The general climbs out of the tiny black car and tucks his hands into his belt. When we climbed up to the top of that hill, we could see the Taliban on the other side, regrouping for the final attempt to stop us. Planning a one-day live-ammo training exercise can require six months of paperwork. Even the CIA was reticent to land paramilitaries and officers to set up the conditions for an Special Forces ODA to be inserted. I grab my cameras and ask Bill, a pensive Green Beret medic, to come with me. The CIA had begun to work with Massouds people in October of 1999 hoping to pay him to kill Osama bin Laden. Mullah Faizal and Mullah Nuri soon surrendered Kunduz to Dostum, and Walker was imprisoned with the other foreign volunteers in the bunker at Qala Jangi. They sit patiently for hours, clutching tiny pieces of paper, seeking his aid. They were potentially facing about 50,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. When an American team finally recovered Spanns body, they discovered it had been booby-trapped with a live grenade (which they removed without incident). He talked for half an hour. "There was nothing built up," Mark Nutsch said. Then the radios are jammed with Dostums men shouting and celebrating. Later on he had a dark premonition. Dostums men load RPGs and check their ammo drums. 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. I could see the horses blasting out the other side. We had an entire 250-man cavalry ready to charge. The Regulators wanted Dostums right-hand man, Commander Lal, to hold off while they got their aircraft in position, but Lal had already given the order. John, he says. The rest of the time they travel. The enemy was 700 meters out and moving quickly. 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. Military families cant escape the fact that weve now been at war nearly 17 years. Initially eschewing interaction with Nelson due to his youth and the fact that he doesnt have killers eyes, they come to trust each other and eventually work in tandem along with their teams. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved, The joy was short-lived. 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. Three or four bombs hit right in the middle of the enemy position, says Will. We thought he was wounded. Their home base is Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but they spend only a few months of the year there. Trigger warnings include battlefield violence, repeated explosions and gun battles, and up-close scenes of civilian killings by the Taliban. All I see is brown dirt and men on donkeys leading camels along the road. There are 86 al Qaeda fighter in the basement, including John Walker Lindh. The entrance to the bunker was pierced by cannon shots and is blackened from explosions. 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. The estimated 30 Alliance soldiers who died have already been taken away by their friends. 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. You see this grid? My opinion is an unequivocal yes. (19 Dec 2001) 1. Our Afghans are running out of ammo. No one knew just when or where the team would be sent. July 22, 2018. Officials had been unaware that Dostum's army still used a horse cavalry. They observed how the film production was set up and talked to some of the actors, but they were never hired as consultants. We had two days to plan, another Regulator says. Our mission was simple, another soldier says. This scandal would tarnish General Dostums very realaccomplishment of being Americas most aggressive and stalwart allyagainst the Taliban and al Qaeda. Im looking through the optics while rounds are zinging all around us. At this point in the tale, Mike nodded toward Paul, who was sitting next to him on the couch at Dostums guest house. Now the CIA and spec ops have been let loose., Dostums men were a loose alliance that grew with every victory against the Taliban. 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. -The Fayetteville Observer. That group was disbanded and then re-formed in the early 1950s as Special Forces, which John F. Kennedy later nicknamed the Green Berets. According to historian and author Doug Stanton, who spent five years. We fought for an idea, says Nuri. In 2012, to honor their extraordinary heroism, a statue of a Horse Soldier was dedicated at the World Trade Center site." . An odd case of alack of evidence being brought forward as the evidence. The riders mount their horses, check their weapons, and begin the one-kilometer sprint to the Taliban front lines. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. There is an emotional landscape here I cannot see. "We dispersed the team at several positions along the ridges of the Tiangi." Until a group of 480 al Qaeda and talibs showed up at the gates of Mazar. -The Fayetteville Observer, ODA 595 was an experienced, mature team of Green Berets that had recently worked with special operations forces in Uzbekistan, Afghanistan's northern neighbor. 