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A Cup of Rancid Tea
In a country that has spent the last 10 years fighting wars that we can’t win and which have cost so much in every sense of the word, it is understandable that Greg Mortenson’s Three Cups of Tea describing the journey that led him to want to build schools, especially for girls, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, struck a chord. It was a story that many wanted to believe. We wanted there to be a romanticized way that the white colonizer could convince the dark heathens that we would save them. We needed a Lawrence of Arabia looking hero and Mortenson fulfilled our fantasy.
Even the U.S. military, which has waged the counter-productive, impossible to win war in Afghanistan wanted to believe, to the extent that they invited Mortenson to advise and speak to troops on many occasions. As Greg Jaffe writes in the Washington Post, Mortenson provided a kinder, gentler way of winning hearts and minds that the military badly wanted to be true,
Mortenson’s narratives of wise, patient and kind Afghan and Pakistani elders made it seem as though progress in Afghanistan was achievable. All U.S. troops had to do was learn the Afghan culture, show some patience and deliver a little bit of progress, and the Afghans would see the U.S. military’s good intentions and turn against the Taliban. In this formulation, counterinsurgency — a complex, morally ambiguous and frequently bloody type of war — came to look a bit like social work with guns.
The allegations made by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer have however severely dented the armor of our hero. While no one disputes that Mortenson has built schools, it is deeply disturbing that,
a financial statement from the Central Asia Institute (CAI), which Mortenson co-founded in 1996 and is acting executive director of, show that only 41 per cent of funds raised actually went towards schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the American Center for Philanthropy, a charity watchdog, CAI claims that $1.7 million was spent on Mortenson’s “book-related expenses,” more than they spent on all of their schools in Pakistan last year.
Also, as Michelle Goldberg points out, while indeed CAI built numerous schools, education requires more than just a building–ongoing funding for books, teachers, etc. are key. But as Goldberg writes, while we want to believe in the white knight in shining armor image that Mortenson presents, it isn’t the best model for making a sustainable difference.
Mortenson became as famous as he did because people love the idea that one intrepid humanitarian can solve intractable problems in the world’s most desperate places. Schimmelpfennig calls it the “White in Shining Armor” approach to development. It makes for good stories, but it usually doesn’t work. In nearly every country in the world, there are people on the ground trying hard to improve things in their communities, and the most successful programs work through them. The Global Fund for Women, for example, takes applications for grants in any form and any language. It supports organizations like the Afghan Institute of Learning, which began by running underground girls schools during Taliban rule, and which has since trained more than 7,000 female primary school teachers. The problem isn’t that the world of development lacks real heroes. The problem is that they’re rarely the ones we hear about.
Kalsoom Lakhani wisely offers this perspective on the Mortenson saga, saying,
We should also use this opportunity to look inwards at ourselves, at our ability to get carried away by a charismatic personality and digestible narrative, in which Mortenson was the John Smith in the Pakistani version of Pocahontas. Rather than society questioning whether good intentions truly equaled good aid, we gave him a platform, feeling warm and fuzzy for the part we indirectly played in saving schoolchildren. This thinking is endemic of a larger problem with charity and non-profit giving, in which show ponies and personalities often sweep us off our feet. We forget that we must demand transparency, and that we need to go beyond giving, remembering instead to give well, and who our money should be ultimately going to. This means supporting institutions and organisations that are not built on personality alone, but on community engagement and sustainability.
There is no question that CAI’s finances need to be thoroughly investigated and Mortenson needs to be given a chance to fully respond (the 60 Minutes story unfortunately came out just before Mortenson underwent a heart proceedure from which he is currently recovering and therefore it may be some time before he is able to respond).
Regardless of that however, the Mortenson story is merely a variation of the we are better than everyone else therefore we must save them and show them the wisdom of our ways mythology that poisons so much of our public dialog.
And let’s remember that Mortenson is hardly the first person to observe that educating children, especially girls, is a very effective way to better a society. Human rights groups have been saying this six ways to Sunday for a very long time. If we truly bought into this theory however, we would be spending a great deal more on education and a great deal less on military action. Women’s rights groups such as RAWA have been operating schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan long before Mortenson showed up to discuss the matter with the male elders of remote villages. Yet RAWA, which operates on very minimal funds and in the face of great danger and usually the disapproval of those very same warlords and elders, only generates niche support in this country while Mortenson catches the attention of the whole country for the simple reason that we were brought up to believe that this was the model of heroism that will save the world.
