Another hero falls off the pedestal? Greg Mortenson

There are some serious allegations floating around against the guy who is considered by many as one of the models of how truly humanitarian assistance must be delivered in some of the toughest regions in the world. Greg Mortenson, the author of best-selling “Three Cups of Tea” and the founder of the Central Asian Institute (CAI, not to be confused with CIA), has often been on a pedestal by many, including recently some top ranking officials in the US army and those engaged in multi-billion dollar efforts in Afghanistan, as his charm made his way through the reading of his book by the spouses and family members of these officials. All of a sudden we are told that even he is not as “good” as we thought he was. Personally, I was as shocked, or even more, as I was when I heard the allegations against the Nobel Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank aka the “Bank for the Poor.” Not to mention another Nobel Prize winner, who except for his most recent victory in eliminating Osama, has lost his public support dramatically.

What on earth is going on? Why are all our role models turning out to be such disappointingly fake and undeserving of our respect?

At least in the case of Mortenson, I can’t help but see these allegations with suspicion, which might make me look bizarre at best and conspiratorial at worst. While agreeing in principle with Jon Krakauer – another mountaineer and author of best seller “Into Thin Air” among others – on the need for transparency, accountability and truth in writing whatever you claim to be true, I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that in addition to becoming increasingly an influential voice on how aid should be used, especially in volatile areas such as the remote villages in the depths of rural areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Mortenson had also become an increasingly “critical” voice of how billions have been spent in this region and elsewhere.

Spicing up his stories aside, which I am not trying to defend or justify in any way, the allegations about his misuse of funds is a serious and important question that needs much further scrutiny and appropriate follow up – whatever that may look like. In doing so, what we need not lose sight of, which I am suggesting that we may end up doing, is that the same standard must also be applied to all those aid agencies involved around the world, whose annual budgets are several times the entire budget of Mortenson’s CAI in the last decade. SIGAR continues to report on billions of dollars being “unaccounted for” in the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, yet not much is being done to follow up or raise public awareness or bring the perpetrators to justice or even stop the misuse of taxpayers hard earned dollars. This is my biggest worry, not the accuracy of Mortenson’s narrative in his book, or how much he spent on his “education and outreach” in the US. Some of the schools he built may not be actively used by the people, but he at least did build the schools, and at a fraction of the cost that schools are currently being built in Afghanistan.

I can go on and on, but the point is to make us look beyond the surface.