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. He was quick to defend the weak and if negotiations failed he had no shortage of armed men that would stand beside him. John Walker Lindh was the second Irish American jihadi I had met who was trained in Bin Ladens camps. They put the prisoners back on the truck. The conflict we expected to be over in months inexplicably continues on. "We think they got it, they got the spirit of the Special Forces team in the post-9/11 moment in American history," said team leader Mark Nutsch, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie. When the council broke up, Dostum stood and motioned toward the horses. Up on the parapets, Dostums troops stream toward a gap in the ramparts created yesterday by an errant American 2000 lb bomb. At its core, 12 Strong is not just a war movie; its a story about learning to respect the differences that separate us but also to embrace the qualities that unite us., Terms of Use Its a helluva thing we do, isnt it? Chris Hemsworth's character's real-life counterpart, Mark Nutsch, had worked on a cattle ranch when he was younger and was one of the few members of the 12-man team who had experience riding horses. What happened to General Dostum in Afghanistan? We had hardened fighters holed up in the middle of an urban area who wanted to die, says Will. 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. Over 5000 Taliban remained hidden in surrounding villages. At least two Red Cross workers who descend into the bunker are shot and wounded. 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. The real-life Special Forces officer he represents is Mark Nutsch, who asked that his name be fictionalized in the movie. But I never travel without a few Mr. It was put on display across from Ground Zero in 2012. Following several weather delays, ODA 595 and ODA 555 flew into Afghanistan on MH-47 helicopters on October 19, 2001, 39 days after Al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center. During the Talibans reign, thousands of Hazara Shias were murdered in northern Afghanistan; the mullahs are unrepentant. And theyd been told that he was the most powerful anti-Taliban leader in northern Afghanistan. Others have speculated that the filmmakers changed some of the names to diversify the Special Forces team for the movie, but that has not been confirmed. Support Dostum. "It's your city, general. Its an irresistible story, made all the more so by a convincing rumor Ive been hearing since my arrival: that Dostum triumphed with a little help from his friendsspecifically, the Green Berets. A hundred yards away, villagers stand against a long compound. A bizarre story called The Convoy of Death surfaced and painted Dostum and the team in a negative light. I saw this look in Fakirs eyes, says Mark, like, Why didnt you help?, Dostum, triumphant on a return to the simple village of his brith. Now the tiny group of Americans need to show General Dostum what they can do. 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. I have been to America and know the quality of life they enjoy. They range in age from mid-20s to early 40s. The sound of canon firecontinues without a break but at a slower pace. Shattered, bearded men lie everywhere on stretchers, covered by thin blue sheets. They moved and attacked mostly at night, riding small, wiry Afghan horses that are well suited to steep slopes and long desert walks. 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. This part of Afghanistan is ancient, arid, windblownand is the real cradle of its history and wealth. A few minutes later, one of Dostums men runs up breathlessly, saying there is an American in the hospital. We set up in a bomb crater and used it as our bunker. Dostum must now change his focus from fighting to rebuilding his country. The bomb lands and hits and bam! The conflict began with several hundred Taliban troops moving into positions on an adjacent hill. 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. You can bomb it until there is no resistance, or you bomb and, as soon as the bomb goes off, you charge. People demanded that I do something, says Dostum. Interestingly, actor Chris Hemsworth's real-life wife, Elsa Pataky, portrays his character's wife in the movie. The greatest restrictions they face have been placed on them by Dostum himself. It took about an hour to get the aircraft. 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. However, the real Amy Nutsch, the wife of Mark Nutsch, was six months pregnant at the time of the September 11 attacks. The two Green Berets are solemn; they insist on driving through the gap so they can tell their story from the right perspective. real general dostum and mitch nelson Uncategorized September 20, 2021. The prisoners were not properly searched by members of the Northern Alliance before they were crammed onto trucks and the troops had not realized the American Lindh was among them. -ABC News. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. 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 The old men are frail, with deeply lined faces. He never sacrificed his men. Dostum implores the mullahs to call down to the bunker and tell the remaining men to surrender. As portrayed by actor Chris Hemsworth in the major motion picture, 12 Strong, Mark Nutsch (aka Mitch Nelson in the film) shares lessons learned in the now-declassified saga of a U.S. Special Forces team that overcame seemingly insurmountable odds to help achieve a historic military victory. Mitch Miller died on July 31, 2010 of natural causes. Infiltrate the 12 Strong true story further by watching the documentary and videos below. Mullah Faizel, commander of the Taliban Army in the North. And we were going to oblige them.. 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. Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. An old man yells, God bless you. I assumed he was fricking mean, hard. He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. The Regulators flew in from Uzbekistan at night on a blacked-out Chinook helicopter. 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. