We thought he was wounded. They just cant figure it out. 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 and the Green Berets drove by them as they headed for Kunduz. At least two Red Cross workers who descend into the bunker are shot and wounded. Nelson must convince Col. Mulholland (William Fichtner) that his team is ready to meet with Northern Alliance General Dostum (Navid Negahban) to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. It was somewhere between harassing and accurateenough to keep our heads down. It is also rumored that there are many dead and at least two live prisoners holed up in the subterranean bomb shelter. Captain Nelson was determined to get the mission done in a timely fashion because of the promise he made to his superiors. 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. Americas finest were about to fight their first war on horseback in more than a hundred years. 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. Their captors brought them here en route to the Sheberghan prison. On September 11, 2001, Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha 595, moves into a new home with his wife and daughter after receiving an assignment to staff duty under Lieutenant Colonel Bowers. Ill admit, my guard was up, as I dont expect even-handed treatment of military-heavy stories these days. I feel he is my brother. Here, the 12 Strong movie and the true story match up. Ironically, he actually served under the man he is portraying. Three years of drought have broken: A cold rain pours down in gray sheets. It's a miracle of sorts given what they faced, a feat that the movie does a good job conveying. 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. Their rooms are filled with green Army cots, dirty brown packs, and green flight bags. The videotape cuts to the next morning. Same thing: We identity it and boom! When an American team finally recovered Spanns body, they discovered it had been booby-trapped with a live grenade (which they removed without incident). They placed it in a body bag and lowered it into the ground. Later on he had a dark premonition. Abandoned Soviet-era tanks are scattered about the flat countryside like dinosaur skeletons. 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. (19 Dec 2001) 1. By the time the team had arrived in Qali-i-Jangi they were gaunt, sick but eager to keep up the fight. Nutsch commented: Were humbled that a movie has been made about our teams mission in that pivotal post 9/11 period. A few minutes later, one of Dostums men runs up breathlessly, saying there is an American in the hospital. Instead, 12 Strong simply tells a storya true one. They moved and attacked mostly at night, riding small, wiry Afghan horses that are well suited to steep slopes and long desert walks. What made working with him particularly dangerous was that he was known for switching sides during several conflicts with Afghanistan. They are direct military descendants of the Devils Brigade, a joint Canadian-American unit that fought in Italy during the Second World War. The real-life base wasn't built up at that point and amounted to little more than a series of Soviet-era bunkers. 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. Nutsch is portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie and renamed Mitch Nelson. I could see the horses blasting out the other side. The pilots, however, could not lock in on the laser-sighting device that the team was using to identify the target. What happened next was the first of many distortions and fictional retelling of their story. 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 Special Forces officer he represents is Mark Nutsch, who asked that his name be fictionalized in the movie. He described the building we were sitting on to a T. Finally, Air Force Steve guided the pilot to the correct building, and he dropped the ordnance: direct hit. This included using horses to navigate the mountainous region. The Regulators final destination turned out to be Uzbekistan, where they spent a week building a tent city and waiting for a mission. The new graves belong to those who were fighting terrorists. He is silhouetted against the slate-blue sky, the long tails of his silver turban whipping in the wind. "They were very mature, very family-orientated," Bob Pennington said. Infiltrate the 12 Strong true story further by watching the documentary and videos below. We thought Kunduz was [going to be] a full-scale attack, says Captain Mark. They were setting up fixed positionsbunkers with Y-shaped fighting trencheson the northern side of the gap. The twisted rag doll bodies of dead Taliban fighters lie heads back, fingers clutched, legs sprawled as if they fell running. More than 400 prisoners are said to have died; I count only about 50 bodies in the courtyard. The wholesale conversion of talibs to the government side during theKunduz surrender had created confusion in how many Taliban existed in the North. It was pretty painful, Paul says. How do you love your family and leave them to go to war? 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. Shattered, bearded men lie everywhere on stretchers, covered by thin blue sheets. That afternoon, Dostum and I set off for the fort, where the uprising has been all but quelled. At the end of the Soviet period Dostum had 45,000 troops with about half of them as village reserves. DP hats, so I dig them out of my bag and pass them around. Dostum was very concerned about us getting too close to the battlefield, Captain Mark had told me back at the barracks. What your name? He refused to talk to his parents and he was takenback to our guesthouse for his protection. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. Its like a casting call for The Dirty Dozen. "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. -The Fayetteville Observer, Yes. Some American soldiers are billeted upstairs in the guest houses; men in camo pants run up and down the stairs. Two of the Green Berets Ive been chatting withAndy and Paul, the pair with the longest tenure in the companyhave decided that I need to see this place for myself, or maybe simply that they need to go see it again one last time. The crowds quickly grew; people threw money in the air for good luck. He confesses that he had worried at first how the Americans would handle Afghan warfare: It was cold; the food was bad. 