3 Cups of Orientalism

by Kerim
on April 20th, 2011 @ Savage Minds

I haven’t read 3 Cups of Tea, and I don’t really have any intention of doing so. (I haven’t yet seen any compelling argument for why I should read the book.) However, I did read another book in the genre, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, by the founder of Room2Read. I was interested because we became involved in a project to support a library/informal school in India while making our last film, and I wanted to see if I could learn anything from the book. While it was mostly about what a great guy the author is (I guess that is a requirement for this genre), I did like the fundraising model they use—in which local communities are expected to buy-in to the project. We are working on trying to replicate that on a smaller scale in the library project. (If you have any relevant experience and would like to help – please contact me.)

I tend to be very skeptical of such efforts, but I think anyone who sees the film will understand how important the library is to the community – and we wanted to have some kind of mechanism in place so that when the film cames out people could support the library. But we’ve also learned that it is important not to go too fast or try to do too much. For this reason, I really liked Timothy Burke’s piece on the 3 Cups scandal:

If I gave you an unlimited line of credit and carte blanche to run everything your way, do you think you could make a single secondary school work? I mean, really work so it was beyond reproach, was by almost any measure superior in outcomes and character and ethos to any alternative? Now what if I took away from you the choice of where your school was located and restricted you to pupils who lived within 30 miles of your school? Now what if I required you to obey all relevant national and local laws addressing education? Still confident? Now what if I made you operate within a budgetary limit that was generous by local and national standards but not unlimited? Getting harder yet? Now what if I put your school in a location with very little infrastructure and serious structural poverty?

The point here is that when one crucial task like that is hard enough, we should be deliriously happy to see a person dedicate their life and money and effort to make that task work. One. When we keep our checkbooks closed and our frowny-faces on because that’s not enough, not nearly enough, we create a situation where development messianism is inevitable. We invite not mission creep but mission gallop: make a hundred schools! change gender ideology! eliminate poverty! Under the circumstances, looking back, you have to ask how that was ever creditable, why anyone cheered and hoped and wrote checks.

But enough about saving the world. You’ve all waited patiently for some juicy postcolonial critique and I don’t intend to disappoint you. The best place to start is Aaron Bady’s excellent round up of online commentary on the subject.

One of the pieces listed there is Nosheen Ali’s article [PDF] (originally linked to by Carole McGranahan on Twitter) published in Third World Quarterly before the recent scandal broke. The article challenges the narrative of fear and danger which pervades the book:

The most troubling irony is that the focal region of Mortenson’s work—the Shia region of Baltistan with its Tibetan-Buddhist heritage—has nothing to do with the war on terror, yet is primarily viewed through this lens in TCT. While it has madrassas affiliated with different interpretations of Islam, the Northern Areas more generally is not a terrain teeming with fundamentalist madrassas and Taliban on the loose—the definitive image of the region in TCT, especially on its back cover, in its introduction and in its general publicity. Hence, despite the now characteristic token statements like ‘not every madrassa was a hotbed of extremism’, the subtext of TCT remains rooted in a narrative of fear and danger.

She also challenges the “taken-for-granted assumption that an American individual can casually talk about ‘changing the culture’ in places where culture and life itself has already been radically transformed through US support of the military and the militant.” Both important points to make.

A more subtle argument was also made by Manan Ahmed about the role of “expertise” in pursuing the War on Terror—an issue which touches on some of the debates we’ve had here about HTS:

In July 2010, The New York Times reported on the popularity of Greg Mortenson’s 2006 memoir Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace … One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations … One School at a Time among the US Military high-command. The report described General McChrystal and Admiral McMullen using the text as a guide to their civilian strategy in Pakistan. Mortenson’s book quickly became required reading in military academies (the report hinted at the role played by the wives of senior military brass in promoting the title) and Mortenson has since spoken to the US Congress and testified in front of committees. Mortenson himself, though a selfless worker for the most disenfranchised of Pakistan’s northwestern citizens, possesses no deep knowledge of the region’s past or present and is avowedly “non-political” in his local role. Still, his personal story, his experiences and the work of his charity are now widely considered to be a blueprint for US strategy in the Af-Pak region.

Both Stewart and Mortenson illustrate one particular configuration of the relationship between knowledge and the American empire – the “non-expert” insider who can traverse that unknown terrain and, hence, become an “expert”.

The HTS argument would be that what we need is simply better experts, ones who actually know something about the local culture (although from what I’ve read about HTS it seems that this is not always the case). Ahmed challenges the Niall Fergusonesque notion that we simply need to learn better ways of managing empire:

There is no better way to do empire. The condition of asserting political and military will over a distant population is one that cannot sustain itself in any modern, liberal society. The efforts to understand, will inevitably lead to the understanding that the people of Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq desire the power to make their own decisions – without the imposition of governments or militaries sanctioned and placed from afar.

I started by discussing how I liked the development model used by Room To Read. It involves treating local organizations as full partners in the development process. Just as thinking through power relationships is an essential part of effective anthropological collaboration, I think it is an equally essential part of development work. The problem with the approach taken by the US military and 3 Cups is that it wants us to think about culture without thinking about power, and I don’t think that can ever work.

Greg Mortenson and the Trouble With Celebrity Philanthropy

LadyWonk

April 21, 2011

I am pretty blown away by Three Cups of Deceit, Jon Krakauer's investigative e-book revealing the depth of philanthropic guru Greg Mortenson's lies.

To summarize: Mortenson is the founder of the Central Asia Institute, which constructs schools in remote parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is also the author of the best-sellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones into Schools, which purport to tell the story of how Mortenson's 8-day kidnapping by the Taliban inspired him to commit his life to educating the children of Central Asia.

It is hard to overstate Mortenson's influence in the world of international philanthropy. When President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he donated $100,000 of his winnings to CAI. From fall 2009 to summer 2010, I worked full-time at The Daily Beast, mostly editing stories on philanthropy and international social issues. Mortenson's name came up again and again among my writers and the sources they interviewed. He was a huge celebrity, well-known from his speaking tours and media appearances, and was regarded as a hero for championing girls' education.