It won’t.
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23 Comments so far
Show AllI think you make a really good point about Mortenson's popularity in the US, versus RAWA's, and your analysis about the mythology that we Westerners have in regards to developing nations is on the money. Thanks for adding a more nuanced voice to this discussion, rather than just throwing insults in Mortenson's direction.
I pushed myself hard to read the book, given how poorly it was written. I also thought that the details presented by the author about Mortenson's recollections were far too vivid to be true.
However, I still like the main idea and imagine most people do because we feel deep inside that humans are fundamentally good, if not sometimes misguided (and of course it is always the turds that will stand out in the punchbowl, or rise to power).
Excellent article. I would submit that the damage which Mortenson's behavior has done to similar projects is incalculable...and will take several years and greater transparency to overcome.
Myself and others support a local kid (Central California) who has been doing his own "Three Cups of Tea"...and Mortenson was his hero. Now...not so much.
Alas, I drank Mortenson's Kool-Aid! It was sweet and gave me hope.
The author is correct that education is the most powerful ingredient in societal change. I don't have a link but remember from college the UN reports that showed women attaining more equality through education as well as the correlation between birthrate and education, more educated women have less babies.
Of course cynics, myself included, can see the benefits to the elites 'dumbing down' USAans.
Of course the majority of the money flowing into Mortenson's pockets was "book-related expenses." Building a school or two is nice, but that wasn't his main interest, which was selling the invasion/occupation of Afghanistan as a humanitarian mission.
Did nobody ever attend any of his lectures? They're all about how much the generals love him. Did nobody stop to ask why they loved him?
O peration I raqi L iberation
C entral A sia I nstitute
C entral I ntelligence A gency
education for girls?
sure...
simply explain we are all slaves to our violent overlords, and looking for the path of least resistance...
this same education could be used for boys...
if one wished to educate boys...
Excellent analysis. This article is spot on.
Great article. It hit the nail right on the head. The "white in shining armor" is a very apt phrase to describe this kind of development strategy. Even if it had been successful, I wonder if the Mortenson project on the balance would have been a good or bad thing. By involving himself in a charitable mission, which does seem to have colonial overtones, I wonder if he isn't legitimizing the US colonial occupation of Afghanistan by making the Western public think that Western intervention in Afghanistan is ultimately positive for the people who live there. The same bible and gun mentality has been used in many colonial endeavors, except that here, the gun is an instrumentality of the state and the bible is an NGO (it's hard to consider Mortenson as unwitting in offering tacit support for the US occupation as he has not done much to distance himself from the US military and has accepted support from them).
My point has always been:
Why aren't we focusing the most on helping those immediately around us, especially family, neighbors, community. It's a good thing to help others far across the world in need. But we need to begin by helping heal ourselves and those closest to us first, then branch out.
If Mortenson did what the conservatives say, wasn't it just good corporate earnings decisions for any stockholders? Taking out a share for salaries, publicity and other costs, there was a huge net plus advantage for Afghans and for American's image there that is invaluable. War profiteers will not like how applied to themselves, their accusations makes them hypocrites. They could have to end some wars that they went through so much trouble to start.
Much appreciate your sarcasm Dubet!
RAWA???
The same RAWA that, during the Soviet ‘invasion’ of Afghanistan, when:
• there were 245,000 women workers in Afghanistan,
• women comprised 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at the University of Kabul,
• four hundred and forty thousand female students were enrolled in educational institutions and 80,000 more participated in literacy programs ,
• the All-Afghanistan Women’s Council had 150,000 members,
• western dress was common in the cities and women enjoyed some real measure of freedom from the veil and subjugation for the first time in Afghanistan’s history,
• four of the seven militia commanders appointed to the Revolutionary Council in January 1986 were women,
• all PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) women members were receiving military training and arms and some 15,000 women had joined the militias, taking up arms to defend not only the rights they had won but their very lives,
kowtowed to religious reaction and supported the misogyny of Afghani tribalism against the soldiers of the Red Army, many of whom hailed from the ex-muslim Central Asian Republics and who knew from their own history what the mujahedin victory would mean for Afghan women?
