Issue date: 1/27/10 Section: Features

Greg Mortenson, has worked in Pakistan in
Afghanistan, setting up schools and promoting
education for young children. He
chronicled his work in his best-selling
book Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission
to Promote Peace...One School at a
Time. He spoke to St. John's about his experiences
Jan. 26.

TORCH: How was your treatment in
Pakistan and Afghanistan when you were
there and how has it changed over the
years when you've gone back?

Mortenson: Most people there are
very compassionate.

I only had one bad experience when I
was kidnapped in July of 1996. I was in Wazirstan,
which in the North Western Frontier
Province of Pakistan. I went into a
tribal area without asking for permission,
and what happened was I got kidnapped.
I was detained for eight days by the Taliban.
I didn't ask permission to come
in and be with them, I was actually looking
for a place to build a school. I wasn't
treated very well.

In comparison, since 9/11 I've gotten
a fair amount of hate mail and death
threats from Americans. They called me
a traitor to the country because I'm helping
Muslims; but what I say is that, no
matter where you are, the real enemy is
ignorance.

TORCH: What were the young people
that you helped build schools for like?

Mortenson: It's so exciting to see the
tenacity and fierce desire for education in
Afghanistan. This is something very few
Americans know about. The most exciting
news to come out of the country is
that in 2000, before 9/11, there were
800,000 people in school, mostly boys, in
Afghanistan.

Now, there are 8.4 million children in
school in Afghanistan. And 2.5 million
of those are female, which is the greatest
increase in school enrollment in modern
history. What is interesting is very few
Americans are aware of that, but the bad
news is that in the last three years the
Taliban has bombed and destroyed about

Continued...

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