Now Krakauer, in a feat of reporting across cultural and linguistic boundaries, has revealed that Mortenson completely fabricated the tale of his kidnapping, that he renegged on a promise to build a school in the village of Khane, that he spent very little time in the places where his books are set, that many of CAI's schools are completely empty or lack teachers and basic supplies, and that just a fraction of the money the charity raises actually goes toward educating kids.

Nick Kristof, who has promoted Mortenson's work, responded to the revelations with a defensive column this morning, arguing that even if all these accusations are true, Mortenson has still "built more schools and transformed more children’s lives than you or I ever will."

I find this unconvincing. To me, the most troubling aspect of Krakauer's reporting is that Mortenson portrayed entire regions and ethnic groups within Pakistan as corrupted by terrorism, when in fact, at the time that his narrative purpotedly takes place, in 1996, there were no Taliban or Al-Qaeda fighters in regions such as Ladha. In fact, it was only after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that, as Krakauer writes, "large numbers of Taliban fled across the Durand Line into the tribal areas of Pakistan, seeking refuge from American drones and bombers."

Mortenson's lies have deep political significance. They obscure the true effects of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and misrepresent Pakistan and the Pakistani people to the American public. In the words of sociologist Nosheen Ali, as reported by Krakauer:

"The most troubling irony is that the focal region of Mortenson’s work—the Shia region of Baltistan with its Tibetan-Buddhist heritage—has nothing to do with the war on terror, yet is primarily viewed through this lens in [Three Cups of Tea]."

What's more, in responding to Krakauer's allegations, Mortenson has engaged in more offensive cultural stereotying, claiming, "It is important to know that Balti people have a completely different notion about time." It is ridiculous to claim that any group of people do not know when a pack of lies have been spread about them. Here are the words--written in a letter to Krakauer--of Ghulam Parvi, CAI's former Pakistan program manager, who has split with Mortenson and his organization:

"...innocent people working with him in Pakistan, especially in Baltistan, had to face disgrace, loathsome from the society, religiously bashfulness and financial losses. Times and again Greg Mortenson was requested not to perform such acts, which bring bad name and defame to us, but he always very politely and smilingly neglected our requests."

The reporting and editing I've done on international social justice work has made me extremely wary of self-promotional, celebrity philanthropy. So often, the most amazing non-profit work is done by organizations and people you've never head of, folks like Molly Melching and Sunitha Krishnan, who live in the countries and communities on whose behalf they advocate.

What's more, celebrity philanthropy very often obscures the fact that without political, legal, and military reforms on-the-ground, no amount of private funding can eradicate problems such as sexual violence or girls' lack of access to education.

The upside of celebrity philanthropy, of course, is that it draws attention to important issues. But I hope this sordid tale serves as a reminder that the media ought to be far more skeptical and hard-headed about evaluating philanthropic claims, both domestic and international. Krakauer's reporting deserves to be celebrated.

Vijay Prashad on Mortensen October 2010: Sifting the 'Three Cups' tea leaves

By Daily Hampshire Gazette

Created 10/19/2010 - 4:00am

NORTHAMPTON - I read Greg Mortenson and David Relin's "Three Cups of Tea" shortly after it was published in 2006. I was moved by the despair in Mortenson's life (the death of his sister) that sent him on his quixotic adventure to climb K2 in Pakistan. An accident ends his quest. The villagers of Korphe rescue him. In response, Mortenson wants to promote education not only in this village, but also in the region.

Thus far, the story is inspirational. But matters are more complex from here on. Mortenson is taken over by his publishers, by the nonprofit industry and by the Pentagon. His genuineness is less relevant than the brand he becomes and the work his charity is able to do for the U. S. war aims in Afghanistan.

Mortenson wanted to subtitle his book, "One Man's Mission to Promote Peace - One School at a Time." Penguin insisted it be subtitled "One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations" (after it became a hit, the book took Mortenson's subtitle).

The small voice of charity had already been suborned to the war on terror. That was how the book came to us, putting forward the liberal view that the war should not only be fought with guns, but with books.

"I supported the war in Afghanistan," Mortenson has said. "I believed in it because I believed we were serious when we said we planned to rebuild Afghanistan. I'm here because I know that military victory is only the first phase of winning the war on terror and I'm afraid we're not willing to take the next steps."

The schools are the next steps, or, more accurately, the simultaneous steps.

In 2002, Mortenson comes to Congress and at a briefing makes his pitch for the schools project. He is not driven by the war on terror, he says, but notes that terrorism "happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death." This statement startles. It comes with insufficient context. Mortenson talks about "Pakistan's impoverished public schools," and the "Wahhabi madrassas sprouting like cancerous cells," as well as the "factories of jihad."

Anthropologist Nosheen Ali points out that "the Shia region of Baltistan with its Tibetan-Buddhist heritage has nothing to do with the war on terror," and it is not the place that Mortensen says, "gave birth to the Taliban." By making such a rash assertion, Ali points out, the subtext of "Three Cups of Tea" is "rooted in a narrative of fear and danger."

The Taliban emerged in the southern districts of Afghanistan and in refugee camps funded by the United States government, the Saudi monarchy and the Pakistani military. After the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, a brutal civil war broke out among rebel factions. The U. S. government colluded with the Pakistani military to bring stability in Afghanistan via the Taliban. Stability was needed to finish plans for an oil pipeline to run from the Caspian Sea to Pakistan.

Why do children in Pakistan's northern region find themselves without education? Not because of "tribal" reticence or some ancient animosity to learning, but because of the long war (since 1979) that has disrupted the region and brought nothing but suffering to the people. In the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund forced Islamabad to end its support of public education, and opened the door to the madrassas, most of which are not "factories of jihad," but the last resort of children from the lower middle class and the working class - all of whom want an education.