The same RAWA whose founder Meena Keshwar Kamal pinned the myth of ‘national sovereignty’ to her burqa as her entrée to the court of French imperialist president François Mitterrand and thence toured Europe on behalf of the US-financed, -armed and -trained mujahedin as a symbol of ‘Afghan resistance’?
The same RAWA whose representative in 2002 frothed that the Soviet forces “were trying to give some rights to Afghan women that are obviously okay in Western societies, but are not acceptable in our societies ... For example, they wanted to give so-called liberties of having a boyfriend or dancing in a nightclub, which are not acceptable in our society”?
In short, the same RAWA that, despite the undoubted bravery of individual members, was never willing, and is no longer able, to do more than limit itself to demands that it thinks the mullahs and warlords will allow or what is ‘popular’ among ‘liberals’ and ‘cultural relativists’ in the West?
*SNORTS*
Clearly merely having breasts and a vagina does not make one ‘progressive’!
I appreciate Sally Abravenal's post.. Women had far more freedom,education and job possibilities under the Afghan government the US financed-mujahedin took down.
The accusations made by 60 minutes against Mortensen and the CAI are refuted item by item by Mortensen and his board of directors at the website www.ikat.org.
I'm wondering whether there is some kind of hidden agenda in Krakauer's piling on Mortensen. The book in question was published a couple of years ago, and the school-building project was known before that. Why has it become an issue that "only" 41% of donated funds go to the project? What percentage of funds in other charitable orgs go to the designated goals? How much of what you give Red Cross, Madre, Save the Children - even RAWA - reaches the target? A comparison would be useful, I think.
Respectable charities tend to use at least 90% of revenue for actual charity.
"Mortenson is hardly the first person to observe that educating children, especially girls, is a very effective way to better a society."
The issue isn't about who was first to observe that educating children is so effective. The issue is about what is the agenda behind the education, and you can bet your boots that the USan imperial agenda in backing any educator is to "win hearts and minds" for the mind-boggling dissonance of ... DAS KAPITAL!!!
No doubt we on the far left also want to win hearts and minds, but instead for the people's platform. To better the society by advancing the people's BETTER interests. Notice the spiritual resonance when the kids are taught in school to value themselves along with the earth and the gift of life it has given them.
You can imagine a school curriculum that teaches the truth, for example the evolution of life. And the civic duty of the people to bring the full swing of the sledgehammer down on... DAS KAPITAL!!!
I do not mean to dispute the data in Sally Abravenal's post. Quite the contrary.
But it should be pointed out that those figures reflect not the Soviet "invasion," but its occupation of Afghanistan for around a decade, during which time it "liberalized" that country in an amazingly short time, while the U.S. snuck in and destabilized that cultural revolution by funding and arming the most reactionary anti-feminist elements in the country, with Dan Rather cheering on the Mujahideen on the CBS evening news (from a secret location in the mountains), only to have those reactionaries turn on the U.S. once we had financed the collapse of the Soviet presence there.
If memory serves, the Soviets "invaded" Afghanistan shortly after the 1979 revolution in Iran and the overthrow of the Shah by a broad coalition that initially included communists and socialists, while the latter were quickly liquidated as the Iranian revolution was consolidated by a Shi'ite consortium that for years had been shielded in France. (Not dissimilar to Ho Chi Minh's Post WWII resurrection in Viet Nam after years as a chef in Paris!)
Many have written that the Soviet "defeat" in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. The USSR had consisted of a massive consortium that included in large part of states that were/are primarily Muslim and what we would call tribal.
After World War II the anti-communists in the U.S. pontificated on the "threat" of Communism in Eastern Europe going to the fact that Berlin had been occupied Tripartite. Had it not been for the Soviets, Hitler might have won, and there are many corporatist Americans who remain bitter about that! For decades, the Cold War was fought around the Eastern Europe (and Greece and Turkey and Cyprus and Israel) conundrum, while the USSR had to deal with everything east of the Urals and south of Christendom.
After the disaster that was Yeltsin, Gorbachev, the man with the Chernobyl cancer on his scalp, dissolved the USSR (I am reminded of the old Beatles song!).
