the US over such things as the teaching of evolution. Debates are inherently political. Delivering education services in other countries is not a technocratic enterprise of building a school and hiring teachers.
By contrast, for governments military expenditures are much simpler, given enough fear in the country. The political contentions are between those who have an economic stake in building military equipment and between officers vying for higher pay and political power through promotion. Which is why in Pakistan and elsewhere military dictatorships come to power through accusation of corruption of civilian governments. It’s not that the military is not corrupt, it’s that people tolerate corruption in the military more; it’s the price of security.
It’s a whacked way of looking at it, but there it is.
making a big speech toward the end of 2001 about how the invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent rebuilding would guarantee that girls in that country would forevermore have the right to attend school.
This from the AP:
Seven and a half years of occupation later.
An excellent statement. It explains so much.
We have never been interested in pursuing the Saudi involvement in geopolitics, including 9/11. We rant and rave about N Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, but say nothing about Saudi Arabia.
Wonder why? (I think we all know why.)
“Let’s help Pakistan educate their youth.“
In other words, lets help Pakistan educate their youth in the way that serves U.S. interests best.
Very imperialist of you, BooMan.
I would say “To hell with Pakistan’s youth – let’s try to educate our own” but I’m sure that there something wrong with that too…
With some folk it’s like the Crow National Anthem from The Wiz – “You can’t win – you can’t break even and you can’t get out of the game.”
Two tears in a bucket…
Educating your own youth sounds like a damned good idea to me. Taking just 10% of the money you spend on killing brown people on the other side of the world and devoting it to educating American kids would make a significant difference, and not just in the U.S.
By the way, one of the first contracts that was awarded for the “reconstruction” (read deconstruction and transformation) of Iraq well before the invasion took place was to an American company for the redesign of Iraq’s school curriculum, including, among other things, writing new textbooks (which included rewriting Iraq’s history to make it, among other things, more US-friendly), and re-educating teachers to use American teaching methods. Of course, the fact that some of us find this sort of thing objectionable simply makes us naysayers, or anti-American, or something, right?
I heard or read an interview with Greg Mortenson a few years ago. Originally he was all set to formulate a curriculum for the first school. However, the village elders gently told him they knew what they wanted to teach their children.
This is from a 2002 interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross:
“the village elders gently told him they knew what they wanted to teach their children.“
Good for them.
And by the way, there is something a little bit odd about Mortenson’s story in the interview. First, I find it difficult to believe that the head Islamic leader in all of Northern Pakistan is a Shi`a. Pakistan is an overwhelmingly Sunni country where Shi`as are generally looked down upon. It sounds like he was dealing only with the Shi`a community in this case, and building schools for Shi`as, while certainly a good thing, does nothing to counter the Wahhabi influence. I’m not criticizing him or his project at all, of course. I think it is a terrific thing he did.
His use of the word “infidel” is weird also. I doubt very, very much that letter contained any word that could reasonably be translated as infidel, particularly since there was a reference there to the Qur’an, which, in addition to encouraging education, explicitly states that Jews and Christians are believers in God, excluding them from the “infidel” category. I am guessing that this word was his choice, not that of the writers of the letter, and it’s kind of unfortunate about what it says for his knowledge of Islam and the Qur’an. Again, I am not criticizing his project or him personally, I just couldn’t help noticing.
the area where he began his work is the Karakorum and it is overwhelmingly Shi’a. He was being accused of being a kafir by some mullahs. He got an edict or ruling from Qom in his favor. He noted the irony of an American non-Muslim getting a just ruling at the same time his own country was operating Guantanamo Bay.
He expanded his work into Sunni areas where Saudi-funded madrassas were popping up like mushrooms.
Thanks for the info, BooMan. That does clarify things. Maybe the “infidel” remark came from the Mullahs as their way of explaining the letter or something. I doubt it came from Qum.
I’m not sure because I haven’t seen the ruling. But the description of it indicated that it covered the accusation that he was a kafir who wanted to spread Christianity and educate girls.
The ruling said that there was nothing in the Koran that prohibited an unbeliever (not sure or the word they used) for helping Muslims gain an education and that there was also nothing that prohibited the education of girls.
Thanks. Despite the one detail that caught my eye, it was a good ruling in my view. It would be interesting to know what word they used. Kafir is generally used in a derogatory way.
.
not just for education in Muslim countries like Pakistan. What ye say about funding and building mosques in Europe including the Netherlands and brainwashing the young minds.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Petraeus has read the book & contacted that author:
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2009-01-01-three-cups-of-tea_N.htm
Notice the last paragraph in the link above.
I believe that I also read somewhere that Petraeus recommended it to everyone under his command at the time.
The fact that Petraeus thought highly of it is not much of a recommendation, I am afraid. :o}
It is certainly a lot better than “Onward Christian Soldiers”!
He has done a lot of things that I haven’t approved of but at least give him a little credit when he tries to do something helpful that does not involve killing.
I am prepared, absent evidence to the contrary, to believe that Greg Mortenson is sincerely interested in helping others, but Petraeus? The only thing he is interested in helping is his own very ambitious career. And he will do anything to that end, including manipulating a subject people in an effort to make them believe he is helping them.