In 2010, the U. S. military has already conducted over 75 drone attacks in the areas of northern Pakistan where Mortenson's project operates. His close association with the Pentagon disturbs people in the region, as the anthropologist Shafqat Hussain found over this summer. One friend writes, "School girls, then bomb them. Or bomb them first, and then school the survivors. The order's not important."

There are many other sincere agencies at work in northern Pakistan. None come with the association of the Pentagon, or with a compelling book. Hafiz Muhammad Iqbal, the dean of the faculty of education at the University of Punjab, says of the work of Aga Khan Education Services in particular, "It is because of such interventions that education facilities have reached almost in each and every corner of the region" (he is referring to Baltistan and Gilgit).

I took to Mortenson's book because he does not seek to elevate himself above the villagers (people like Haji Ali, Sakina, Ghulam Parvi, Hussein and others). In "Three Cups," Mortenson is careful to avoid the lineage of the "white man's burden" and his own temperament seems unequal to the colonial official.

Nonetheless, the Mortenson effect allows us to adulate Mortenson for his sacrifices and to reduce the efforts of people in Pakistan, who wish to bring dignity to their own lives. Indeed, their work is often undermined by the very policies Mortenson supports, and that he allows his foundation to run alongside. This is colonialism by book, as the bombs fall with apologies.

Vijay Prashad is director of international studies at Trinity College and author of "The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World" (New Press, 2007). He lives in Northampton.

Fabricated Philanthropy: Echoes Beyond Mortenson

By FARZANA VERSEY

It is being vilified as a yarn, for plagiarism, for making up the Taliban threats. Frothing mouths are expressing anger over being cheated. Cheated about what? A chronicler who took liberties in the telling of his story or one who embezzled funds from the charity he set up?

Let us go beyond the mountain story. Greg Mortenson, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, wrote the bestselling 'Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time' based on his experiences with the tribals after having lost his way on a mountaineering expedition and landing up in Korphe, a Balti village. It is possible that he exaggerated bits of the anecdotes, but surely he did not know that the Central Asia Institute charity he set up to fund schools in the region would turn out to be a cash cow? If, as the reports now reveal, only 41 per cent of that money was utilised for the charity work and the rest went on his book marketing, then we need to use another route of inquiry. There is hypocrisy in the manner in which it was promoted; the author was following the good old altruism trail. The reality and deception lie between the lines.

One report stated: "President Obama was so impressed with the book that he donated $140,000 of his Nobel Peace Prize money to education ventures it spawned. The US military made it compulsory reading for personnel deployed in the Af-Pak theatre. American kids emptied their piggy banks to give to schools the author claimed to be building in Pakistan."

Why was it made compulsory reading for army personnel and why humanise what is being demonised? Why did Barack Obama donate the money to this charity and not to any local one? Mortenson's greater crime is one by default – of whitewashing the image of the US administration, even if to a small degree.

It has come to light that he was not kidnapped by the Taliban. In one of the photographs of 1996, his so-called kidnapper turns out to be Mansur Khan Mahsud, a research director of the FATA Research Center. After all these years, he now tells the Daily Beast that the author "just wanted to sell books because by 2006 everyone wanted to know about the Taliban and Waziristan…He thought this was a good chance to cash in". Going by this argument, he too is cashing in after the expose. Did he not recognise himself earlier in the picture?

There are many organisations that work in those areas and if one writer has conjured up stories about Taliban intimidation it does not mean they are entirely untrue. It isn't, in fact, just the Taliban. The government agencies too keep track. There have been cases of some activists being poisoned, of phone calls being tapped, of attempts at conversion. This I have first-hand knowledge of. But many of them also understand that they could be seen as suspect. There are some who admit that being do-gooders can be a pampered job profile where you don't socialise with the locals beyond three cups of tea, and return to the UN club for your dance and drink evenings.

The Mortenson story, as opposed to Mortenson's story, is not as unusual as it is made out to be. Misappropriating funds from charity is a known racket. In this case an individual has been exposed. What about the conniving methods by respectable people who ride on the philanthropy bandwagon in needy societies?

Lady Gaga's bracelet for Japan's tsunami victims is less devious than what the two Williams had been upto in India. Gates and Buffett made the idea of aid a business enterprise. It is a shame that they are sponging on the Indian economy while pretending to be "cheerleaders" for the game of giving.
With evangelical fervour they went about tutoring Indian industrialists on philanthropy. In this manner they got to meet all the big honchos under one roof and make a sound investment, not just in the poverty sector but to further their own businesses back home.

Beneath the umbrella of donations, it is raining opportunities. Buffett, the third richest man in the world, even manages to get upfront about it: "India is now a logical destination for an investor. I am an enormous believer in global trade and the better the rest of the world economies do, the better the US economy will do."

So insular is the attitude that while flashing sympathy he commented on the two recent world crises - in Libya and Japan - rather callously: "Of course it is a tragedy for the people who have lost their loved ones. But for trade these events are just an interruption. Business will go on and this will not slow down world economic growth."

India's poverty will work as a testing ground for experimental entrepreneurship and can also be a means of skirting bureaucratic stasis. Together with the vaccines, they will be pumped in "chewing gum and coca-cola". His company, Berkshire Hathaway, has a stake in Wrigley and Coca-Cola.

Bill Gates follows a similar principle when he says, "Giving and making money has a lot of similarities." It is, if seen in entrepreneurial terms. A minuscule portion of the growing individual wealth is channelised into a large nameless pool. But success is rarely shared by those who contribute directly and are seen as competitors.

It is easy to speak about the Third World black money that can be routed for such legitimate activities. Buffett made a startling comment, "A child receiving a vaccine is not going to question the source of the money." This could well apply to those coming from outside as well.

The plans for healthcare may set dangerous precedents. Bill Gates has been travelling through the villages of Bihar and while talking to NGOs, there is an attempt to educate and train the people. The simple fact is that such training will be quite useless, not because the rural folks are resistant – most do not question – but because it will be open season for the multinational pharmaceutical industry to dump their medical waste on us. This is not new and banned drugs even in urban areas are still prescribed and sold in India.

