One Tribe at a Time
Can the U.S. military devise a successful strategy to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan? It already has the outline of a potentially successful strategy, just read Major Jim Gant’s “One Tribe at a Time (A Strategy for Success in Afghanistan)”, previously posted here, Reference: One Tribe at a Time by Maj Jim Gant along with Reference: One Tribe at a Time by Steven Pressfield.
The details of how to implement a tribal strategy and work with the Afghan tribes are unique to that country, but the overall strategy of working with tribes is not new at all.
Where has it been done? Maj. Gant mentions what Army Special Forces did with the mountain tribes of Vietnam (known by the French term “montagnards”). Another even more appropriate example is what the CIA’s Bill Lair did with the Hmong of northern Laos and what other CIA officers did with the Ta’oi and other Lao Theung tribes of southern Laos.
There were no American fighting units in Laos at all. The only American military assigned to Laos were the handful of U.S. Air Force forward air controllers, known as Ravens, but they coordinated a very powerful force multiplier, the close air support of Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps aircraft assigned to work for Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). The tribal strategy in northern Laos was a very few CIA officers working with entirely Lao tribal surrogates. These tribal surrogates fought on our side and helped implement the strategy of keeping the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) occupied in Laos and away from South Vietnam. They also defended the ancient invasion corridor leading from Hanoi to the Lao capital and on into Thailand.
Continue reading “Journal: Vietnam and Laos and Afghanistan”
