"The conflict here will not be won with bombs but with books."

So says US Army Lt. Col. Christopher Kolenda about the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistani border region in a column by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times.

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.

Mortenson, a US Army veteran from Montana, arrived at the idea after being nursed back to health in a remote Muslim village after a failed attempt to climb the famous Himalayan peak K-2. In return, he built a school for the village and discovered a calling. Mortenson's best-selling book Three Cups of Tea describes his experiences.

He secures a commitment from a village to demonstrate "buy-in" by providing land and labor to build a school. He provides funding and building materials through his aid group the Central Asia Institute. Aside from being kidnapped for a week, Mortenson and his schools have largely been left alone by radical groups that have attacked other Western aid groups due to the stake in the schools by local people.

The project has focused on including girls since finding that educated mothers are better able to restrain their sons from joining radical Islamic groups. The Pentagon has shown interest ordering a number of copies of Mortenson's book and inviting him to speak. Kristof concludes

Military force is essential in Afghanistan to combat the Taliban. But over time, in Pakistan and Afghanistan alike, the best tonic against militant fundamentalism will be education and economic opportunity.

So a lone Montanan staying at the cheapest guest houses has done more to advance U.S. interests in the region than the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of the Bush administration.