In a shocking bit of news a while ago, four Indian public-funded national universities entered into a pact with Nestle for nutrition awareness programmes for adolescent school-going girls in government-run village schools. This was kept under wraps because it has come to light that there was a Memorandum of Understanding between the two sides that stated: "This MoU, its existence and all information exchanged between the parties under this MoU or during the negotiations preceding this MoU is confidential to them and may not be shared with a third party."

When questioned on the basis of the Right to Information Act, the response from Nestle mentioned that the programme was"specially developed by scientists and experts to be used exclusively to carry out the set objectives of the MoU. The contents of the programme are of commercial and confidential nature and the disclosure of which may harm our competitive position." It is amazing that public institutions are being utilised for such competitiveness.

Our societies are also pulled up by the international philanthropist communities for spending on religion – people are more interested in building temples or donating to shrines. But when a huge tragedy occurs, it is the local NGOs and people who join in to help without waiting – the earthquake and floods in Pakistan, the tsunami in India. Except for foreign agencies, the Samaritan business community prefers to seek areas where they can spread their wings. This too is proselytisation.

Perhaps, it would make sense to talk about a preacher from Oakland, California. Harold Camping, an 89-year-old former civil engineer, runs a $120 million Family Radio Network, a religious broadcasting organisation funded by donations from listeners. He now owns 66 stations in the US alone.

There are many kinds of stories to be told and as many subterfuges. Greg Mortenson's charity will be examined. He has, however, only fabricated the truth a bit. The real fabricators are the ones who delude people into believing that while they are emptying their pockets their motives cannot be questioned. They are not selling books. They are buying obeisance, these altruistic colonisers.

Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based columnist and author of 'A Journey Interrupted: Being Indian in Pakistan'.

Three cups of sincerity

By Nosheen Ali
Express Tribune
April 19, 2011

The writer is a visiting scholar in the Centre for South Asia Studies at the University of California at Berkeley.

On April 17, the CBS investigative programme “60 minutes” revealed shocking details of alleged misconduct by Greg Mortenson, the renowned American humanitarian who builds schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan through his charity, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), and who co-authored the top-selling book Three Cups of Tea, which chronicles his life and work. The program highlighted how Mortenson fabricated key stories regarding his personal journeys in Pakistan, and how his charity has been involved in serious financial malpractice. While these are critical concerns that demand further inquiry, the real scandal is far more insidious and goes beyond Mortenson.

Three Cups of Tea is not merely about Mortenson’s humanitarianism. It is the quintessential text through which Americans are seeing one of the longest wars in US history. Primarily set in Baltistan and northern Pakistan, the text is designed to nourish western stereotypes and white knight fantasies — the region is a wild frontier filled with extremist madrassas and the Taliban, where people are waiting to be claimed and tamed by Mortenson’s schools. Because an abstract template of poverty and danger is applied to diverse locations, one gets a sense that there are mobile, multiple enemies all around in Muslim places that are self-evidently poor and ignorant, and thus potentially violent and dangerous. In a narrative that is not only distorted but plain simple dishonest, the largely peaceful, Shia-dominated region of northern Pakistan is ridiculously depicted as the birthplace of the Taliban, and the large presence of government, private and community schools in the region is completely eclipsed to create a spectre of rural ignorance. Terrorism is then conveniently reduced to this manufactured Muslim ignorance, instead of being connected to the violence of US foreign policy. By erasing the devastating consequences of US interventionism and sensationalising American humanitarian work in the war zone, Three Cups of Tea provides a palatable and therapeutic account of the war on terror for the American public conscience.

More disturbingly, Mortenson has become deeply entrenched in the counter-insurgency projects of the US military, with some of his girls’ schools now being inaugurated by the military top command. This has helped to reinvent the image of the US military as a harbinger of humanitarian development. While Mortenson’s emphasis on books appears to be an alternative to bombs, it actually complements them by helping to justify and sugar-coat the war at home. Journalists like Thomas Friedman and Christiane Amanpour dwell on the Mortenson-military partnership as if the war has really changed and its key characteristic is girls’ education, not occupation. Let’s not forget: The discourse of ‘white men saving brown women from brown men’ has a long colonial history. Imperial power as the beacon of women’s empowerment and civilisation was precisely the rationale used by British and French colonisers in Egypt, India and Algeria amongst other places for explaining their occupations.

It is beyond doubt, of course, that girls need education and that CAI-created schools have been tremendously beneficial for local communities. Mortenson’s story embodies a moving account of a foreigner’s dedicated service to rural Pakistanis and has inspired many to undertake their own charitable endeavours. Yet, humanitarianism is not a license for disingenuous representation and action, and must be assessed within the larger politics that it reflects and perpetuates. What we need is an anti-colonial humanitarianism — one that acknowledges suffering as well as the relational histories that have produced it. Dr Paul Farmer’s Mountains beyond Mountains provides a fine example in this regard.

It is also striking to observe the responses to the CBS investigation. Many are gravely disappointed, of course, as Greg Mortenson is a humanitarian idol both in the US and in Pakistan. Several have been hesitant to criticise him, saying that “heroes are not saints and can make mistakes” and “mismanagement is there in all non-profits, it is ok if some CAI schools do not exist on the ground”. While my argument is beyond Mortenson’s financial practices and ghost schools either way, it is nevertheless interesting to note that such a lenient, sympathetic response would have been unimaginable if the humanitarian in question was a non-westerner. CBS has provided an initial opening. Investigations of accountability must now be made with regard to CAI’s work.

The saviour rhetoric of humanitarianism constitutes a powerful force that often claims unquestionable moral certainty and superiority, and therein lies its danger. All critiques of Greg Mortenson’s work can simply be silenced by saying, ‘he has made schools, you have not’. Hence, the bottom line for many people is that since Mortenson is doing good and making a difference in the lives of poor people, it does not really matter if there are errors in how he conducts himself because the targets of his action are basically happy to have schools. That is tantamount to saying that poor people do not have feelings or a right to due process and dignity. Ghulam Parvi, a key character in Three Cups of Tea and CAI operations director in Pakistan for many years, resigned from CAI last year partly in response to the book’s blatantly false depiction of Baltistan as Taliban-central. Several of my friends from the region who are deeply grateful for Mortenson’s services are nevertheless thoroughly disappointed that he would use his platform to spread fundamental misperceptions about their region. Others are suspicious of his work with the military. If the CBS report is indeed true, then the casualness with which the director of a Pakistani think tank is portrayed as a Taliban kidnapper in Mortenson’s writings exemplifies a form of imperialist abuse that cannot be shielded under the guise of humanitarianism.

