Hearts and minds – and 3 cups of tea – in Afghanistan

I saw Three Cups of Tea author Greg Mortenson speak to hundreds of people at Fort Drum on Saturday. Unfortunately, Mortenson wouldn’t let us record any of the speech, nor did he give an interview. But we’ll hear some reaction later this week.

I mention this because the core philosophy of Mortenson’s Central Asia Institute is being replicated in the U.S. military’s revised strategy in Afghanistan.

Mortenson’s mission is very simple: educate girls. He repeats again and again what he’s heard during more than a decade of building schools in the most remote regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Women tell him: a) we want our babies to stop dying. b) we want our girls to go to school.

On the same day that Mortenson was at Fort Drum, the New York Times reported on a new effort that will put female soldiers on the front lines specifically to talk with Afghan women:

Next month they will begin work as members of the first full-time “female engagement teams,” the military’s name for four- and five-member units that will accompany men on patrols in Helmand Province to try to win over the rural Afghan women who are culturally off limits to outside men. The teams, which are to meet with the Afghan women in their homes, assess their need for aid and gather intelligence, are part of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s campaign for Afghan hearts and minds. His officers say that you cannot gain the trust of the Afghan population if you only talk to half of it.

In his speech, Mortenson quoted Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen as telling him, “we cannot capture the hearts and minds of Afghanis, we must engage them.”

I’m not saying Mortenson is driving military policy, but the Pentagon brass are clearly listening to people like him.

And we can only hope the U.S. military has as much success in Afghanistan as Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute has had.