Security

From Greg Mortenson's book, "Stones into Schools."

' "I'm no military expert, and these figures might not be exactly right," I said. "But as best I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles, tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced, nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?" '

Also see this fantastic op-ed from the NY Times on the same subject.

A Girl's Life

The very first place we went on our first full day (the day after we arrived; March 2) was a girl's school. That was also, if not my favorite then one of my favorite things we did. Those girls were adorable and it was great seeing them pursuing an education, because I firmly believe that schools will single-handedly do more to solve all the many problems facing Afghanistan today than any other possible solution.

One thing that really struck me about the classes was how varied the ages were. There would be young girls sitting next to middle-aged women in first, second, third grade classrooms. Just another example of how women were denied education under the Taliban and everything during the civil war.

In case you couldn't tell, the second to last picture is a shot of several of the people on the trip standing at the front of one of the classrooms, along with Najib, our fixer/translator/tour guide. He would introduce us to each class in Dari and then start asking the girls question, like what they want to be when they grow up. Then whichever girl volunteered to answer would stand up and answer in English, always prefacing her statement with "In the name of Allah".