Perhaps the lesson to draw is not about sharing tea; it’s about sincerity. It’s also about self-interrogation of American interventions abroad, humanitarian or otherwise. Finally, one hopes that Greg Mortenson recovers from his ailments soon. All the people whose lives he has helped to change will undoubtedly be praying for his good health.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20th, 2011.

Greg Mortenson's three cups of fabrication

Watch CBS News Videos Online






Greg Mortenson’s elaborate, profitable and vile charade

Why we wanted to believe what Greg Mortenson was selling

Mosharraf Zaidi

National Post Apr 20, 2011


Greg Mortenson was awarded the Star of Pakistan, one of Pakistan's highest civil awards, in 2009

Under the burden of a 60 Minutes exposé on CBS and a blistering, 75-page takedown by adventure writer Jon Krakauer, Greg Mortenson’s phenomenally successful weaving together of fact and fiction has already faced more scrutinythan most pop philanthropy ever receives in its entire shelf life.

While opinions about Mortenson have always varied within the international development community and among humanitarian workers, that debate never really got a full airing. The ideas and philosophy driving the Three Cups of Tea mania for school-building has become a bit of an orthodoxy. Orthodoxies usually have the effect of muting debate. Pakistanis should know. Pakistan has endured far too much unjustified and illegitimate orthodoxy in its short history. Until the 60 Minutes exposé, only the very brave ventured to openly mock Mortenson. The fact that there is now intense scrutiny of every aspect of his two books and the charity that he founded is therefore a wonderful thing.

Many Mortenson sympathizers are perplexed by the strong reaction to the unraveling of Mortenson’s elaborate and carefully constructed fables. These sympathizers are not all innocuous middle-aged accountants or bleeding-heart housewives. Some very knowledgeable and clued-in people — heads of NGOs, education experts, media personalities — are also confused by the outrage at the little lies Mortenson told to help address a big truth: that girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan need help getting educated. Consider this: In Pakistan, the proportion of rural women who have attended school is one in three. In such dire need, many reasonable people wonder why there is such unmitigated outrage at a few Mortenson fibs.

The fact that Mortenson and his legions of supporters are perplexed by the tsunami of outrage and disappointment is a big part of this story. But if you’ve ever felt a sense of moral outrage about a big social or political problem (and which one of us hasn’t?), then understanding these people’s defensive crouch should not be too difficult.

Indeed, moral outrage is the raw material that helps build and sustain efforts like Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute. CAI’s donors evidently care deeply about the plight of girls in this part of the world. And that sort of emotion is the fundamental fuel that drives an entire globalized narrative of change being made in bad places (like Pakistan) by good people (like Greg Mortenson). The best and most effective practitioner of this narrative is New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof may stumble occasionally, but is decidedly anything but Orientalist — and he has introduced dozens of heroic African and Asian women to the Western world. Kristof’s columns and books help save lives; of this, there’s little doubt. But they do more than just spur generosity and philanthropy. They help hone the lens through which people see the less-developed world and the less-privileged that live in that world.

One aspect of that lens, which Mortenson’s book and several others like it share, is the notion that individual bravery, innovation, and action can be transformative for entire countries — as Mortenson’s various book titles clearly claim. The original hardcover subtitle for Three Cups of Tea was “One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations … One School at a Time” and the subtitle for the “young reader’s edition” is “One Man’s Journey to Change the World … One Child at a Time.” (To his enduring credit, Kristof’s reportage is almost entirely selfless, and he has rarely, if ever, credited himself as a savior).

Still, by any stretch of the imagination, the idea that anyone can save a country or the world is an emotional appeal, not a reasonable or rational one. There is nothing, of course, inherently wrong with tugging at people’s heart strings while relating serious problems and the possible solutions that brave innovators are coming up with to solve them. But just because there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with this kind of narrative doesn’t mean it is the right way to deal with complex and multilayered problems like HIV/AIDS in South Africa, malaria in Tanzania, female infanticide in India, or education in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Every single one of these problems should rightly compel us to act at a basic human level. The morality of doing something to address these problems is unquestionable. But the stimulus to act, and the action itself, have to be separated. Rushing into the serious and sober public-policy problems of health, sanitation, and education on emotional highs, induced by books like Three Cups of Tea, is a recipe for disaster. Exhibit A: Mortenson’s post-60 Minutes reputation.

So what are the lessons from all this? There are a few. The first is that giving to charity without reading the fine print is tantamount to throwing your money away. Charity and philanthropy have an important place in a post-global world where our interconnectedness, from Kalamazoo to Karachi to Kyoto, is undeniable. Charity humanizes us and (hopefully) humanizes the recipients of our magnanimity. But you have to read the fine print. Luckily, I never donated to CAI, but owning to its elaborate and self-congratulatory subtitle, I also never read Three Cups of Tea. If I had, it would have been easy for me to resist the waxing eloquence of friends and family who were completely taken in by it. Mortenson’s story of being kidnapped by the Taliban in South Waziristan in 1996? Possibly the most blatant and obvious lie ever constructed in pursuit of girls’ education. The Taliban were busy taking over Afghanistan in 1996 and did not arrive in Pakistan until at least 2001.

