Written By Benjamin Orbach
I watched the 60 Minutes piece on Greg Mortenson with disappointment. If you haven’t heard of Greg Mortenson, he is a humanitarian that has built more than 100 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea (co-written with Oliver David Relin). Three Cups of Tea is the inspirational story of Mortenson’s personal journey from a lost K2 mountain climber to the founder of the Central Asia Institute, an organization devoted to children’s education, primarily girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
If you haven’t watched the 60 Minutes piece, Mortenson is accused of embellishing his personal story and of his mismanagement of the Central Asia Institute. He has offered a partial response to the accusations – none of which are criminal – and I hope that he clarifies further the points that have been raised.
In the interim, I have two thoughts on the subject. First, by the impact of his actions, Greg Mortenson remains a hero. He built mountains from sand both on an individual and organizational level. He went from sleeping in his car to building more than 100 schools, many of them for girls, in villages in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Without his personal efforts and investment, there are thousands of young women who never would have had the opportunity for an education. There are about double that number of parents who have been able to see their children take a path to opportunity. In the end, that impact, and the future accomplishments of those children as productive citizens are more important to Mortenson’s legacy as a person and activist than the details of his personal narrative.
Second, however this story unfolds, Greg Mortenson’s actions were an extraordinary service to the American public. His personal narrative, even if it turns out to be flawed, introduced millions of Americans to the concept of forming people-to-people partnerships to support the human development needs of local leaders and citizens. These partnerships and their impact are unquestionably in our country’s national interest, both at home and abroad. Three Cups of Tea ruled the bestseller lists at a time of acute disinterest and despair with the war and people of Afghanistan. The story that Mortenson and Oliver David Relin introduced to the world showed Americans the complexities, humanity, and needs of a people who were stereotyped en mass for harboring terrorists and abusing women.
Whether it is in Pakistan, Palestine, or Peru, if you have worked in development in a marginalized community, you understand the human element of it all – that parents want the same things for their children around the world and that young people aspire to dreams of their own success and normalcy if given the chance. Through his story, Mortenson took American readers – from Oprah book clubbers to servicemen about to deploy to Afghanistan and Iraq – to a place of understanding that we are dealing with people in our foreign policies, not just faceless security issues. And from that, he inspired people to act – to donate and to serve. In this moment of national apathy, that is admirable.
Frequently, when I’m speaking about America’s Unofficial Ambassadors, I mention Greg Mortenson, his achievements, and comment that very few of us are going to devote our lives to building people-to-people partnerships in development in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet, many if not all of us are able to engage in some type of short-term volunteer service for a week or a month or even a year in the Muslim World, as an English teacher in Indonesia perhaps or as a public health volunteer in Senegal. Mortenson is still hero. His actions have made the world a better place; he has mobilized tens of thousands of people to support the dreams of strangers in need. He understands that those dreams intersect with our American aspirations, and he educated people about that connection. None of us are perfect, and I’ll continue to cite Greg Mortenson as one of America’s fine Unofficial Ambassadors.
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