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The team had been working together for two years and the average age was 32 years old. The rest mounted up and rode north. He was quick to defend the weak and if negotiations failed he had no shortage of armed men that would stand beside him. The only sign that something is about to happen is a white contrail high in the sky. Gradually shapes emerged out of the shadows - a small group of Afghan Northern Alliance soldiers together with four American advisers who had been in country for about two weeks. Even the CIA was reticent to land paramilitaries and officers to set up the conditions for an Special Forces ODA to be inserted. Wide four members of American Special Forces and General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance2. The two Green Berets are solemn; they insist on driving through the gap so they can tell their story from the right perspective. It works against tanks, but its plain stupid in this terrain. If there is no enemy, then bureaucracy is the enemy, he says. It was old-fashioned professionalism. They spend every day training for war, teaching other armies about war, and waiting for the call to fight in the next war. The dirty gray mushroom cloud slowly bends in the wind. They moved and attacked mostly at night, riding small, wiry Afghan horses that are well suited to steep slopes and long desert walks. If the U.S. Special Forces team didnt work together with General Dostum and his militia, they would have had no chance against the tens of thousands of Taliban fighters. The sound of canon firecontinues without a break but at a slower pace. They also had two boys, then ages 4 and 3 (in the movie, they have a little girl). I suggest to Bill that we remove Walker from the hospital, where he might be killed by other patients, many of whom were fighting against him at the fortress. Dostums real success was in negotiating enemy commanders to lay down their arms and to join him. I am surprised, then, to see Dostum wrap his blue turban around his head and chin and stride into the village . I targeted a spot right next to this guys head. Its an important part of our countrys history and an amazing story of courage, brothers in arms, and the reasons we ended up in Afghanistan in the first place. Its three weeks after the madrasah bombing, and word has come down that 3,000 Taliban are still occupying the city and environs of Balkh, Alexander the Greats old walled capital, a few miles west of Mazar. We jumped in the back of a truck and drove up to Dostums HQ here in this house.. The old men are frail, with deeply lined faces. The greatest restrictions they face have been placed on them by Dostum himself. We wind through the tight pass alongside a swollen mountain river, go over the pass, then head a kilometer down the south side of the divide and stop at a freshly mudded house. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! We pass the twisted, stripped wrecks of trucks and Toyotas. All the while ostracizing the now First Vice President Dostum who is currently in exile in Ankara plotting his next move. Mitch Nelson, scanned the dark landscape around the landing zone. The crumpled bodies of prisoners, frozen in agony, are scattered everywhere. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. Bill and the team were wearing armor decorated with my logo when he died. Ironically, he actually served under the man he is portraying. He takes me to the hilltop above the village. The unexplained feeling of relief when you know your loved one is safe. . -KTLA 5 Riggle, now an actor known for his comedic performances, gave 23 years of total service to the military. It's a miracle of sorts given what they faced, a feat that the movie does a good job conveying. The morning after Heavy Ds return from Kunduz, he greets me with a deep, booming Howareyou? Today, he tells me, he is eager for me to meet his trophy mullahs. It took about an hour to get the aircraft. Furthermore, as shown in the movie, they were grossly outnumbered. These soldiers, I soon realize, come from much the same background as Dostums: sons of miners, farmers, and factory workers; some are men whose only way out of poverty is the military. -The Fayetteville Observer. This is the back jacket of The Hunt for Bin Laden ghostwritten by the late Jack Idema and published as non fiction by Random House editor Bob Loomis. Dostum must now change his focus from fighting to rebuilding his country. Its more like, I am coming to get youwhether I hit you is another story. Its Old World combat at its finest. Within hours, they are gone. Transfixed, they watch the Christmas tree being lit in Rockefeller Center. Around eight oclock on Saturday night, while Im talking with the Green Berets, one of Dostums men comes into