James Nye
They kept their affair secret from the military for a year while they lived as natives fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
She was an experienced Washington Post war correspondent and he was a decorated Green Beret, known as ‘Lawrence of Afghanistan’ for his ability to rally the local Pashtun tribes to his side.
Despite the fact that both were already married and each had four children, Major Jim Gant and Ann Scott Tyson conducted their clandestine love affair as members of the local Pashtun tribe until he was relieved of his command in disgrace in March 2012 amid accusations of erratic behaviour and substance abuse.
While the US Army Special Operations Command has never revealed why Gant was airlifted out of Mangwel, in the north of Afghanistan, he and Tyson have both come forward to lift the lid on their tumultuous affair and reveal the betrayal they feel from the military.
‘We did fall in love, I would say over the course of about a week,’ Tyson, 55, told ABC News in a recent interview about the first time they met in 2010. She told interviewer Brian Ross that Gant, then 44, had fallen in love with her at first sight and asked her to marry him within days of their first meeting.
Despite being thrown by his forwardness, both had marriage problems and soon they began a passionate love affair. Eventually, Tyson gave up her job and her family to come to Afghanistan and live with and report on the charismatic special forces commander.
Tyson joined Gant in wearing the traditional tribal clothing of the local Pashtuns and became so trusted by the locals that she was accepted into the inner circles of the tribe’s women and children.
For his part, Gant instructed Tyson on how to conduct herself in a firefight and gave her a spare pistol to use in case she ever needed to defend herself.
With his long hair, unkempt beard and flowing robes, Gant looked more like Osama bin Laden than a US military officer - but his command was successful and his fame as Lawrence of Afghanistan meant he was welcoming VIPS to his Mangwel base.
Senator John McCain and presidential candidate Mitt Romney were just some of the politicians who wanted to see first hand the unconventional success Gant enjoyed.
During these visits, Tyson had to hide. ‘I stayed out of the picture,’ she said in a joint ABC News interview with Gant. ‘We didn’t want my presence there to be widely known, but at the same time a lot of people knew about it... I was glad for the opportunity to help the man I had fallen in love with, as well as to write about a potential solution to the incredible suffering I had witnessed over a decade almost.’
Indeed, Gant’s commanders claim to this day that they had no idea that the Green Beret was keeping a woman the Taliban openly referred to in radio communications as ‘his wife’ by his side - against all rules and regulations. But it all fell apart.
Despite their love affair, Gant had endured constant fighting in Mangwel for 22 consecutive months and had developed a problem with drinking and pain killers. Drinking in Afghanistan is against army rules as is conducting ongoing relationships during warfare.
In confidential files revealed by Tyson and Gant, the major was relieved because he ‘indulged in a self-created fantasy world’ supported by his ‘wife’.
He was stripped of his Special Forces honours, demoted to captain and made to retire. He was labelled a disgrace, a charge he says causes him the most pain after all the success he enjoyed.
‘We both knew that there was a lot of risk in doing what we did. And I would do it again,’ Gant told ABC News this month in his first television interview. ‘It was extremely unconventional, yes, to say the least.’
In that interview, Gant admits he drank, took drugs and kept Tyson with him - all against regulations. However, he claims that his superiors were aware he was not a by-the-book soldier and luminaries such as retired General David Petraeus were supporters.
‘I never left the battlefield defeated. I never lost a man. Well over 20 awards for valor for the men that I fought alongside. We went after ‘em every single day. I brought all my men home. That’s it,’ Gant said. Indeed, Petraeus still calls Gant, Lawrence of Afghanistan - a comparison that Gant was keen to play up to.
Despite all that has happened, Gant and Tyson, who married last year, have come forward to tell their story in Tyson’s new book, American Spartan: The Promise, The Mission And The Betrayal of Special Forces Major Jim Gant.
Gant’s fall from grace was as swift as his rise. Just four years ago, some of his superiors believed that he held the key to winning the war in Afghanistan.
Altogether, Gant spent 50 months in Iraq and Afghanistan - receiving the Silver Star Medal for his service in Iraq, the nation’s third-highest award for valour.
As part of the Green Beret’s he was shipped off to Mangwel, by the Kunar River and it there that he wrote a 45-page pamphlet, One Tribe At A time in 2009, which detailed how the US could actually win the war in Afghanistan.
Gant believed the only way to do this was to earn the loyalty of the country’s Pashtun tribes - and he thought the way to do this was to go native.
The pamphlet so impressed Petraeus, who had been made commander in Afghanistan in 2010, that he encourage Gant to follow through with his theories. ‘It wasn’t about our weapons or our body armour... it was gonna be about how we treated them. And it worked. It worked in a big way,’ said Gant.
He and Tyson became so trusted by the Pashtun that they admitted them to their tribe. Gant in turn got them to fight the Taliban with him - issuing this simple command.
Petraeus visited Gant in 2011 and saw the level to which he had become accepted by the tribesmen, even becoming like a son to their chief, Malik Noor Afzhal, nicknamed Sitting Bull.
‘Gant did go native. You go native so that the natives feel that you respect them and are comfortable with them and trust them, above all. And he really was adopted as a son by Sitting Bull... there was no question about the relationship between these two individuals. And that’s what you want,’ Petraeus said to ABC News.
‘Jim had become more Pashtun than the Pashtuns,’ Tyson wrote in her book.
But some thought Gant was going too native and whispered that he was becoming a Colonel Kurtz figure along the lines of Marlon Brando’s character in the Vietnam film, Apocalypse Now. But it was the arrival in early 2012 of Army 1st Lt. Thomas Robert straight from West Point that sealed Gant’s fate in Mangwel.
‘None of his bosses knew that Ann was there,’ Roberts said in a recent interview. ‘He didn’t follow any rules. He was definitely erratic. He did not act in a stable manner.’
In March, Roberts filed a statement accusing Gant of ‘immoral and illegal activities and actions’ and said he was often ‘intoxicated and under the influence of pain medications.’
Gant admits this, claiming he was suffering PTSD brought on by his constant services. He was airlifted out immediately and made to shave his beard and wear his uniform. ‘I would have rather been in the hands of the Taliban at that point,’ he said. ‘It was crushing. It was absolutely crushing.’
Recovering now in Seattle, Gant recently returned to Mangwel to the village he left so unceremoniously two years ago. They greeted him as a friend and fired their Kalashnikovs in the air in celebration.–Daily Mail