Education-Minded Afghans, Pakistanis Urge Central Asia Institute to Build More Schools

By Elaine Pasquini

Central Asia Institute co-founder and director Greg Mortenson with the first Afghan students to attend school in Sarhad village in the Wakhan corridor of northeast Afghanistan (Photo courtesy Sarfraz Khan, Central Asia Institute).

REGARDLESS OF WAR or political chaos in their countries, families in rural areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan want schools for their children. “We’re overwhelmed with requests for schools,” Central Asia Institute (CAI) Board of Directors chairman Julia Bergman told the Washington Report in a Nov. 30 interview. “Presently, we have 61 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but we still need to build more.”

In 1996 Bergman, library systems administrator at City College of San Francisco, first visited the small village of Korphe—the last community below the Boltoro glacier leading to K2 in the Karakoram mountains of northern Pakistan’s Himalaya range. She never dreamed she’d return the next year with Central Asia Institute co-founder Greg Mortenson to furnish a school library.

Following his nearly successful climb in 1993 to the summit of K2, the world’s second highest peak, Mortenson fell under the spell of this remote enclave perched high on a cliff 800 feet over the Braldu River in Baltistan, since 1948 an area of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Befriended by Korphe’s villagers, the mountaineer promised his hosts he’d return and build their first school. He kept his promise, and Korphe Community School became the Bozeman, Montana-based NGO’s first project.

Mortenson recounts his experiences in the award-winning book he co-authored with David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea…One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time.

Educating girls is a top priority for Mortenson, who subscribes to the premise of an African proverb that observes, “If you educate a boy, you educate an individual, but if you educate a girl, you educate a community.” Of the 24,0000 students educated by CAI schools, 14,000 have been girls. Teacher training is also a priority and the group is fund-raising to establish an endowment for teachers’ salaries.


A first-grade boy learns his numbers at the Halde School in the Karakoram mountains in northeast Pakistan. Prior to 1997, when the school was built by the CAI, the literacy rate was less than 5 percent (Photos courtesy Greg Mortenson).

Since the group mainly builds primary schools for grades K through five, one special concern is students’ ability to continue their education. To this end, Bergman said, in addition to providing scholarships CAI is building a hostel in Skardu to provide safe, chaperoned housing for students while they attend middle school and high school in Baltistan’s capital city. Since CAI schools follow the national curriculum of Pakistan, graduates eventually can matriculate to universities in Lahore or other major cities. With financial assistance from CAI, Bergman noted, Jahan Ali, Korphe School’s first graduate, was able to continue her education in Skardu.

While Baltistan residents follow the Shi’i branch of Islam, Bergman pointed out that CAI also has projects in the mainly Sunni Punjab and the predominantly Ismaeli region of the Charposan Valley in remote northwest Pakistan.

“We also have many requests for schools in the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan,” the librarian added. “We have seven schools there now, and plan to build more. It’s about 40 hours by rough road from Kabul or two to three days by horse over the Irshad Pass.”

This mountain valley—bordered by Tajikistan, Pakistan and China—is the poorest district in one of the poorest provinces of Afghanistan, with a literacy rate of 5 percent. Local residents—even former Taliban fighters—are involved in all phases of building the schools, guided by a village committee of elders. “We have incredibly strong local support staff in all areas where we have schools,” Bergman said.

For more information, or to make a donation, contact: Central Asia Institute, P.O. Box 7209, Bozeman, MT 59771; phone (406) 585-7841; e-mail <info@ikat.org>; Web site <www.ikat.org>.

Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

SIDEBAR

“Today, Another Candle of Knowledge Has Been Lit.”


	Syed Abbas Risvi (l), supreme Shi’i spiritual leader in Baltistan, with Greg Mortenson (Photo courtesy Greg Mortenson).

Ever since Greg Mortenson’s auspicious first meeting with Syed Abbas Risvi in April 1997 at a PSO gas station in Skardu, the religious leader of northern Pakistan’s Shi’i Muslims has been one of Mortenson’s strongest supporters. Four years later—and just three days after the 9/11 attacks—the tall, thin scholar, trained in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, was the featured speaker at the CAI’s Kuardu School inauguration.

In his book Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson relates how Risvi’s speech (a section of which is reprinted below) touched him and others in the crowd. “I wish all the Americans who think ‘Muslim’ is just another way of saying ‘terrorist’ could have been there that day,” Mortenson wrote. “The true core tenets of Islam are justice, tolerance, and charity, and Syed Abbas represented the moderate center of Muslim faith eloquently.”

At the school inauguration the Shi’i leader addressed the crowd as follows:

“Today, from the darkness of illiteracy, the light of education shines bright. We share in the sorrow as people weep and suffer in America as we inaugurate this school. Those who have committed this evil act against the innocent, the women and children, to create thousands of widows and orphans do not do so in the name of Islam...Protect and embrace these two American brothers in our midst. Let no harm come to them…These two Christian men have come halfway around the world to show our Muslim children the light of education…I request America to look into our hearts and see that the great majority of us are not terrorists, but good and simple people. Our land is stricken with poverty because we are without education. But today, another candle of knowledge has been lit. In the name of Allah the Almighty, may it light our way out of the darkness we find ourselves in.”

—E.P.