the house and asks us to follow him outside. ", Yes. "Sir," he said. Mark Nutsch's team, ODA 595, was dropped in Dehi, roughly 100 miles from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. I dont think I will make it through this one he wrote me in an email just hours before he was gunned down on a raid in Ramadi. Some were angry then, some had been through enough wars to see what was coming. Newsletter And that ended the resistance. As the three of us climb back into our vehicle, I glance at the battlefield. Dostum implores the mullahs to call down to the bunker and tell the remaining men to surrender. As we drive, Paul tells me that, back in the U.S., even the Regulators are subject to a military culture of rules and red tape. The teacher giggles, his white beard shaking with joy. These Special Forces soldiers took on the Taliban on horseback I thought the guy was this ruthless warlord, one soldier says. It was September 12, 2003. Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. While researching to answer the question, "How accurate is 12 Strong?" If he wants to take over the whole country, do it. The shelling, raping, pillaging, looting, and house-to-house fighting that then befell Kabul stained the name of every mujahidin commander, including Dostums, and fueled his reputation for brutality. Some cry out in pain, some are weeping, and others lie still, their faces frozen in deathly grimaces. They observed how the film production was set up and talked to some of the actors, but they were never hired as consultants. SFC Bill Bennett RIP Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. It is rated R for violence and language throughout. In a village on the outskirts of Balkh, the convoy rumbles to a halt near an ancient castle that is now a rounded mound of tan mud. Fittingly, a lot of the actors in the movie had very little or no experience on a horse as well, so there wasn't very much acting needed to convey the team's lack of experience riding horses. Privacy Policy Our Afghans are running out of ammo. We are alive thanks to you. As Dostum stands on the porch, looking at the place of his birth, he chokes up. Ironically, it was this sort of diplomatic triumphthe surrender at Kunduz just before my arrivaland not a battle that gave the Regulators their most bitter experience of the war. Their closest call came toward the end of the campaign, before theyd reached the Tingi Pass; Id gotten an account of it last night from Mike, a big, bearded, soft-spoken soldier. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. Aside from the challenges of cultural differences and a sense of distrust on both sides, the Americans, with their state of the art technology and equipment, had to learn to navigate the treacherous mountains and desert landscape the same way the locals did: on horseback. I grab my cameras and ask Bill, a pensive Green Beret medic, to come with me. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Armored personnel carriers jerk to life in clouds of black diesel exhaust. Instead of the expected handful of holdouts, no fewer than 86 foreign Taliban emerged after a week in the agonizing dark and coldstarved, deaf, hypothermic, wounded, and exhausted. Mitch Nelson, a character based on Nutsch. The Regulators job was to invent a new form of warfare: coordinating lightly armed horseback attacks with massive applications of American air powerall without hitting civilians or friendly forces. It was right at dark. A few yards before the turnoff to Khvajeh Do Kuh, he gestures to a place where 180 of his men died fighting the Taliban. Men who are the Armys elite, who are college educated and fluent in several languages, yet who are paid little more than a manager at McDonalds. Their rooms are filled with green Army cots, dirty brown packs, and green flight bags. He refused to talk to his parents and he was takenback to our guesthouse for his protection. "My men are hungry. They have been blowing themselves up with grenades. Captain Mark Nutsch, Special Forces commander on the mission and Chief Warrant Officer Bob Pennington, the real-life counterparts to the roles played by Chris Hemsworth and Michael Shannon, were both on set to ensure accuracy in the movie's portrayal. Or maybe that scene in Star Wars: These sand people started jabbering in a language we had never heard. The Americans shouldered their hundred-pound rucksacks while the Afghans hefted the rest of the equipment. With Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Navid Negahban. Over 5000 Taliban remained hidden in surrounding villages. 