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. Dostums men kick the corpses into the trenches and cover them with the tan dirt, not bothering to count the dead. Families back home monitor the news, not wanting to look but more afraid to turn it off. In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, the elite U.S. Special Forces unit, Operational Detachment-Alpha 595 (ODA 595 for short), was one of three teams of Special Forces soldiers sent into Afghanistan. The team set up on the roof of a building about 400 meters from the madrasah and called in a strike. In the movie, Nelson and his men must link up with General Abdul Rashid Dostum and his small band of fightersa partnership as much diplomatic as military, according to 12 Strong's director. After that hit, all of them took off on foot to Mazar. In the 1980s, as a young army officer in the Soviet-backed government, he fought against the mujahidin. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. Some are in pieces; others have been flattened by tank treads. Images of them doing this can be seen below and in Alex Quade's short documentary Horse Soldiers of 9/11. An event and a man I will never forget. "Sir," he said. Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, . We must honor their truth not the fiction that creates more wars. show Dostum the chapter in Rashids book that includes the account of the gruesome execution of the thief. My friends were struggling against the Taliban, and I was sitting there., Dostum says that to help him get back into the fray, the former president of Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, sliced offabout $40,000 from the CIA funds. Dating at least to the days of Genghis Khan, the violent game is not so much about scoring as it is about using every dirty trick possiblebeating, whipping, kickingto prevent the opposing team from scoring. The now declassified mission, code-name Task Force Dagger, included joining forces with the loosely organized Northern Alliance to help take back certain provinces, as well as act as the tip of the spear in the initial fighting against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Ironically, he actually served under the man he is portraying. He is a kingmaker who works the ethnic minority to choose who will rule and who will fail. The baby was born early while Mark was in Afghanistan. It was the finest sight I ever saw. A local mullah sings a prayer of deliverance and thanks to Dostum. 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. The real-life base wasn't built up at that point and amounted to little more than a series of Soviet-era bunkers. Like in the movie, Doug Stanton's book Horse Soldiers describes Nutsch going to Colonel Bowers after the attacks to ask to be placed with his team again. 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. The madrasah was surrounded for about a mile on each side by identical buildings, which made it difficult for the pilots to pick out the school. Meanwhile, Im hunkered down, waiting for Dostum. He is so sincere; whenever I see him, I feel joy. He pauses for a moment, lost in reflection. Faizal has his prosthetic leg off. At first I thought, Why not let them rule? he says. Our warhad been big footed by Iraq. However, the rugged Afghan terrain forced them to adopt the rudimentary practices of the Afghan horse soldiers. This is the first close-air-support strike in years in an urban area, says Air Force Steve. The soldiers on the U.S. Special Forces teams were used to state-of-the-art warfare. Like in the 12 Strong movie, the real Horse Soldiers were able to liberate Afghanistan's fourth largest city, Mazar-i-Sharif, in just three weeks. In the book, Bowers had planned to give the piece of metal to Afghan General Dostum and warlord Atta Muhammad Noor, if needed, to bind them in their common fight against the Taliban. 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. Weve spent years apart from our spouses due to Middle East deployments, and some of us, like me, are now sending our sons and daughters to fight the same war in the same places. Yes. Dostums real success was in negotiating enemy commanders to lay down their arms and to join him. They said, You guys will be on the ground; you figure it out. , Within half an hour of meeting Dostum at the mud-walled compound in the Darra-e Suf, the Regulators swung into action. I had jumped a train in Tajikistan, snuck into Uzbekistan and remained holed up in a dusty border town. (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. They spend every day training for war, teaching other armies about war, and waiting for the call to fight in the next war. (Within a week, he will be named deputy minister of defense for the new interim government of Afghanistan.) Up until now the CIA has been hog-tied. Within hours, they are gone. Then the war began. The Regulators rush to catch up in two mud-covered cars. We were at the right place at the right time, says Steve. He told them his name was Abdul Hamid. In real-life, Dostum became the Vice President of Afghanistan, as stated prior to the movie's end credits. 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. After days of killing as many Taliban as they could they were accused of murdering prisonersin shipping containers. I was full of emotions. Some stayed behind to handle logistics and supplies. The people of Dostums village were so impressed with his leadership that they recruited 600 men for him to command. Mitch Nelson in the film about a team of Green Berets on a strategic mission in Afghanistan in the days immediately following 9/11. They use simple wooden saddles covered with a piece of carpet, and short stirrups that put our knees up by our heads. At eight that night, we pulled in to Shulgareh, which is the biggest town in the valley. Now, on most mornings, Dostum emerges from his house, squinting into a crowd of turbaned men waiting for an audience. Nothing of the war, death, exile, and victory that have shaped the man sitting in the front seat. