Posted on 01/18/2010 1:22:04 AM PST by nikos1121
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.
Malik Noorafzhal, an 80-year-old tribal leader, told Gant that he had never spoken to an American before and asked why U.S. troops were in his country. Gant, whose only orders upon arriving in Afghanistan days earlier had been to "kill and capture anti-coalition members," responded by pulling out his laptop and showing Noorafzhal a video of the World Trade Center towers crumbling.
That sparked hours of conversation between the intense 35-year-old Green Beret and the elder in a tribe of 10,000. "I spent a lot of time just listening," Gant said. "I spoke only when I thought I understood what had been said."
In an unusual and unauthorized pact, Gant and his men were soon fighting alongside tribesmen in local disputes and against insurgents, at the same time learning ancient tribal codes of honor, loyalty and revenge -- codes that often conflicted with the sharia law that the insurgents sought to impose. But the U.S. military had no plans to leverage the Pashtun tribal networks against the insurgents, so Gant kept his alliances quiet.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Thanks for posting the article. Very interesting.
Good stuff.
As you were, Major. Carry on.
Not sure that's recipe for long-term success.
Champlain assisted the Hurons against the Iroquois and as a result got the French into long-term hostility which arguably lost them North America.
Magellan did the same in the Philippines and got himself killed.
Cortez, OTOH, used locals against locals and then crushed them all.
But picking sides in local disputes we by definition don't really understand is not by any means always a successful tactic.
Yes, I agree and that’s why I said we should pray for him. His time is really numbered, unless we can support his efforts with massive numbers. The idea that you have 4 to 6 Green Berets per tribe startles me.
He’s also going to be a marked man.
I don’t see how he or any of his men can be safe there in the long haul.
Sunglasses. Dead give-away.
This is, I bekieve, the first time I have fully agreed with the WaPo.
DG
(I hope hope no one tells the Pushtuns about the Montagnards.)
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