It's the tribes, stupid! (or not)

I’ve twice featured Jim Gant’s essay on the subject of ‘It’s the tribes, stupid!’ Alas, not everyone is so taken by it as I or, more recently, Generals Petraeus and McChrystal. Take Christian Bleuer, who blogs at Ghosts of Alexander from the standpoint of his studies of Afghanistan language and culture at Indiana University and Australian National University, where he’s a doctoral student. Recently he brought all the academic guns to bear on Major Gant. It’s easy to make fun of a graduate student arguing with a footsoldier, especially when it’s not entirely clear that Mr Bleuer has ever been to the ‘Stan, but his essay is certainly worth reading. It’s long, and I admit I skipped here and there. It ends with this rhetorical question: ‘And we’re supposed to expect that American soldiers can navigate all of this while embedding with a local tribal leader?’

Well, if they can’t, then we might as well bring them home, because not much is going to happen otherwise. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Lawrence of Afghanistan

On November 25, I published a link to Major Jim Gant's online essay, One Tribe at a Time, and suggested that Mr Obama could do worse than adopt it as his new-new Afghan strategy. I assessed the chances of that as little or none. But according to the Washington Post today, the chances have suddenly and hugely improved:

'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.

'"Maj. Jim Gant's paper is very impressive -- so impressive, in fact, that I shared it widely," Petraeus said, while McChrystal distributed it to all commanders in Afghanistan. One senior military official went so far as to call Gant "Lawrence of Afghanistan."'

If you aren't willing to read his monograph, at least look at the WaPo's slide show with a narration by the major. It's the essence of his argument. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford