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Greg Mortenson: Mountaineer fighting Islamic extremism with education

It was a failed attempt to climb K2 in Pakistan in 1993 that set Greg Mortenson on a path that would take him almost to the humanitarian summit of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Exhausted from the climb, recovering in a remote village Mr Mortenson, left, met a group of children sitting in the dirt and writing with sticks in the sand. He promised to build them a school. It seemed, he says, a "rash" promise.

The story of what happened next is told in Mr Mortenson's book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time, a bestseller that is now required reading for military leaders as well as for humanitarians. In the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan, many say, his work has been transformative. His Central Asia Institute has built 84 schools in the region, educating mainly girls, and Mr Mortenson, 51, has become a tireless advocate of the need to build human relationships with the Muslim world. His mantra: politics won't bring peace, people will bring peace.

"These are secular schools that will bring a new generation of kids that will have a broader view of the world," he says. "We focus on areas where there is no education. Religious extremism flourishes in areas of isolation and conflict."

Born to two American humanitarian workers, during his own humanitarian career he has been kidnapped, shot at, and forced to deal with two fatwas issued against him by local clerics opposed to female education. In 2009 alone, he has been awarded Pakistan's highest civilian award, the Star of Pakistan, and a half dozen other humanitarian gongs but, for this year at least, he failed to land the biggest one of all.

Stephen Foley