American Commando Brought His Girlfriend to Afghanistan, And Armed Her
American Commando Brought His Girlfriend to Afghanistan, And Armed Her by David Axe, War is Boring
Let me be clear about what I’m writing here. This is not only a story about disgraced U.S. Army Special Forces major James Gant. This is also a story about a story about Jim Gant.
On March 24, David Wood at Huffington Post published a glowing profile of Gant that carefully, even elegantly, talks around the shocking reality of Gant’s rise and fall as a commando officer in the Afghanistan war.
Gant had invited his girlfriend Ann Scott Tyson, a Washington Post reporter, to accompany him and his team on secret missions in a remote province in eastern Afghanistan in late 2010. And according to Wood quoting Tyson, Gant armed Tyson, teaching her to use “almost every weapon” in the Special Forces inventory.
Gant and Tyson, who are now married, lived close together in Afghanistan while unmarried—a big no-no by Islamic standards. Gant also kept alcohol in Afghanistan, where drinking is illegal. And he had unauthorized drugs and unsecured classified documents.
This long list of violations got Gant fired, demoted and kicked out of the Army. Tyson wrote a hagiographic book about her disgraced husband called American Spartan. I have not read it…
Excerpt:
QUOTE Gant isn’t the military genius that he, Tyson and Wood would have you believe he is. Foreign Internal Defense was an established doctrine before the 46-year-od Gant was even born.
The former major didn’t invent counterinsurgency practices such as soldiers meeting with village elders. Nor is Gant responsible for America’s increasing reliance on secretive Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and other conflict zones.
In fact, the very first U.S. troops in Afghanistan in late 2001 were Army Special Forces. These Green Berets trained and led local forces, just as Gant did in Kunar in 2010.END QUOTE
As we have discussed on SWJ before and in fact specifically when One Tribe at a Time was published, the concept really has its roots in Foreign Internal Defense doctrine and specifically “remote area operations:”
“Remote area operations are operations undertaken in insurgent-controlled or contested areas to establish islands of popular support for the HN government and deny support to the insurgents. They differ from consolidation operations in that they are not designed to establish permanent HN government control over the area. Remote areas may be populated by ethnic, religious, or other isolated minority groups. They may be in the interior of the HN or near border areas where major infiltration routes exist. Remote area operations normally involve the use of specially trained paramilitary or irregular forces. SF teams support remote area operations to interdict insurgent activity, destroy insurgent base areas in the remote area, and demonstrate that the HN government has not conceded control to the insurgents. They also collect and report information concerning insurgent intentions in more populated areas. In this case, SF teams advise and assist irregular HN forces operating in a manner similar to the insurgents themselves, but with access to superior combat support (CS) and combat service support (CSS) resources. (From FM 3-05.202 Foreign Internal Defense 2007.) ”
But we should by now understand that such operations are not war winners in and of themselves. They must be part of a coherent and comprehensive strategy and campaign plan in order to support achieving success in the long term.
This is a much better article than the earlier one by David Wood who made a self promoting Major out to be a hero when he was anything but. His article was a disgrace to the hundreds of special operations soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen who have numerous tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and fought at least as well as Gant (he is not an outlier in that respect) and who served quietly. Furthermore our many good officers appropriately gave credit to their men instead of spinning a self-serving myth.
Most Special Forces ODAs have to rely on locals for their safety, but that doesn’t remove the responsibility for them, especially their leaders to “trust, but watch your six.” As for outliers, most Special Forces soldiers enjoy the thrill of combat (as do many throughout the U.S. military). I don’t think most enjoy killing their fellow man, and certainly most are not immature enough to publically boast about it. I just assume we all have a dark side, and mature individuals with character struggle to subdue it. That kind of boast is something you expect from a young Marine graduating boot camp years ago, a tone that changes quickly once he gets some life experience. Finally, NCOs are the backbone of SF, and I don’t recall Gant crediting his team mates with any of his supposed outlier successes. On the other hand, officers are entrusted to lead these men and enforce a high moral standard which is also critical for success in COIN and FID. Based on what I read and heard from others it doesn’t appear Gant accepted his responsibility as an officer.