12 Strong stars Chris Hemsworth (Thor from the Avengers movies, in case youre not up on pop culture) and Oscar nominee Michael Shannon and is produced by Alcon Entertainment, Black Label Media, and Jerry Bruckheimer Films. The steel gate to the guest house opens, and Dostum strolls out, hands in pockets, and is ushered into a black Audi Quattro with tinted windows. . The horses cast long shadows in the late afternoon. In the movie, another team member arrives to pick them up and tells them about the attacks. Sidelined, and in exile in Turkey, In 2009, Dostum was begged by President Karzai to come back from exile to reelect him and again in 2014 Dostum engineered the victory ofPresidentGhani.only to go back into exile. As he leans into the Afghan wind, the light falls, and a moment in history fades. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. '12 Strong' turns heroic tale into generic war movie "When I went to Afghanistan, I reported to Lieutenant Colonel Max Bowers. We were surprised at how good they were, says Captain Mark. A few minutes later, one of Dostums men runs up breathlessly, saying there is an American in the hospital. Finally, the pilot says he has the target in sight. The info I had was that he was MIA, Mark says. If the Taliban can rule successfully, let them. A year later, betrayed by his second in command, who had defected to the Taliban, Dostum fled to Turkey. If we had been there, Mikes death would not have happened., When they got word of the incident, the unit desperately wanted to get back to the prison. In an air attack, says Air Force Steve, you do one of two things. At first, their mission was one of personnel recovery, tasked with rescuing any pilots shot down during the air war in Afghanistan. The book is the inspiration behind the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film called "12 Strong" that was released in 2018 and stars Chris Hemsworth as Capt. An NGO insisted that thousands of corpses were dumped at a graveyard calledDasht-i-Leili outside of Shiberghan but refused to actual exhume them. Now, in a scene that has been repeated over and over for the past 2,000 years, a warlord is arriving. The Regulators were joined by at least three CIA officers kitted in full combat gear, including a 32-year-old ex-Marine named Mike Spann. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. A crude videotape made by one of Dostums men shows a battle in the rolling hills of the Darra-e Suf, where the yellow grass contrasts with the deep blue sky. He says it was an area sympathetic to the Taliban and that his heart went out to them. Shannon's character is wounded in the movie for dramatic effect. So, I worked for him, directly," says Riggle. It was about this time that Abdul Rashid became Dostum. In Uzbek, dost means friend; dostum means my friend. It was a nickname that the young soldier was given for his habitual way of addressing people. Dostum chuckles and denies the allegation. You raise your flag," Nelson says. You felt the air leave. Dostum is actually a nickname thatmeans my friend was born Abdul Rashid in 1954 in the desolate village of Khvajeh Do Kuh, about 90 miles west of Mazar. John Walker Lindh was the second Irish American jihadi I had met who was trained in Bin Ladens camps. I waited for it, that inevitable politicization of our troops presence in Afghanistan, but was happily surprised when it never came. It also means a great deal to our families, who sacrifice so much, that what we accomplished is finally being brought more into public light. They have Beretta pistols strapped to their thighs like gunslingers and short M-4 rifles slung across their chests. Now, Cpt. "They didn't expect us to survive," Mark Nutsch said. Nelson commits to leading 595 into Afghanistan as word of the disastrous terrorist attacks that day breaks. The Taliban had dug-in, trench-line bunkers shooting machine guns, heavy ma-chine guns, and RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades]. "12 Strong": The Inside Story of the Making of a (Refreshingly Accurate Six months ago, he traveled to Kabul with some Pakistanis to join the Taliban. Dont I know you? one of them says. So I approach a war movie set in the days after 9/11 with a certain amount of skepticism. "They weirdly are a formidable force that will continue to fight, no matter what.". He confesses that he had worried at first how the Americans would handle Afghan warfare: It was cold; the food was bad. Of course, war is cruel and brutal; any person who has ever read a single page of history understands the unfortunate necessity and commonality of war in all cultures, in all countries around . Weve all been there. When noon comes and goes, I expect the order to fire. What we are doing now has not occurred since Vietnam. The riders mount their horses, check their weapons, and begin the one-kilometer sprint to the Taliban front lines. As we drive through a drought-ravaged wasteland, he points out battlefields and the sites of ambushes and