The second lesson is that emotions have no place in solving serious public-policy problems. When we allow emotions to overtake our intellect, we allow charlatans like Mortenson to construct fables that play with those emotions. Put aside emotion as you consider the titles “One Man’s Journey to Change the World” or Stones into Schools, and what’s left is an intellectually indefensible set of words. Schools don’t get built from stone. They get built from teachers, students, parents — interacting with each other. They get built from annual budgets; and annual performance assessments of principals and school district superintendants; and education councillors, ministers, and secretaries. They get built from boards, and PTAs, and excursion trips, and sporting competitions. If that infrastructure is missing, then you will build schools from stones that will be empty and used as sheds for cows. That’s exactly what has happened to thousands of government schools in Pakistan (known as ghost schools), and that is what has happened to more than a dozen of Mortenson’s schools, as reported by 60 Minutes.

The lesson could not be more valuable. I recently worked as a strategist for the Pakistan Education Task Force, a government-established body assigned to devise solutions to Pakistan’s education emergency. The reaction to even some of the conservative data that the task force publicly released was nothing short of shock and awe. It was a demonstration of the fact that the true extent of the problem is understated and often misunderstood. One example? No less than 25 million Pakistani kids between ages 6 and 16 are out of school. (I personally favor the 40 million figure for out-of-school kids, which depends on older enrolment data and a larger net — it includes children between 5 and 18.)

The emotional response to such devastatingly low levels of enrolment is to indiscriminately support anything that claims to provide education. The spectrum of what this produces shouldn’t be hard to predict. At one end, it validates arguments and appeals made by radical Islamist charities to increase coverage of madrasas — religious schools — most of which may be benign, but some of which are decidedly malignant. At the other end, it creates an incentive for do-gooder NGOs and charities to eventually go bad — kind of the way it happened with Mortenson.

At just a shade under 10 million, Pakistan already has one of the world’s largest nonstate school (or private school) populations in the world. Any eventual solution to Pakistan’s education crisis will necessarily include both for-profit private schools and nonprofit schools of the kind built by organizations like the Pakistani charity the Citizens Foundation, which has built more than 600. That’s why Mortenson’s fall from grace is so disappointing, because his schools are not a bad idea — just an incomplete one.

Mortenson’s mistakes and fabrications notwithstanding, philanthropic schools offer too much value to be rejected wholesale. Three reasons stand out in particular. The first is that they provide a demonstration effect. Schools built from foreign charity that do well are an example for others in Pakistan to follow. For generations, Pakistan’s Zoroastrian and Catholic schools served as examples for the private sector to ape. The successful ones now regularly produce Ivy League material. There’s no reason to believe that — in theory –Mortenson-style schools couldn’t do for Baltistan what the nuns did for Karachi and Rawalpindi.

The second is that they spur competition among local charity initiatives, regular government schools, and even private schools. In the free market for education in Pakistan, that competition will invariably spur improved practices across the board. This process has already begun and will, over the years, only deepen. Private schools are often housed in rented homes, rather than custom-built premises, yet they outperform government schools. Pakistanis have been voting with their feet, with total enrollment in nonstate schools going from virtually zero in the early 1980s to now making up about a third of all enrolment. One big reason the government has organized an education task force is to address this shaming of the public school system by nonstate providers.

Finally, they serve as a badge of shame and dishonor. Any country that cannot educate all of its children has a serious deficiency. Foreign charity schools should be prominent in the Pakistani education discourse because they should serve as reminders of the failures of Pakistani state and society to address a basic and fundamental human right, now recognized by Pakistan’s Constitution, thanks to last year’s passage of the 18th Amendment, which requires the state to “provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to sixteen years.”

No matter how important their contribution may be, however, charity and philanthropy cannot service the needs of a country that has more than 70 million children between ages of 5 and 18. Only a state-financed education system, with serious oversight and accountability instruments built into it, can address the challenge here. Mortenson may have been wrong to tell lies and make up tales. But those who believed he had the answers to Pakistan’s problems were not fooled by Mortenson. They were fooled by their own thirst for easy solutions to cold, hard, and complex problems.

The warmth of our emotions will never solve public-policy problems of the magnitude and scale that exist in Pakistan. Only an effective and accountable state will. Fact or fiction, Mortenson’s cups of tea were never going to deliver such a state. Only the Pakistani people can do that.

Mosharraf Zaidi has served as an adviser to governments and international organisations on the delivery of aid in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Greg Mortenson's wild Pakistan tale exposes more than one fantasist – it reveals Americans' delusion about their 'civilising' mission

The US swallowed these cups of tea to justify its imperial aims

Madeleine Bunting
The Guardian, Friday 22 April 2011


In the mid-90s an American nurse, Greg Mortenson, was sleeping in his car to save rent so he could fulfil a promise he made to build a school in remote northern Pakistan. Fifteen years later, his book of his epic journey, Three Cups of Tea, has been in the US bestseller list for more than four years; thousands attend his speaker events; he has raised millions for his charity, and built hundreds of schools in the Gilgit-Baltistan region. His book was top of the reading list for US troops deploying to Afghanistan.

It was an extraordinary story – until this week, when it was dismantled in the US programme 60 Minutes and in an ebook by one of Mortenson's former supporters, Jon Krakauer. Mortenson has admitted to "some omissions and compressions" while largely defending his work. But his myth has fallen apart with such astonishing speed that every- one is left wondering how on earth it persisted for so long.

Mortenson's feet of clay expose far more than one fantasist: they also reveal a lot about the naivety of Americans concerning the world and their role in it. No one questioned him too closely, and, more importantly, no one listened closely enough to what the Pakistanis themselves had to say: the unravelling of the Mortenson fable has come as no surprise there. Even in such a highly connected world, some forms of information still don't travel and certainly make no headway against the word of an American hero. Americans swallowed his tale because they wanted to. What empires – particularly those involved in violent conflict – need, above all, is heroes.

Making Mortenson a credible hero means traducing the whole region of Gilgit-Baltistan which, in his script, becomes a wild region of extremist Islamism drawn to violent terrorism. Time and again, he braves personal danger to follow his dream. His big pitch for the last 15 years is that schooling will divert potential terrorists: a "one-man peace mission" in the war on terror. By this account, the insurgency in Afghanistan/Pakistan is not political opposition to foreign intervention but a form of false consciousness inculcated in the madrassas. Get to the child early enough and they will grow up good democrats. It's ludicrously naive given that all the 9/11 bombers were highly educated.

