The Green Beret Who Could Win the War in Afghanistan

Jim Gant, the Green Beret Who Could Win the War in Afghanistan – Ann Scott Tyson, Washington Post opinion.

It was the spring of 2003, and Capt. Jim Gant and his Special Forces team had just fought their way out of an insurgent ambush in Afghanistan’s Konar province when they heard there was trouble in the nearby village of Mangwel. There, Gant had a conversation with a tribal chief – a chance encounter that would redefine his mission in Afghanistan and that, more than six years later, could help salvage the faltering U.S. war effort…

… In recent months, Gant, now a major, has won praise at the highest levels for his effort to radically deepen the U.S. military’s involvement with Afghan tribes — and is being sent back to Afghanistan to do just that. His 45-page paper, “One Tribe at a Time,” published online last fall and circulating widely within the U.S. military, the Pentagon and Congress, lays out a strategy focused on empowering Afghanistan’s ancient tribal system. Gant believes that with the central government still weak and corrupt, the tribes are the only enduring source of local authority and security in the country.

“We will be totally unable to protect the ‘civilians’ in the rural areas of Afghanistan until we partner with the tribes for the long haul,” Gant wrote. A decorated war veteran and Pashto speaker with multiple tours in Afghanistan, Gant had been assigned by the Army to deploy to Iraq in November. But with senior military and civilian leaders – including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; and Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command – expressing support for Gant’s views, he was ordered instead to return to Afghanistan later this year to work on tribal issues…

More at The Washington Post.