For the military we shouldn’t allow the media to tell us who our heroes are. We all know how the spin machine works, and we also know who our real heroes really are, and most of them go out of their way to avoid media coverage for themselves. They’re the junior enlisted, NCOs, Warrant Officers, Officers who have been on repeated combat rotations who you count on when the going got tough. They provided valued leadership at their level, despite questionable leadership at higher levels. Fortunately, they aren’t that rare in the Special Operations community. To them a sincere thank you for their service, many of us can’t hold a candle to you.
Bill—-Jim came up from the SF NCO ranks and as far as I remember he has always given his team huge respect comments when he was in Iraq.
Also it is noted that when he released his article “One Tribe at a Time” it was shredded by countless writers and bloggers in 2009 to include a large number of DoD and military members.
What really bothers me deeply about comments concerning Jim is the simple
fact that if one thinks the issues mentioned in say David Axe’s comments or say the rebuke by the Army were justified—-then it totally and I mean totally overlooks the true fact that if one thinks the entire 5th SFGA in 10 years of war in VN did not have the same things going on—alcohol, drugs, women, journalists being armed and accompanying patrols, and even yes SF personnel who had reputations for the enjoying of killing which got them on the top ten wanted list by the NVA and Hanoi Hannah are in another world.
Was it right in say a moral way—probably not—was it right within a military standard –no—but was the 5th highly successful in a war—yes it was.
By the way even with alcohol, drugs, women, and the love of killing by some SF the 5th SFGA was the highest decorated wartime US Army SF Group in the history of SF.
I remember starkly the debate that broke out when Jim released his article
“One Tribe at a Time” in 2009 in which the concept of VSO was first being discussed.
He took a major beating and one should have read the voices of doom and gloom on a program that made sense to no one at that time in 2009—and some even questioned openly his thinking.
So here we are five years after the article was written–and the core question remains was VSO a success or a failure?
AND if a failure—why then a failure?—I keep going back to an old SF UW saying—if at war win it or go under trying—did the Army really want the VSO program to really succeed? Did the Army really want to win in AFG?
IMHO—no to both questions.
Riddle me this. Did Jim Gant’s military and cultural tactics work; was his team successful? I have read no official (classified or unclassified) report that suggests otherwise. If so, how was Jim Gant and his team’s success exploited and integrated into our coherent and comprehensive strategy and campaign plan in support of achieving long term military, social and political success (in accordance with the cultural frame of reference of our local Afghan allies in the hills) in Afghanistan?
I inherited Gant’s Iraqi NP unit in 2007, (note: he was not the TT chief at the time as he had redeployed). The Iraqi NP were well-trained and I’ll give his team some credit there. However, from what was reported to me, the team seemed to exist to support his operations. From my conversations with officers (US and Iraqi) and enlisted here is what I gleaned.
1. Gant ran his own sources and would go out and conduct unilateral operations without coordinated. Obviously given the congested battlespace of Baghdad this could pose problematic with BCTs and BNs and their AOs. According to those I talked to, he would roust them at o dark hundred and take them on missions without reason or purpose, no NP, no backup, nothing.
2. He routinely went out with NP BN leadership in civilian cars, dressed in Arab garb to the Babylon hotel to booze it up and cavort with their whores. From what I recall he was married at the time to another Army officer with kids.
3. He flaunted the rules and regulations set forth by those in charge regarding dress and grooming standards. He was on a MiTT in Baghdad, not some JSOC kill team or A Team in Kunar.
4. He armed his interpreters which according to a MND-B JAG ruling was against the laws of armed conflict (arming a non-combatant).
All of this sounds very similar to the issues surrounding his relief in Afghanistan. In my opinion he felt he the rules didn’t apply to him, and it looks like someone finally called him on it. I doubt his relief was something that occurred overnight…probably was given some counseling, but ignored it.
Best wishes to him and his family.