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. Blackened, twisted vehicles are perforated with thousands of jagged holes. Only two characters in 12 Strong . The moments of shockIs this really happening? 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. But back in 2001, Warlord Dostum who was head of the Jumbesh political party had simpler but identical goals: Align with the U.S. to return from exile in Turkey and bring the Taliban into the new government. He is a kingmaker who works the ethnic minority to choose who will rule and who will fail. A small group of CIA that included Mike Spann, flew in to the Darra-e Suf the day before ODA 595 would land. On another truck are the seriously wounded. The general climbs out of the tiny black car and tucks his hands into his belt. Finally after two weeks they admitted they could not smuggle me across. But the US Armed Forces were thin on the ground, and were potentially facing around 50,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. At first I thought, Why not let them rule? he says. After a final check of their gear, they head into the fortress. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media, Horse Soldiers Documentary & Related Videos, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. If he wants to take over the whole country, do it. I wondered if they could adapt to these circumstances. After four days of bombardment, the interior of the fort is a scene of utter devastation. Two weeks after Dostum descended on Balkh, things have calmed down, so the warlord climbs into the front passenger seat of a Nissan, and we head across a sandstorm-blasted desert. We fought for an idea, says Nuri. When the television begins to blare, the men stare at the screen. As the Hespan drips into his veins, I fire up the video camera, and the man begins to tell his story. His father is old. They send off steam in the cold night, their brown skin white with dust. "My men are hungry. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. 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. In the movie, another team member arrives to pick them up and tells them about the attacks. Dostum enlisted in the Afghan militaryone of the few ways for poor men to escape lives of labor and hardship in rural Afghanistan. you die. We were focused on calling in an air strike to take out this truck that had rumbled into view, and now RPG rounds are flying over our heads. I soon learn that yesterday some 400 foreign Taliban prisoners overpowered their guards, broke into arsenals, and took over part of the fortress. They are currently enjoying some well earned recognition now that the film 12 Strong has been released but again, the filmis not anywhere close to the truth. In the last two semi-wars we have been in, every time American soldiers get killed we pull out. Over the ensuing days, I take every opportunity to spend time in these makeshift barracks, particularly once I discover that this is the very unit of Green Berets that Id been hearing rumors aboutthis is Dostums covert support team. Not everything goes to plan during a raid on a village Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Because of this, Dostum was forced to flee . Newsweek, The New York Times and other outlets insisted that eyewitness had seen American soldiers laughing and shooting into containers. Advertise Soon were winding past an ancient brick bridge that crosses a roaring gorge; on the west side are large caves that shepherds have scooped out of the soft rock over the centuries. I targeted a spot right next to this guys head. 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. Fifty tents later, they told us to pack our shit again.. Lined up against a wall is the most pathetic display of humanity I have ever seen: the survivors of the bunker at Qala Jangi fortress. Yes. The teacher giggles, his white beard shaking with joy. All I see is grass growing beside abandoned trenches. Our mission was simple, another soldier says. 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. Early in the afternoon on November 10, Dostum reached Mazar. Paul, Andy, and I drive past villages of round, domed huts, past a checkpoint manned by Dostums men, and up along the winding road to the Tingi Pass. Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, . When noon comes and goes, I expect the order to fire. I talk to an Iraqi, as well as to Pakistanis and Saudisall of whom speak English. The Taliban had surrendered at Qali i Jangi to CIA officer JR and Dostum and surrenders were under way in Kunduz. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Each member had an average of eight years experience and most had combat experience in either Desert Storm, Kosovo or Somalia. Over chai (tea), he announces good news. The problem is that the the Convoy of Death story is false. The men in the room try to act formally, but as Dostum starts to leave, some begin to cry. The next morning, about 60 Afghan cavalry came thundering into the compound. Compliance. 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. Dostum must now change his focus from fighting to rebuilding his country. What happened to General Dostum in Afghanistan? In Hollywood I was asked to join meetings during which actors and producers pitched the story, read half a dozen books in which the idea of John Wayne like cavalry charges and Dostums ogre like cruelty were fictionalized into cartoons. 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. You have to understand: Dostum had told them, If an American gets hurt . We called in a couple of bomb strikes. When a Marxist government came to power in a bloody coup in 1978, the new regimes radical reforms ignited a guerrilla war with the mujahidin who based themselves in the countrys remote mountain ranges. Each night, Dostum would sit down with the Americans and lay out the battle plan for the next day. The Afghans shoot from horseback, but there is no aiming in this country. He ended up in the Takhar Province, in the northeastern part of the country. 