We are constantly reminded that the Dollar is the "reserve currency." But who has the primary resources upon which our technological societies are constructed? Russia remains resource rich exclusive of her former minions, while the U.S. today probably could not build a Model T without foreign suppliers.
Meanwhile, as for feminism, and the likes of Three Cups of Tea, we have many women in high places complaining to this day about the "glass ceiling," but who is still changing the diapers and making sure the men don't turn into self-destructive couch potatoes?
Something can be said for the proposition that, globally, we would be better off if the USSR still existed. Certainly this would be better for women.
Perhaps I should close this with the observation that I suspect that Germany's Angela Merkel knows this! (What was George Bush doing when he came up behind her and imposed himself? You have to see the video...)
And, yeah, men also need to be educated, as boys, but don't expect the schools to do that. They can't. Try your local library. Or the Internet.
What causes an erection? Why is this an important question? (Viagra and Internet porn? In this context, "real" women become irrelevant as I suspect Sioux Rose would agree!)
What do women want? ! A classical question in American Lit.
In my old age I no longer pursue women. Most I knew were lousy cooks anyway. But that is my own personal problem. Is there a writer out there who is confronting the issue of the subjugation of women as it relates to the failure of Globalization?
What does it mean to be "enlightened" about the relationship between men and women? Is there still a thing called a "nuclear family"? Do they make break-fast together?
Today, define a "breadwinner"!
Reagan: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." Notice the use of "Mr." Not, "President Gorbachev," or "Comrade Gorbachev" (which would have been more amusing!).
Today our Media refer to the Dictator Mubarak of Egypt while for decades they called him President.
Given the history here, anyone who believes that the United States has been promoting "feminism" or the rights of women in post-Soviet states is living in ignorance.
I have no doubt that Angela Merkel would rather snuggle with Gorbachev---and I mean this in the physical sense---than with either Bush II or Obama, while the German economy is now the only thing keeping the EU intact.
"A cup of Rancid Tea," indeed!
In this context, most men are helpless, and most women have no interest in men who are helpless. OTOH, women also need income. How do they get it?
It just goes on and on. Why bother? Just keep oppressing and see what happens. We will all lose.
Women will not gain by denigrating men and men will not gain by denigrating women. (Lousy cooks can be good lovers...!)
Mortenson; what is "education"?
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Of tax dollars sent to Iraq, what percent reached the US ground level troops and the Iraqis in the streets, who actually were the stated end recipients? How much went to subs of subs of subs, to lobbyists, fixers, scammers and cost-plus, no-bid, single source racketeers?
They were flying C-5 transports into Baghdad completely filled with shrink-wrapped, palletized $100 bills. Nobody knew where it was going. Two small examples 1) the Iraqi "Finance Minister", left Iraq with at least $1billion, 2) one of the central govt's main ministries built a new office, in which the outflow pipes for the toilets, simply emptied into the wall void behind the sheetrock.
So, where was 60 Minutes while this was happening?
Dear jareilly---
You raise really interesting questions here. What happens to a country that suddenly has to use Dollars instead of the local currency as Rumsfeld dropped Hundred Dollar bills out of airplanes simultaneous with the bombs?
I guess you go with what you have. And while you're at it, loot the museums. History is the enemy of the State.
Meanwhile, you also write: "2) one of the central govt's main ministries built a new office, in which the outflow pipes for the toilets, simply emptied into the wall void behind the sheetrock."
One lesson that we need to relearn: the stench of that kind of corruption originated right here at home. And for this "improvement" of the government of Iraq we now have hundreds of thousands of brain-damaged (and I mean this in the broadest sense) young men who will require a lifetime of rehab and personal pain.
Meanwhile, why would you be hoping that 60 Minutes would be relevant here? They (CBS, Dan Rather) promoted the rise of the Mujahideen as a reactionary force to drive out the Soviets from Afghanistan.
I guess President Carter is now too old to appear on TV to explain this, but his old buddy Zbigniew Brzezinski remains active in political circles.
Might we all have been better off if the U.S. had stayed out of Afghanistan?
Probably.
And that stupid move preceded Iraq (which does not have an opium crop!).
I know; hindsight and all. But the fact is that people like me have been opposed to this death-dealing bullshit for decades. We are witness to our own collective destruction.
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