Bill M… Point by point right back at you… I’ll keep mine short. Why does the “enjoy killing” statement have to be about promoting one’s ego… Inappropriate or not, why can’t it be a statement of fact? Are you a psychiatrist? If you are, let me tell you about my issues.
I agree with you that we can’t confuse emotion with fact or relevance. A number of your opinions are not based in fact… since we don’t have all the facts yet… i.e. the need to ask his men whether they felt unnecessarily endangered or not… Secondly, what makes us think that his men have to come to his defense? Maybe they know he can take care of himself. Maybe these men are still on active duty and think it best to wait. Maybe they are happy to be rid of him. I don’t know… all I know is what I read and I read that Jim Gant didn’t lose any team members. Is this true?
Jim Gant and I spoke in person and he gave me credit for what I did. I don’t expect Jim to shout it from the mountain top… and although I can’t speak for others… maybe others who worked with Jim feel the same way.
I participated in the prolonged “arguments” on his proposed strategy and I hate to share this bit of news with you…the sources you cite as valid criticism of Jim Gant’s approach were not universally accepted as valid. So, what are we calling tribes today… solidarity groups, kith and kin networks, cluster of clowns? The very same smart people who disagreed with every descriptive of the locals never did provide a useful analytic construct of Pashtun society. It is always easiest to shout down an idea than to develop one… Oh, the lamentations… We could have won this war and the hearts and minds peace years ago if only they would have taught us better… but no one did and we didn’t…
Thanks for this exchange of opinions.
VSO/ALP have indeed been integrated as a major cornerstone of the Afghan strategy for the last few years. As stated in Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan:
“Village Stability Operations (VSO) and the ALP are complementary components of both the ISAF and Special Operations Joint Task Force-Afghanistan (SOJTF-A) COIN strategy. The VSO is an umbrella term for a collection of governance and development programs at the village level that are linked to the ALP. The VSO/ALP programs aim to promote progress along three lines of operation: governance, development, and security.”
http://www.defense.gov/pubs/October_1230_Report_Master_Nov7.pdf
One has to wonder why ALP was not an automatic response of the SF community upon entering Afghanistan. SF had the CIDG program in Vietnam and the Marines had the CAP program…all ALP predecessors. It took a maverick like Jim Gant to get SF back to a core FID capability in the rural areas. Why? Also, why didn’t SF pull his “paramour” out earlier? Why didn’t they pull Gant out earlier to wind him down? I think there is a leadership failure here as well as Gant’s own shortcomings.
Finally, what is the difference between BG Sinclair, General Petraeus and MAJ Gant? Petraeus didn’t get caught with his “paramour” while he was on active duty.
Wow, we love a good drama, don’t we? I am sure someone in Hollywood is already scrambling for the movie rights on this little drama. Thirty years from now that yet to be made movie will be the narrative of that defines our little misadventure in Afghanistan for most Americans.
I wish Jim well. It sounds like he has demons to wrestle, like so many of our guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. I hope he wins that wrestling match some day. I didn’t walk in his boots in battle, so I won’t judge him here in this forum. It sounds like he made bigger mistakes than most and that it ultimately caught up with him.
As to leveraging one segment of a population against another as a means to resolve insurgency? I think the jury is still out on that one. It certainly did not “win” the war in Vietnam, and it will not overcome the fundamental illegitimacy of the Northern Alliance monopoly on governance we established and have defended these many years in Afghanistan either.
Ron White the comedian says “you can’t fix stupid,” well, I’m thinking maybe you can’t fix extreme acts of hubris either. At least not in an enduring way, and not in this modern strategic environment where everyone is so connected by modern tools of communication.
Jim’s hubris as an individual has caught up with him – our hubris as a nation is closing fast… I, for one, am far more concerned about the latter than the former.
DOL,
Bob
Something is not adding up here.
I would argue that the two worst things a small unit could do when attempting to establish village security in any Third World country are bring your girlfriend and bring booze. To attempt that in Kunar strikes me as impossible – I mean the can of worms you would open is staggering. In my experience the least of your problems would be the enemy – in other words the mission would go out the window.
I obviously don’t know where all of this is alleged to have occurred but the Kunar is, believe it or not, a comparatively ‘liberal and accessible’ region of AF. I’m sure the mission required security to be imposed along the Kunar Valley itself but further up the Parun and Kunar Rivers into the interior is where the more intelligent ALQ & Taliban were likely to have holed up and you would need to eventually address that possibility. IMO the suggestion you could interact with these more isolated mountain folks with your GI Jane girlfriend and a few cases of Jack Daniels is complete bullshit.
If you think in the mind of the average AF mountain man that sexual fraternization with a native village female was much more fraught with danger than bringing your own western ass to the gig you should think again.
If you then teach the broad to shoot, use comms, strip weapons, read maps, display courage, education, humor, medical skill as good or better than any Afghan male within the village you may as well walk around the village and go on patrol with an unpinned grenade in your mouth.
Unlike native women who are ‘protected’ by a mind-blowingly harsh code of conduct that deals death to transgressors both ways a western women who is living in sin is rated as some sort of exotic animal that human considerations need not apply. And the notion they would let her near their wives, sisters, daughters etc. I suggest unlikely. Many folks may find this attitude unacceptable but these conditions are widely understood and accepted by the natives. Furthermore they are aware many foreigners do not live by the same customs and they make it very plain to any potential visitor if you can’t live by their code stay out of their village.
Like I mentioned earlier these are allegations but it is not the first time someone has attempted this type of behavior in this part of AF.
I had the misfortune of encountering a similar couple (both foreigners) who attempted the same thing as it is alleged here. On a romantic stroll thru the forest above the village the couple were intercepted by a group of men, the male was immediately bludgeoned to death in front of his lover and she was raped for several days and then murdered. The Taliban were blamed but eventually it emerged it was youths from the village who were the culprits. The elders determined 8 youths (all unmarried virgins) were guilty to varying degrees of culpability including those condemned by association and all eight were executed.
Sure they deserved it but you can imagine what happened to the mission the US taxpayer was hoping the team might have accomplished.
Similarly at a different time and location another individual attempted to introduce his girlfriend into the mission and the elders informed him either she goes or the team goes. Obviously they sent her out but unfortunately for all involved the local guides decided to ‘rest’ the women at a summer shepherds hut up on the alpine pasture.
She was held there for three months. Miraculously she survived long enough for one of her guilt-ridden assailants to contact me and I was able to get her out. The poor kid was completely covered in festering sores and bites and addicted to what I guessed was opium. She only spoke French but she knew a bit of broken English and as I attempted to clean her weeping sores I’ll never forget her mumbling that she been raped by numerous men for three months “up both roads” as she put it.
On another occasion the village elders suspected the couples within a NGO medical team were not married despite their claims to the contrary. I was asked to determine if their claims of legitimate marriage were genuine. They were not and I informed the elders as much.
After considerable persuasion I got the now furious elders to allow the 4 male doctors and none of the women permission to enter the valley. The medical team refused to compromise and as a result the entire team (5 doctors and 5 nurses plus a large caravan of medical supplies and camp-followers) failed to treat a single patient in the valley for the entire tour.
I have heard of numerous other instances of similar problems in AF & elsewhere but these three were in this region and I know to be true and none involved official sanction as they were all under the radar.
The two questions I always asked was :
“Why the hell are you here ?”
and
“ What the fuck is the purpose of your mission?”
Never once did I get an even remotely acceptable answer. Invariably the women burst into tears and the men just frowned at you with dumb red-faced indignation.
RC
I agree bringing your girlfriend to the combat zone is a bad idea. Unfortunately USASOC codified the bring your girlfriend to war tactic with CST’s; all female “Cultural Support Teams,” essentially issuing the SFODA’s paramours at their remote VSO outposts. So, take some impressionable female soldiers in their late teens and early twenties, add them to a bunch of horny U.S. commandos stuck in the middle of nowhere in a combat zone and you get the best “As the World Turns” for U.S. forces Afghanistan soap opera that taxpayer money can buy. You can guess what happens, and it has…Instant home wrecking. Good idea.