'Three Cups' author says Afghan 'surge' is mistake

<p>Building relationships rather than dropping bombs or sending in more troops will determine America's success in war-torn Afghanistan, author-activist Greg Mortenson said Saturday night at Santa Rosa High School.</p><p>“If we really want to help them we need to drink tea with them,” Mortenson, 51, told a packed auditorium of about 900 people. “You have to build relationships.”</p><p>Mortenson's 2006 best-selling book, “Three Cups of Tea,” chronicled his conversion from mountain climber to activist whose organization has built more than 130 schools in remote, impoverished regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.</p><p>He's on tour now promoting his second book, “Stones into Schools,” which picks up where the first left off in late 2003.</p><p>“I really believe in what he's doing,” said audience member Brian Erwin of Santa Rosa. “He shows the difference one person can make.”</p><p>Dale Knight of Windsor said Mortenson is “doing absolutely the right thing.” The Taliban don't burn schools built by Mortenson's Central Asia Institute “because the villagers have taken ownership, and they won't let anything bad happen to them.”</p><p>“The real enemy we all face is ignorance,” said Mortenson, who worked as a Bay Area nurse while raising money to start his nonprofit organization.</p><p>While much of the news from Afghanistan is negative, Mortenson noted that in 2000 there were 800,000 children, mostly boys, attending school. There are now 8.4 million children, including 2.5 million girls, going to school.</p><p>Educating girls is especially important, he said, because it reduces infant mortality and curbs population growth. In Afghanistan, he said, “most educated women refuse to let their sons join the Taliban.”</p><p>Mortenson said he learned the importance of involving locals from the late Haji Ali, the head man in the remote Pakistani village of Korphe.</p><p>He got a school built there for $12,000, but only after allowing Ali to take away his books and tools. “Sit down and be quiet and let us do the work,” Ali counseled.</p><p>“It was a very important lesson about letting go,” Mortenson said.</p><p>The Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe after World War II, worked because it was decentralized — unlike American efforts to reconstruct Afghanistan.</p><p>The United States would “be in a lot better position today” if it had followed the Marshall Plan's principles.</p><p>Mortenson, who served in the U.S. Army, faulted the Obama administration for deciding in a series of closed-door meetings to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.</p><p>“I think as a democracy we have a right to be involved in these decisions,” he said.</p><p>But military leaders understand the need to deal with local Afghani leaders better than American political leaders, he said.</p><p>Mortenson has arranged more than 35 meetings in Afghanistan between tribal leaders and military commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, top commander in Afghanistan.</p><p>Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited one of Mortenson's schools in Afghanistan in July.</p><p>Mortenson, who received the gold Star of Pakistan medal, the nation's highest civilian award, donated 650 copies of “Three Cups of Tea” this month to the Lake County schools. The book is required reading for all Special Forces troops deploying to Afghanistan, he said.</p><p>Copperfield's Books, which sponsored his appearance, has sold 4,000 copies of the first book and nearly 500 copies of “Stones into Schools.”</p>