Tuesday, July 15, 2008

It Takes a School, Not Missiles (NYT, 7/13/08)

It Takes a School, Not Missiles
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: July 13, 2008

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.

Read the entire article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/13/opinion/13kristof.html?ref=opinion

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

Rosemary Stasek: A Little Help Goes a Long Way

Former Mountain View mayor, Rosemary Stasek, was featured on NBC on June 27 for the work she's doing in Afghanistan. To view the two minute segment, click here.

Her non-profit, "A Little Help," has a website:
http://stasek.com/alittlehelp/.

The resources link is her bibliography of books about Afghanistan that she finds exceptional.