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Outside Magazine December 2001

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Seismic Shift (Cont.)

GREG GOT THROUGH five days later. He was calling from Islamabad, where rumors of an imminent U.S. attack on Afghanistan were flashing through the streets.

"There are nearly 27 million Afghans and probably no more than 45,000 Taliban," Greg said. "That's one Taliban for every 600 Afghans. We helped create the Taliban. We funded them, we trained them, we used them in a proxy war to stop the Soviet Union from marching down to the Arabian Sea—basically to keep them away from our oil. Then, after we got what we wanted, we abandoned Afghanistan and its people to the Taliban radicals."

Greg was appalled at the prospect of more killing in a country that was already "nothing more than a land of starvation, mutilation, and oppression.

"The Afghans know war better than any people," he said. "They have had two decades of hatred, executions, torture. The long-term solution to terrorism is to help them. Feed them, clothe them, help them create a viable economic infrastructure. If we ever want to reduce terrorism, we will need the support of the Afghans.

"We have to show them that the world can be a better place. We have to show them love."

I spoke to Greg one last time before he left for the refuge of the mountains. I told him I wouldn't be coming over, at least not in the next few weeks. At this stage, any trip through Afghanistan could only focus on the crisis. The beauty, the history, the culture would only be footnotes to a story of death and destruction. Journalists from around the world were rushing to Pakistan and Afghanistan to cover the brutal play-by-play. I would not be one of them.

"It's the right decision," Greg said sadly.

I asked him what he was going to do.

"Stay here. Go back up to Baltistan. Work on the schools. You know, it sounds absurd, but perhaps none of this would have happened if women were allowed to go to school."

In some fundamentalist Islamic cultures, women are forbidden even a basic education. The Taliban, who impose an unrecognizably distorted form of Islam on Afghanistan, deny women the right to learn to read and write. From the start, CAI has focused on education for girls and on the empowerment of women; each time CAI funds the building of a school, the villagers must agree to increase girls' enrollment by 10 percent annually.

"Girls' education has a major influence on a region's quality of life," Greg said. "Educating girls reduces infant mortality and overpopulation, which in turn reduces ignorance and poverty—the most fertile grounds for extremists."

Greg Mortenson, like Sir Edmund Hillary before him, is a climber who came down from the summit with a conscience. In a ravaged part of the world, he is one man who has severed the Gordian knot entwining adventure with war, and instead has bound adventure to acts of kindness.

"No matter what happens," he said, "the schools, the children, the mountains—everything that really matters—will all still be here next spring. You can come then."

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