skirmishes. When it looked like they would break the back of the position, he would ride through as fast as he could and keep the Taliban on the run., With their knowledge of military history, the Regulators appreciated the ironies of this strange war: The Taliban had gone from the muj style of fightingin the mountains, on horsebackto working in mechanized columns, says Will, another member of 595. Dostums strategy was now their strategy: to ride roughshod over Taliban positions up the Darra-e Suf Valley, roll north over the Tingi Pass in the Alborz Range, then sweep north across the plains and liberate Mazar-e Sharif, Afghanistans second largest city. The men know their story and I wrote it down. Early in the afternoon on November 10, Dostum reached Mazar. -The Fayetteville Observer, In addition to ODA 595, three other teams were selected. The idea that that Dostum would actually savethe day for an embattledAmerica is an irony that has not fully played out. Twenty Urgan missiles point toward the village. But coordination soon improved, and the improbable allies fell into a rhythm: The Americans would bomb; Dostums men would attack. I tell the prisoner where he is and who hes talking to. Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. A good reminder for all Americans are the scenes portraying the oppressive lives the Afghan people were subjected to under Taliban rule. However, it's hard to imagine that was the case with the 12 Strong movie, since Nutsch has become a fairly well-known public figure. We moved our targeting up along the ridgeline to the second bunker. I convince the staff to move him to an upstairs bed, where Bill inserts an IV of Hespan into the mans dehydrated body to increase blood circulation. (19 Dec 2001) 1. Mitch Nelson (1963-) was a US Army captain during the Afghanistan War . In a tiny, sparse room are his father, Dostums former teacher, and a village elder. This time I had less worries with just a few hours waiting for Uzbek guards to look the other way while we hustled our kit over the blockade Friendship Bridge at night. Although nighttime gunfire is normal in Afghanistan, there is an urgency to the sound of the deep explosions that come from the 19th-century fortress of Qala Jangi, just over a mile east from Khoda Barq, a Soviet-era apartment complex west of Mazar. The Turks, long staunch enemies of Islamic extremism, contributed a small sum as well, and, on April 22, 2001, General Dostum and 30 men were ferried into northern Afghanistan on Massouds aging Soviet helicopters. real general dostum and mitch nelson Uncategorized September 20, 2021. He has two weeks of beard, beetling eyebrows, and a graying brush cut. It took a few hours for bombers to arrive from their carriers. When the television begins to blare, the men stare at the screen. People still walk by the 16-foot bronze statue of a Green Beret on horseback overlooking Ground Zero and are unaware of its significance (the Horse Soldiers monument is pictured near the bottom of this page). Nutsch said that the movie leaves out a key river that the men often had to swim across in the freezing cold water with their horses, one of the bigger obstacles they faced on the mission. It was at K2 that their team received new orders, after which it was no longer a mission about personnel recovery. The two Afghan leaders study a map with Captain Mark, just in case air strikes are needed. We were at the right place at the right time, says Steve. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Their motto is To Free the Oppressedsomething they have done so far in this war with no civilian casualties, no blowback, and no regrets. He did have trouble getting off his horse, and like in the movie, the medic gave him something for the pain. The lead horsemen disappeared behind the rocks, and the Regulators all held their breath, praying the bombs would reach the bunkers before the cavalry did. They sit patiently for hours, clutching tiny pieces of paper, seeking his aid. Some are in pieces; others have been flattened by tank treads. All I see is grass growing beside abandoned trenches. Dostum in September 2014 First Vice President of Afghanistan In office 29 September 2014 - 19 February 2020 President Ashraf Ghani Preceded by Yunus Qanuni Succeeded by Amrullah Saleh Personal details Born (1954-03-25) 25 March 1954(age 68)[1] Khwaja Du Koh, Jowzjan, Kingdom of Afghanistan Political party Junbish-e Milli Nationality Afghanistan His name, he says, is John Walker. Ive arranged through intermediaries to spend a month with the general, but for the past week, he has been a hundred miles east, trying to subdue Taliban forces that control the city of Kunduz. Travel and accommodations were provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. The twisted rag doll bodies of