One Tribe at a Time: The Paper that Changed the War in Afghanistan

"Major Jim Gant, a man seen by many of us as the 'perfect insurgent,'--an inspiring, gifted, courageous leader...
-- GENERAL DAVID H. PETRAEUS (U.S. Army, Ret.)

THE PAPER THAT ROCKED
OSAMA BIN LADEN

Team members during the May 2, 2011 U.S. military raid that killed Osama Bin Laden seized piles of Al Qaeda intelligence. One piece of evidence found in Bin Laden’s personal sleeping quarters was an English language copy of Jim Gant’s One Tribe at a Time. It contained notes in the margins consistent with others identified as written by Osama Bin Laden.

A directive from Osama Bin Laden to his intelligence chief was also discovered. It identified Jim Gant by name as an impediment to Al Qaeda’s operational objectives for eastern Afghanistan.

Bin Laden ordered that Gant be assassinated.

“[One Tribe at a Time] was hugely important…at a time when I was looking for ideas on Afghanistan…[Gant] was the first to write it down, in a very coherent fashion, very readable, very encouraging frankly…and there is enormous power in that.”
--General David H. Petraeus (U.S. Army, Ret.) quoted in American Spartan: The Promise, The Mission, and The Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant by Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post reporter Ann Scott Tyson read “One Tribe at a Time,” and - informed by her combat experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and her eight years as a reporter in China - she realized that Jim’s paper made sense. She decided to write a story about Jim entitled, “Jim Gant, the Green Beret who could win the war in Afghanistan.” After the article appeared in January 2010, as Jim was in Washington, D.C., attending Pashto language training, he met Ann and the two fell in love. She followed his mission in Afghanistan and wrote AMERICAN SPARTAN: The Promise, the Mission, and the Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant.