Tribal Engagement and the Heavy History of Counterinsurgency Light
Tribal Engagement and the Heavy History of Counterinsurgency Light
by Hannah Gurman
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For months now, James Gant has been dreaming of returning to Afghanistan, where he served for nearly four years since 2003 as a Special Forces officer for the U.S. Army. “I feel like I was born there. The greatest days of my entire life were spent in the Pesch Valley and Musa Qalay and with the great Sitting Bull.” In a short time, Gant’s dream will come true. Although the army originally ordered him to Iraq, where Gant served from 2006-2007, it has now re-written his orders. Soon, he will return to Afghanistan to re-unite with Sitting Bull and pursue an alternative strategy to defeat the Taliban.
Gant first met Sitting Bull in April 2003, when he and his team of nine soldiers, mostly Special Forces officers, were deployed to the Konar Province of Afghanistan on orders to “kill and capture anti-coalition members.” After successfully fighting off an attack in the first months of their deployment, they made their way over to the village of Mangwel, where they met the tribal doctor who agreed to introduce Gant and his team to the tribal elder. When they sat down, Sitting Bull, whose real name is Malik Noorafzhal, asked Gant why none of the other US forces passing through his village had ever stopped to talk to him. It was the beginning of Gant’s self-described “journey of discovery” through which he and his team threw their fate in with Sitting Bull’s tribe, fighting and negotiating alongside them to resolve decades-long land disputes between local tribes and build their capacity to defend themselves from the Taliban.
Gant has received much praise in the military for his work with the Afghan tribes. One senior military officer dubbed him “Lawrence of Afghanistan” after the larger-than-life British officer who fought alongside Arab tribes in their rebellion against the Ottoman empire. The similarity is evident in a personal photo of Gant in Afghanistan, in which he is wearing a long black robe and headdress, looking straight into the camera with a serious gaze and a strong sense of purpose. While the analogy to Lawrence was originally intended to underscore the incredible promise of Gant’s vision and influence, it unwittingly reveals the links between Gant and the darker side of the history of counterinsurgency.
Download the full article: Tribal Engagement and the Heavy History of Counterinsurgency Light
Hannah Gurman is an assistant professor at New York University’s Gallatin School and is in the early stages of a larger research project in an attempt to (re)institutionalize counterinsurgency in the U.S. military and foreign policy establishment.