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. Mitch Nelson (1963-) was a US Army captain during the Afghanistan War . Despite knowledge of the mission being available to the public, it had remained largely unheard of until the book. The warm smell of gangrene and human waste hits me as I open the door to the triage room. Furthermore, as shown in the movie, they were grossly outnumbered. Commanders, clergymen, womenthey would all tell me very bitter stories. I waited for it, that inevitable politicization of our troops presence in Afghanistan, but was happily surprised when it never came. When noon comes and goes, I expect the order to fire. 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. Nuri is chatty, although he often looks to the silent Faizal before answering my questions. They chose not bullets or grenades but ordnance that ranged from Maverick missiles to laser-guided bombs. Green Berets work in secrecy, so only their first names can be used: Theres Andy, the slow-talking weapons expert who is never without his grenade launcher; back home, he keeps the guns in his collections loaded so they are ready when I am. Both he and Paul, a quiet, bespectacled warrant officer, have been in the unit 11 years. -SOFREP, In the movie, Chris Hemsworth's character's wife is not pregnant. Early in the afternoon on November 10, Dostum reached Mazar. The truck-mounted ZU antiaircraft guns are cranked down to eye level. The deadline is noon. I get off the horse and say, Screw this; Im walking.. In the morning Villagers come out in the crisp, golden light of morning, shivering and tired. They placed it in a body bag and lowered it into the ground. At the last minute the Agency was told by the SF ground commander that his men were going in with or without the Agency. So we would put in for priority for the planes. The teams primary weapons were not pistols or rifles; they were the most fearsome tools in the American arsenal: F-18s, F-16s, F-14s, and B-52s. The rocket howls over the roof of General Dostums house in Khoda Barq at about 10 p.m. Its November 26, my second day in Afghanistan, and already Im in the middle of a hellacious firefight. A cavalry charge is an amazing thing, Will says. The teacher giggles, his white beard shaking with joy. It took just a few months for American and Afghan forces to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan; thus ousting them from power. Only two characters in 12 Strong . Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, is moving into a new home with his wife and daughter on September 11, 2001, after receiving an assignment to staff duty under Lieutenant Colonel Bowers. Later, I find out that theyve come hoping to retrieve the body of Central Intelligence Agency officer Johnny Micheal Spann, who was killed by Taliban prisonersthe first American combat casualty in Afghanistan. We jumped in the back of a truck and drove up to Dostums HQ here in this house.. More than 400 prisoners are said to have died; I count only about 50 bodies in the courtyard. CHRIS HEMSWORTH, left, as Captain Mitch Nelson and NAVID NEGAHBAN as General Dostum in "12 STRONG," (Warner Bros. Pictures) CHRIS HEMSWORTH as Captain Mitch Nelson in "12 STRONG." (David James) 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. Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. We get out of the jeep and stand in the rain and slick mud. On 19 October . William Fichtner portrays Mulholland in the movie and Homeland's Navid Negahban plays General Dostum. It didnt seem to matter that there was no actual evidence. They have been blowing themselves up with grenades. Transfixed, they watch the Christmas tree being lit in Rockefeller Center. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. 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. Prisoners were so hot that they had to lick the sweat off each other one man said. The wholesale conversion of talibs to the government side during theKunduz surrender had created confusion in how many Taliban existed in the North. General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Captain Mark Nutsch achieved this unexpected success in November 2001 by breaking out of a rebel pocket of the Hindu Kush Mountains and seizing Mazar i Sharif,. Dostums first stop was the blue mosque at the tomb of Hazrat Ali, the revered son-in-law of the Prophet. The book was quietly taken out of print. As Bill checks for wounds, he talks to the young man briefly in Arabic. I was at the prison in Sheberghan when they unloaded the trucks and watched the Red Cross medics count the dead and note the wounded. So I approach a war movie set in the days after 9/11 with a certain amount of skepticism. After four days of bombardment, the interior of the fort is a scene of utter devastation. The Afghans shoot from horseback, but there is no aiming in this country. As for team leader Mark Nutsch, the real-life counterpart to the film's main character portrayed by Chris Hemsworth, he had no actual combat experience prior to the mission. "The battle at the end was not depicted accurately," says the real Bob Pennington. Some details of their mission they cant discuss. The men were thrilled; they were so happy. In a tiny, sparse room are his father, Dostums former teacher, and a village elder.
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