dead Taliban fighters lie heads back, fingers clutched, legs sprawled as if they fell running. Some huddle together to watch the gray pillars of smoke from the bombing runs. The problem is that the the Convoy of Death story is false. He knew that he had to put in his time shuffling papers in order to move up in rank. As I wait for Dostum to return, though, the constant chatter of machine guns and the badoom badoom of cannons from an American gunship bombarding the fortDostums military headquarterssuggest that I might be a bit premature in offering any congratulations on winning the war. I looked at Lahl and said, Bombs away. We had 30 seconds till impact; meanwhile, the Afghan horde is screaming down this ridgeline. It was somewhere between harassing and accurateenough to keep our heads down. When a local singer wrote a song about Dostum, the name stuck. A wife buried shoulders deep in her oven, scrubbing it out as if her life depends on it, as if it will make any sort of difference in whats coming (Angry cleaning, I call it.). When the regime fell in 1992, three years after the Soviets departed, Dostum fought alongside the mujahidin and helped the Northern Alliances legendary Ahmad Shah Massoud battle the fundamentalist Pashtun forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and gain control of the capital. We thought he was wounded. Mark Nutsch, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie, had recently been promoted out of the job he loved, serving in the field as a Special Forces team captain. I will let what you see be the truth.. Each night, Dostum would sit down with the Americans and lay out the battle plan for the next day. They were forced to spend the night on the river bank after dense fog made it impossible to navigate their Zodiac inflatable boats. The risk they were taking was indeed that great. Paul picks up the story, raindrops dotting his gold-rimmed, government-issue glasses. And if they became overwhelmed by the enemy, little could be done to save them since they would be roughly nine hours away from help. -The Fayetteville Observer, Originally, the Special Forces team, ODA 595, was supposed to be in Afghanistan on September 14, just three days after the attacks. But when he smiles, he looks like a naughty 12-year-old. When an American team finally recovered Spanns body, they discovered it had been booby-trapped with a live grenade (which they removed without incident). Staying off the roads and in the wilds, they could swoop down andattackthe Taliban but could not hold the ground. No one individual was the model for the statue. Dostum and Mitch Nelson remain close friends to this day. The mystery of missing prisoners was never matched up to the careful medical records kept of each al Qaeda and Taliban detainee kept by doctors and local NGOs. He rolls in a John Wayne walk to Commander Lal, whos in charge of the standoff. Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, . 12 Strong | On-set visit with Navid Negahban "General Dostum" John, he says. Dostum stays in contact with the Americans by radio, working to help focus the bombing: a man with a seventh-grade education directing the fire of the worlds most powerful military. The Uzbeks and Hazara took to the mountains to escape the mechanized columns of the Taliban, Those among Dostums men who had remained in Afghanistan now became guerrilla fighters, moving on horseback holed up in the mountains under the command of his former number two La. Mitch Nelson (Aussie Chris Hemsworth, aka Thor) is the highly trained but not combat-tested leader of the small team dubbed Task Force Dagger and sent by Col. Mulholland (William. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. That group was disbanded and then re-formed in the early 1950s as Special Forces, which John F. Kennedy later nicknamed the Green Berets. For a brief moment, the general stands triumphant, the conquering hero, the bring-er of peace, the warlord who has ended war in the northand, therefore, perhaps eliminated his own reason for being. "I created the face without the use of models or photos," said artist Douwe Blumberg, who designed the statue in collaboration with Mark Nutsch. More than 400 prisoners are said to have died; I count only about 50 bodies in the courtyard. In the back, a doctor leans over a man with a smoke-blackened face, wild black hair, and an unkempt beard. Various close ups of American Specia. Nelson and five of his men set off behind General Dostum and his forces, leaving Cal Spencer, Pat Essex, Charles Jones, Scott Black, Ben Milo, and Fred Falls behind to coordinate logistics and . The baby was born early while Mark was in Afghanistan. It seems that the brutal warlord has engineered the biggest peaceful surrender in recent Afghan historymore than 5,000 Afghan Taliban fighters and foreign volunteers laid down their arms. Yes. One of the soldiers from the ODA 595 died later while serving in Iraq. The team cleared him for immediate re-attack, but the pilot radioed back that he had hung a bomba bomb had not released. "We slept on the ground the first couple of nights." The general climbs out of the tiny black car and tucks his hands into his belt. 