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. The Battle of Bescham wwas fought on 23 October 2001 at the Taliban-occupied village of Bescham during the Invasion of Afghanistan. Theyd heard rumors that he was 80 years old, that he didnt have use of his right arm. Wide four members of American Special Forces and General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance2. The bomb lands and hits and bam! And that is a story worth telling. The then-secret Uzbekistan air base, also known as K2, is depicted as a sort of tent city in the movie. It was like that scene in Close Encounters where the aliens meet humans for the first time, one soldier says later. 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. Faizal has his prosthetic leg off. Andy chimes in. It turns out theyre staying next door, guests in Dostums house. 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.). It is rated R for violence and language throughout. They told us, If Dostum wants to go to Kabul, you are going with him. The truck-mounted ZU antiaircraft guns are cranked down to eye level. That is one of the premises Osama bin Laden operates under. Dostum wasnt about to let an American casualty put a premature end to his battle plan. I whip my horse, it takes three steps, and stops. Then came September 11. He takes my hand in a meaty grip and apologizes for being dirty and tired; he has just driven eight hours on a shattered road from Kunduz. Our Afghans are running out of ammo. At the last minute the Agency was told by the SF ground commander that his men were going in with or without the Agency. 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. America was fully committed to defeating the Taliban and ousting them from power. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. He studied Arabic in Yemen and then enrolled in a madrasah, or religious school, in northern Pakistan. When SFC Bill Bennett invited me over to jointhe teamSCUD hunting before the war he did not like that war. It was old-fashioned professionalism. He points out that the word "Tiangi" actually means gap, so when they refer to the "Tiangi gap" in the movie, they're actually saying the gap, gap.Pennington said that with regard to the enemy vehicle (BM-21) launching rockets in and around the Tiangi, it did happen, several times. "They weirdly are a formidable force that will continue to fight, no matter what.". Afghans in a blue truck are scavenging for parts. When team leader Nelson presented Dostum with a gift of horse feed, Dostum was obviously offended. Who were the 12 strong in real life? - JOUNIMARTIKAINEN Arent you the guy who goes to all those dangerous places?. 12 Strong | On-set visit with Navid Negahban "General Dostum" On the next pass, three more bombs went through the hole in the roof made by the first bomb, killing most of the holdouts inside. The men were thrilled; they were so happy. Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns From there, American and Afghan forces would liberate Kabul in the east, Herat in the west, Kandahar in the south, and Jalalabad, resulting in the Afghan forces taking control of the country from the Taliban. While researching to answer the question, "How accurate is 12 Strong?" Dostum chuckles and denies the allegation. They also need blankets.". The radio crackles with call signs and traffic broadcast between bombardiers and the American soldiers. The team was ordered to exile to meet Donald Rumsfeld and be interviewed by Robin Moore. Toward the end of September, the word came down: Pack your shit., Fifteen days later, the team boarded a C-5 Galaxy with a secret flight plan. Now, on most mornings, Dostum emerges from his house, squinting into a crowd of turbaned men waiting for an audience. I looked at Lahl and said, Bombs away. We had 30 seconds till impact; meanwhile, the Afghan horde is screaming down this ridgeline. If he goes off the deep end and starts whacking people, advise higher up and maybe pull out. This was the most incredibly open mission we have ever done., Before heading in-country, the soldiers had been briefed only vaguely about Dostum. The whole team jelled.. Some details of their mission they cant discuss. 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. Now, in a scene that has been repeated over and over for the past 2,000 years, a warlord is arriving. It feels like a scene out of a bad Mexican movie. Dozens of dark-eyed men in turbans scramble into battered Toyota pickup trucks and assorted four-wheel-drive vehicles. He was quick to defend the weak and if negotiations failed he had no shortage of armed men that would stand beside him. 12 STRONG: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers After all, can Hollywood do this topic justice? They are known as the quiet professionals because their missions are covert and, for obvious reasons, they rarely publicize their exploits., Actor and producer Thad Luckinbill commented on the need to just be authentic and pay these guys the respect that they deserve and tell the story that should be told., One of the most fascinating threads throughout the movie is the forging of an uneasy partnership between Captain Mitch Nelson (Hemsworth) and Northern Alliance General Dostum (Navid Negahban). About 200 men have taken up positions around the village, eyeing ragged locals, who stare back from a careful distance. . Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. We transfer him to Dostums house, and the next day hes spirited away at the same time that his story is being broadcast around the world. 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. Trigger warnings include battlefield violence, repeated explosions and gun battles, and up-close scenes of civilian killings by the Taliban. In the bewildering matrix of Afghan politics, Dostum has frequentlyand nimblyswitched allegiances. Six months ago, he traveled to Kabul with some Pakistanis to join the Taliban. "The battle at the end was not depicted accurately," says the real Bob Pennington. The movie tells the hitherto little known story of a U.S. Army Special Forces unit sent on a dangerous mission into Afghanistan mere days after 9/11. real general dostum and mitch nelson Uncategorized September 20, 2021. I tell the prisoner where he is and who hes talking to. Commanders, clergymen, womenthey would all tell me very bitter stories. Somehow I make it across the open area. An odd case of alack of evidence being brought forward as the evidence. The bread we ate was half-mixed with dirt. -Den of Geek. You raise your flag," Nelson says. To this day the war continues and Dostum as First Vice President remains a staunch ally of America. Despite actively fighting the Taliban, it was not until Santos introducedDostum to JSOC that the United States might want to give him some help. At first he is hostile, like a kitten baring its claws. The dirty gray mushroom cloud slowly bends in the wind. 