Q: President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops into the region — will this help or hinder your efforts to educate Afghan civilians?
Mortenson: Our work will continue, regardless, because of our nonprofit’s relationships with the Afghani elders. I was quite angry that there were nine meetings held behind closed doors in secrecy between President Obama and several of our commanders and advisers in the run-up to the president’s decision this week to send in more troops; the one thing that was never considered in any of the factoring-in was: What do the Afghan elders, or the shura, want? I feel that they should have had at least 50 percent of the voice in those meetings with the president.
The only place where the shuras were able to have some say, at least a little bit, was in the dozens of meetings our nonprofit helped to organize and facilitate between the shura and Gen. McChrystal since the general was appointed in April. There have been probably 35 or so meetings between him and some 200 shura from many of the different rural areas in Afghanistan. Our nonprofit has done this all on its own; we don’t receive any federal money and we don’t have any agenda. We’ve done this primarily on behalf of the elders who really wanted to meet the generals, and the generals who wanted to meet the shura.
Deirdre Eitel
Q: And who are the shura, specifically?
Mortenson: They are not elected. They’re pretty much people who have risen through the ranks of society in Afghanistan and are held in high esteem by the people locally. They’re successful businessmen or warriors or poets, and they are seen as being very wise and the real power in the country. And unfortunately, the Afghani government is fairly fragile and to some degree is also fairly corrupt, and so to the shura, it’s very humiliating and also very angering that nobody ever talked with them and asked them what their consensus is or how they feel about their own country.
I was able to sit in on some of these meetings, which would include Gen. McChrystal. One of the very strong points that came out in these meetings was that elders are very opposed to bombings. That’s their No. 1 complaint. The problem is that if you bomb, you kill civilians and if you do bomb, you need intelligence and the only way you can have good intelligence is to have more boots on the ground.
Q: What other things did the shura say in those meetings?
Mortenson: I think our government has done a poor job telling the public that about a third to half of those troops Obama is sending over are trainer troops. Of the 22,000 troops announced in February, 8,000 of those are trainer troops — from the National Guard and reservists. They’re teachers and engineers, bankers, dentists, horticulturalists, civil engineers and veterans. And roughly about a third or more of the new 30,000 troops he is sending will be trainer troops.
This is in line with what the shura have been saying for years — that they don’t need firepower but brainpower. They say, 'We want you to help us out but we don’t need help to go fight the Taliban or to kill and capture al-Qaida, but we do need some help to get us on our feet again so if you want to send over some of your special soldiers, like veterinarians and doctors and dentists and nurses, we’d love to have those come over. But if you’re just going to send over troops for fighting, then we don’t want those, we don’t really need those troops.' That’s what the shura are telling McChrystal when I’ve heard him talking to them.
In "Three Cups of Tea," I was actually fairly critical of the military. But now I think that, in many ways, they’re ahead of the State Department and our political leaders because they’ve been on the ground numerous times now. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, the special forces commander, have — combined — been in Pakistan and Afghanistan 35 times in the last 14 months. Compare that with, for example, Hillary Clinton, who went over to Pakistan for a few hours last week. I’m hoping ultimately that all of the top military and American diplomatic and political leaders of will spend more time and get to know people and talk to them and listen to them more now going forward.
Q: What else do you think Americans should know about Afghanistan?
Mortenson: Some of the things the elders will talk about that you don’t hear about in the public are, for example, that in 2000, there were 800,000 kids in school in Afghanistan, and this was during the height of the Taliban. The kids were nearly all boys. Today, there are 8.4 million children in school in Afghanistan, including 2.5 million females. So it’s the greatest increase in school enrollment in any country in modern history and the goal is 13 million. So what I’m saying is that there are some really good things happening in Afghanistan, as well. There’s also a central banking system now in Afghanistan that wasn’t there and which was put in in 2006. That’s had a huge impact on the country. There also is an Eisenhower-era road-building program so the roads are about 60 percent done. ...
You can’t plug in a democracy; you have to build one. The real key is not only education but also land ownership. You go into the district courts now in Afghanistan and it’s mind-boggling how many women are going in and filing their titles for land ownership. I just try to tell people that yes, there are a lot of bad things happening and it’s very frightening but there are also some very amazing things going on and pretty much this all happened at a time when we put Afghanistan on the back seat. Just imagine what could happen if we devoted serious effort over the next two to four years to help the people of Afghanistan.( msn.com )
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