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers We could see a bunch of Taliban come out of another bunker complex off to the south and disappear behind a hill. Two Soldiers Tell the Real Story Behind 12 Strong | Paul Asay Most of the fallen look as if they were killed instantly. -ABC News. we discovered that all but one of the 12 Horse Soldiers depicted in the movie were married and 10 of them had at least two kids. There was talk that the team might be split uprumors of differences with a commanding officer who didnt appreciate the traditional independence of the Green Berets. That he is known to be a deft alliance makerand breaker. I ride in the warlords communications truck, a white Land Cruiser. We accepted a huge amount of risk." Yes. Dostum and the Green Berets drove by them as they headed for Kunduz. The team set up on the roof of a building about 400 meters from the madrasah and called in a strike. They had to kill their horses for food. Despite the movie accurately capturing the soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, the real-life heroes have said that the movie does take artistic liberties, adding drama and portraying certain events out of order. He was authorized to transform his Jowyzjani militia into the 53rd Infantry Division in 1988 and ultimately under the Soviet backed regime of Najibullah, he became commander of the 7th Army Corps in charge of all of Northern Afghanistan. Yes. As they began unloading their gear, they were met by Afghans in turbans, their faces wrapped. The U.S. refused to work with Dostum until former UN envoy Charlie Santos pointed out to the CIA that the only functioning fighting group besidesthe Panjshiris ofMassoud wereDostums Uzbeks. Both are awake, both unwilling to break the silence as their young child sleeps nearby. Submit an Article Until a group of 480 al Qaeda and talibs showed up at the gates of Mazar. (In his book Taliban, author Ahmed Rashid reports a tale he heard that Dostum once ordered his men to drag a thief behind a tank until all that was left was a bloody pulp of gore. Then theres Steve, a well-mannered southern medic; Pete, the burly chaw spitter; Mark, their blond, midwestern captain; and so on. It was then that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld showed the press an image of a bearded Green Beret on a horse and explained that the man was directing air strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets in northern Afghanistan. By the time they come up and look, you are on them. The latter approach was well suited to Dostums style of attack. Rashid later admitted that not only did he not witness it but it the event wasfictional. When the two aircraft were on location, the Green Berets radioed Alliance commanders to evacuate civilians from the area. A local mullah sings a prayer of deliverance and thanks to Dostum. The general gets out of the car and goes down the line, trying to embrace and talk to each person, but it is getting dark. Buzkashi is the way Afghan boys learn to rideand its the way Afghan politics is played: There are few rules and the toughest, meanest, and most brutal player takes the prize. No one knew just when or where the team would be sent. Late in the afternoon, a convoy of mud-spattered off-road vehicles pulls up, and a dozen dusty Americans in tan chocolate chip camo climb out. Hemsworth plays Capt. Mullah Faizal and Mullah Nuri refuse: They claim they dont know these people. Compliance. Dostums meetings do not end until well after midnight. We only had the time it takes 250 horses to travel 1,500 meters, so I told the pilot to step on it, Will says. (Within a week, he will be named deputy minister of defense for the new interim government of Afghanistan.) If one was to look for the roots of Dostums warlord reputation it began when he was the direct and most successful enemy of the CIA-backed insurgency of fundamentalist warlords based out of Pakistan. "I don't need food for my horses," he said. They landed near a mud-walled compound in the remote Darra-e Suf valley in northern Afghanistan. The real-life base wasn't built up at that point and amounted to little more than a series of Soviet-era bunkers. In 1996, when the Taliban rolled into Kabul, Dostum was forced to retreat to his stronghold in Mazar as the mullahs instituted their version of a pure Islamic state.

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