Even more importantly, it has no relevance in Gilgit-Baltistan, which is a peaceful, predominantly Ismaili region whose inhabitants see the Paris-based Aga Khan as their spiritual leader. There is a strong Tibetan Buddhist influence.

Rather than Mortenson waging a lonely battle against ignorance, the Aga Khan Development Network has been building hundreds of schools in the region and has a track record of staffing them and keeping them open. As the Pakistani journalist, Rina Saeed Khan, points out, Gilgit-Baltistan has one of the highest literacy rates in Pakistan. She asks, quite rightly, why Mortenson didn't join forces with the network given their experience and expertise, instead of struggling desperately to work it all out for himself.

But an American putting money into a foreign-sounding aid foundation doesn't quite have the same marketing appeal as the "one-man mission" line that captures perfectly the boom in DIY aid: a new wave of fledgling agencies driven by individuals frustrated and impatient with bureaucracies and politics, who launch their bid to "make a difference". A myth which turns development into an amateur's hobby.

To every age, their own type of hero: the British empire had Gordon of Khartoum in the 1880s, and the Americans have Mortenson. He is the gentle giant of a man who stumbles into exotic and dangerous locations of which he knows little, and makes friends. This is the innocent abroad – an image of America in the world that is also evident in Mortenson's rival in the New York Times bestseller lists in the last few years, Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love.

These hugely popular tales portray a deeply consoling myth of how the US engages with the world as these adventurous individuals wander through foreign climes, and in their expansive, endearing way want only to bring as much delight in their interactions with the locals as they experience themselves. Both books share the personal crisis/failure which is resolved by finding a new self (through a new sense of meaning or love) abroad: in both, the individual's emotional quest is the starting point and provides the narrative thread. These are knowable characters who effectively explain the exotic to home audiences. They offer homely, charming myths for an empire currently embroiled in deadly protracted wars, rather as Rudyard Kipling's fables delighted a previous age of imperialists.

But perhaps the most intriguing – and most serious – aspect of the Mortenson myth is that his "one-man mission to bring peace" is a continuation of a western drive to "civilise" the world. His parents were Lutheran missionaries in Tanzania. Mortenson describes grinding poverty and ancient tribal customs: it's a patronising form of orientalism.

Above all, Mortenson has talked about women's empowerment and his pledge to get girls into schools. Women need liberating from the oppressive tribal patriarchy. There is nothing original here – US foreign policy is now stuffed with the rhetoric of women's rights – but Mortenson has helped popularise one of the most astonishing conundrums: feminism has been co-opted as a rationale for the US war on terror. It dangerously justifies and confirms an American self-righteousness in central Asia.

Greg Mortenson's dizzying fall from grace

People in Pakistan featured in Three Cups of Tea dispute writer's recollection of events in memoir

Saeed Shah in Lahore and Ed Pilkington in New York
guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 April 2011 21.46 BST

The troubled world of book publishing has become almost wearily accustomed to receiving yet more bad news of a critically acclaimed memoir that turns out to have been partly or entirely fabricated.

The works of James Frey, J T LeRoy (aka Laura Albert), Margaret Jones (aka Margaret Seltzer), Nasdijj (aka Timothy Barrus), and many more fit the theme.

But rarely has there been anything quite as spectacular as this week's fall from grace of Greg Mortenson, author of the wildly successful and until now highly revered memoir Three Cups of Tea.

The scale of Mortenson's tumble is partly amplified by the dizzy heights that, until Sunday, he occupied in the realms of both publishing and philanthropy. Three Cups of Tea, his account of how he came to dedicate his life to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sold 4 million copies and remained in the New York Times bestseller list for more than four years.

The Central Asia Institute, which he founded on the back of the book to promote the educational causes he espouses, has attracted funding of almost $60m (£36m), in no small part from the donations of his deeply moved readers, including Barack Obama, who gave $100,000 from his Nobel prize winnings.

Another of those smitten readers was fellow adventurer and author Jon Krakauer, who was so moved he donated $75,000 to CAI. But Krakauer then grew suspicious of the story and began his own investigation.

Note to budding writers: if you have to choose an assailant who attacks your literary integrity, let it not be Jon Krakauer. He went at it like a CSI detective on steroids, writing his own 89-page ebook with an accompanying exposé on the CBS show 60 Minutes, which aired last Sunday. In both ebook and TV programme, Krakauer tears apart the narrative core of Mortenson's book, beginning with his claim that after a failed attempt to scale the mountain K2 in 1993 he stumbled into the Pakistani village of Korphe, where locals saved his life, gave him sustenance and inspired him to give something back by devoting himself to building schools in the area.

The problem, Krakauer says, is that none of that happened. "The first eight chapters of Three Cups of Tea are an intricately wrought work of fiction presented as fact," he says, accusing the writer of "fantasy, audacity and an apparently insatiable hunger for esteem".

Questions have also been raised about the charity side of Mortenson's hero status, with the revelation that only 41% of CAI's income in 2009 was spent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Mortenson's publisher, Viking, has promised to carry out a thorough review of the book. The Guardian can perhaps help the process, having spoken to several people in Pakistan who feature in Three Cups of Tea in ways that sharply conflict with their recollection of events.

Badam Gul said that the American had been an honoured guest in his home in the Laddah area of South Waziristan, not held hostage by Taliban, as Mortenson had suggested in the book. "We even made Greg Mortenson the chief guest at a football tournament we held for the children and put a special ceremonial turban on him. He gave out the prizes and the children were thrilled that an 'Englishman' had done so," said Gul, adding: "We are not rich people, but we did our best to make his stay comfortable."

In his book, Mortenson describes the tribesmen he met – who were from the Mahsud clan, though he wrongly calls them Wazir tribesmen – as continually smoking hashish and eating meat like wild animals.

Gul said that while there might be some hash smokers in Waziristan, as in any society, it was taboo to smoke in public as Mortenson describes. He thought that they were portrayed as "barbarians".

