It Takes a School, Not Missiles – Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute of Bozeman

Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.

Mr. Bush has focused on military force and provided more than $10 billion — an extraordinary sum in the foreign-aid world — to the highly unpopular government of President Pervez Musharraf. This approach has failed: the backlash has radicalized Pakistan’s tribal areas so that they now nurture terrorists in ways that they never did before 9/11.

Mr. Mortenson, a frumpy, genial man from Montana, takes a diametrically opposite approach, and he has spent less than one-ten-thousandth as much as the Bush administration. He builds schools in isolated parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan, working closely with Muslim clerics and even praying with them at times.

Central Asia Institute http://www.ikat.org/

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13kristof.html?_r=1&oref=slogin