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. The book was quietly taken out of print. Dostums first stop was the blue mosque at the tomb of Hazrat Ali, the revered son-in-law of the Prophet. At first, their mission was one of personnel recovery, tasked with rescuing any pilots shot down during the air war in Afghanistan. The old creed is that we never leave a guy behind. The Regulators wanted to find the prisoners who had killed Spann and attacked a second CIA man who was questioning 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. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! 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. An NGO insisted that thousands of corpses were dumped at a graveyard calledDasht-i-Leili outside of Shiberghan but refused to actual exhume them. We must honor their truth not the fiction that creates more wars. Once they hit the ground, the Regulators would be writing their own game plan. They reach out to shake his hand, to embrace him. I will let what you see be the truth.. According to historian and author Doug Stanton, who spent five years. Three hours later, I am awakened by a massive explosion a few yards from the houseanother near miss by a rocket fired from inside the fort. . Support Dostum. -ABC News. Accordingly, on 25 May 1997, Malik arrested Khan, handed him over and let the Taliban enter Mazar-e-Sharif, giving them control over most of northern Afghanistan. Their home base is Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but they spend only a few months of the year there. Now the CIA and spec ops have been let loose., Dostums men were a loose alliance that grew with every victory against the Taliban. "We knew nothing about these guys," retired Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland said. "Sir," he said. Outmanned, the Green Berets decided to move out on horseback. Nothing of the war, death, exile, and victory that have shaped the man sitting in the front seat. 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. -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. The soldiers on the U.S. Special Forces teams were used to state-of-the-art warfare. Hemsworth and Negahban convey the tension between the two men brilliantly, and Negahban had this to say: This was the first film that truly shows what Afghans went through and how we united with them to achieve our goal.. Commandeering whole villages, women in burkas with not even eyes showing, the stoning of a woman only for being caught in adultery, and the execution of a mother for daring to teach her daughters to read. This scandal would tarnish General Dostums very realaccomplishment of being Americas most aggressive and stalwart allyagainst the Taliban and al Qaeda. Again he began integrating mujahideen into the political military ranks among them his number two against the Taliban Lal Kamadan. Every time the plane would circle, the Taliban would run behind their bunker. The greatest restrictions they face have been placed on them by Dostum himself. Horse Soldiers Analysis - eNotes.com In all, less than 100 Special Forces soldiers toppled the Taliban government. 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. The Taliban are running. 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. Dostum dismounted and shook everyones hand, then sat on a mound covered with carpets. The Green Berets call it the Gap of Doom. It moves past politics and rhetoric to provide a picture of what our military members choose to go through willingly. They chose not bullets or grenades but ordnance that ranged from Maverick missiles to laser-guided bombs. Mark Nutsch Age, Wife, Family, Story, Biography & More The team had been working together for two years and the average age was 32 years old. -The Fayetteville Observer, In addition to ODA 595, three other teams were selected. He was later shot in the leg when the makeshift prison he was in became the scene of a violent Taliban uprising. There were roughly 200 paid Afghan soldiers under General Dostum's command and an undetermined number of part-time militia. As we explored the accuracy of 12 Strong, we discovered that a group of both currently-serving and retired U.S. special operators were involved in the making of the movie, mainly to make sure that the filmmakers represented soldiers and combat accurately. We were ready to throw down the mattress and settle in for the night when one of the security guards came up with a radio and said that Dostum needed someone to go up to the front to call in aircraft. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. Ka-RUMPH! The 12 Strong true story confirms that he had been given an administrative staff position in the Fifth Group Headquarters. Dostum points to the fresh dirt of new graves in the cemetery. The rest mounted up and rode north. They huddle in brown blankets, trying to avoid the soaking rain. Pennington is portrayed by Michael Shannon in the movie. I assumed he was fricking mean, hard. This was a guy we considered part of our unit, says Mark. 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. Nuri is chatty, although he often looks to the silent Faizal before answering my questions. Soldiers run up to the bite in the wall, shoot into the fort, and then scurry back down. He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. 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. Headstrong and known to get into fights,was adept at the game of buzkashi, in which horsemen attempt to toss the headless carcass of a calf into a circle. Until a group of 480 al Qaeda and talibs showed up at the gates of Mazar. 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.
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