In the book, Mortenson describes how the Taliban held him captive for eight days but then released him. Gul said that there were no Taliban in Waziristan until 2002, when they fled across the border from Afghanistan after the US-led invasion of the country.

Those views are echoed by Mansur Khan Mahsud, who was one of the men featured in a photograph of Mortenson's "abductors" used in his second book, Stones into Schools.

"It is lies from A to Z. There's not one word of truth. If there had been a little exaggeration, that could have been forgiven," said Mahsud, the research director of a thinktank in Islamabad that specialises in the tribal area."The way that he's portrayed the Mahsuds as hash-smoking bandits is wrong. He's defamed me, my family, my tribe. We are respected people in my area. He's turned us into kidnappers."

Mahsud said that he had decided to file a lawsuit against Mortenson and was in contact with a lawyer in the US.

Also considering suing Mortenson is Mohammad Ali Changazi, a mountain trekking tour operator in Skardu, northern Pakistan, where the American built his first schools. Changazi's "scheming and dishonesty" is described at length in Three Cups of Tea.

Changazi, speaking by satellite phone from Everest base camp, where he was part of an expedition, said that he had largely carried out some of the charitable works in Skardu that Mortenson had claimed sole credit for.

Mortenson has so far largely avoided responding to the allegations, saying through intermediaries that he has been admitted to hospital for an operation relating to a heart complaint. As the legal suits pile up – including an investigation by the authorities in Montana into the accounts of his charity, CAI – he has spoken to only one journalist, from Outside magazine .

In the interview he admits to a certain amount of "compression of events", saying that his main visit to Korphe had taken place a year after he came down from K2. He claims literary licence, and passes the buck to his co-author, David Relin. "If we included everything I did from 1993 to 2003 it would take three books to write it. So there were some omissions and compressions, and … I don't know, what's that called?"

Krakauer thinks he knows. He has called his ebook Three Cups of Deceit.

Greg Mortenson's flawed one-man mission in Pakistan

Mortenson's fall from grace has hardly come as a surprise to the people in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan region, who spotted some of the flaws in his organisation early on

Rina Saeed Khan

Posted at The Guardian

Thursday 21 April 2011

I have to admit I enjoyed reading Greg Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea, a couple of years ago when I visited Gilgit-Baltistan and was encouraged by the locals to pick up a copy. After all, a relatively unknown American had written about their remote mountainous region and put them on the global map.

I found it to be an adventurous tale, often moving at times. However, there were several glaring holes in the story – what persuaded him to venture into the tribal area of Waziristan (strictly no foreigners allowed) where he is allegedly kidnapped by the Taliban? Then there were all the truckloads of materials that had to be loaded in Rawalpindi to be heroically taken up north via the dizzying Karakoram highway to build the schools. How strange, for in Skardu, the nearest big town to the mountain K-2, one can get anything from bunsen burners to bags of cement.

But perhaps the most obvious omission as Mortenson pursues his "one-man mission to promote peace … one school at a time" was that there was no mention at all of the Aga Khan Development Network that has quietly built more than 280 schools in Gilgit-Baltistan since the early 1980s. This mountain region is home to a sizeable population of Ismailis, who regard Prince Karim Aga Khan (who is based in Chantilly, outside Paris) as their spiritual leader. He founded the AKDN several decades ago and regularly visits the region. The Aga Khan was last in Baltistan in 2009 to inaugurate the picturesque Shigar Fort Hotel, which ploughs its profits back into the community.

Today the Gilgit-Baltistan region has one of the highest literacy rates in Pakistan. The Aga Khan schools are mostly English medium, where children learn from teachers trained at special centres set up by the Aga Khan Education Services. Nowhere is this covered by the book, which makes it sound like Mortenson had to tackle this problem single handedly, in the educational wilderness of the Hindu Kush/Karakoram mountain ranges.

I had quietly thought to myself then and wonder aloud now, why didn't he just plug himself into their large and competent network? Why did he not partner his schools with them, thereby ensuring a better chance of success in the long term? He could have continued to build the schools and they would have provided the teachers, solving many of the problems he encounters in the book. He must surely have heard of them, you can't drive for a couple of miles before running into a sign proclaiming the presence of the AKDN in the area.

"Education is not promoted by the building of schools, you need a whole infrastructure and organisation to support it," says Izhar Hunzai, the head of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme, while agreeing that Mortenson did indeed build several schools in the high-altitude villages and inaccessible valleys of Baltistan.

Given the backdrop of the extensive work done by the Aga Khan's network in health and education in the area, the local people did not exactly regard Greg as their hero or saviour. That was the yarn sold to the unaware American public. Mortenson had a good story to sell and he sold it well to a gullible western audience. They bought his books, earning him the large profits that are now going to be scrutinised by the attorney general in Montana (where Mortenson lives), among other sources of funding.

Back in Gilgit-Baltistan, Mortenson's fall from grace has hardly come as a surprise to the local people. According to Gohar Abbas, an investigative journalist from the upper Gojal region of Gilgit: "Perhaps the biggest problem with Greg Mortenson's Central Asia Institute was that there was no proper organisational structure in place."

During his investigations into the girls hostels set up by the institute in Rawalpindi last year for students displaced by the large lake that has formed in Gojal after a landslide blocked the Hunza river, Abbas discovered that the sole person in charge of the hostels was a 23-year-old whose father happens to be working with Mortenson as director of operations. "The people of our area, which has an almost 100% literacy rate, are familiar with the work of NGOs and expect very high-level work done in a professional manner," he explained. "This was more like a one-man show."

Mortenson's one-man mission is now floundering as accusations pour in and few rush to defend him, not even in Pakistan. Perhaps his heart was in the right place, but his approach was clearly flawed. Perhaps the money could have been better used – but it might be too late to change course. Greg Mortenson has unwittingly endangered the few schools that he has built in Pakistan's remote mountain valleys – I hope, for the sake of the local people, that his schools find a way to keep going.