. The 12 Strong true story confirms that he had been given an administrative staff position in the Fifth Group Headquarters. 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. You could see horses falling. An outcrop obscured views of the last 250 meters to the target. Were not about to stand up and watch whats going on. The first words I wanted to learn in Dari were, How do you make him stop?, Their most important immediate order of business was to establish themselves in Dostums eyes. It's true that Dostum said that he would rather see 500 of his own men killed than see a scratch on an American soldier. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. Once the plane got there, it circled about six times, Paul says. 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. Now, on most mornings, Dostum emerges from his house, squinting into a crowd of turbaned men waiting for an audience. Were not lifting our heads up!, When we turn around and notice whats going on, we see our Afghans have split., The team decided to call in a B-52 strike practically on their own positiona drastic move considering the planes were flying above 15,000 feet. The mission was also chronicled in Doug Stanton's 2009 book, Horse Soldiers, on which the movie is based. Some American soldiers are billeted upstairs in the guest houses; men in camo pants run up and down the stairs. The dirty gray mushroom cloud slowly bends in the wind. 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. When I look at the terrible conditions and the predicament that Walker is in, I have to ask him if this is what he expected. After four days of bombardment, the interior of the fort is a scene of utter devastation. -Horse Soldiers book, The movie finds the soldiers being told that there is a good chance they won't survive the mission. They linked up with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and his Uzbek fighters. 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.. -Horse Soldiers book, Yes. 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. We grabbed our stuff and ran., The team knew that their story would be stolen, rewritten and misused as Rumsfeld and others seized the moment. When the pilot radioed that he needed to return to base, the other pilot swung into action. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. They had to kill their horses for food. Afghans in a blue truck are scavenging for parts. 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. The enemy was 700 meters out and moving quickly. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. However, the mission quickly changed and became about convincing ethnic leaders (some were more similar to warlords) to join forces with them to fight their common enemy: the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies. The problem is that the the Convoy of Death story is false. The Battle of Bescham wwas fought on 23 October 2001 at the Taliban-occupied village of Bescham during the Invasion of Afghanistan. Mark Nutsch's team, ODA 595, was dropped in Dehi, roughly 100 miles from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. is the manner in which military members tend to downplay their service or push aside thanks, rarely focusing on themselves, but on their team or country as a whole. Yes. Mark Nutsch and his team had to gain Dostum's trust and convince him that 9/11 had changed things. However, the real Amy Nutsch, the wife of Mark Nutsch, was six months pregnant at the time of the September 11 attacks. Not exactly. Yes. 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. "They were very mature, very family-orientated," Bob Pennington said. 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. None of the 12 soldiers died during the 2001 Afghanistan mission. John Walker Lindh was among those who surrendered in the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif and his story is included in the Horse Soldiers book but not in the movie. 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 Mark Nutsch | Keppler Speakers Theres one time Ill never forget, he says. However, at least 3 false starts delayed their deployment for almost a month. I soon learn that yesterday some 400 foreign Taliban prisoners overpowered their guards, broke into arsenals, and took over part of the fortress. A few yards before the turnoff to Khvajeh Do Kuh, he gestures to a place where 180 of his men died fighting the Taliban. At a full gallop, its a smooth ride. Nutsch was the commander of the 12-man Green Berets from 5th Special Forces Group on a mission to Afghanistan in the weeks after 9/11 terrorist attacks. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. 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. In real-life, Dostum became the Vice President of Afghanistan, as stated prior to the movie's end credits. -Den of Geek. The crumpled bodies of prisoners, frozen in agony, are scattered everywhere. No one knew just when or where the team would be sent. Some details of their mission they cant discuss. At the same moment he was trying to flee Mazar from the Taliban assault. Rifles, night-vision gear, and boots are strewn everywhere. Three or four bombs hit right in the middle of the enemy position, says Will. Until a group of 480 al Qaeda and talibs showed up at the gates of Mazar. 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. Capt. 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. In the 1980s, as a young army officer in the Soviet-backed government, he fought against the mujahidin. Ill admit, my guard was up, as I dont expect even-handed treatment of military-heavy stories these days. "The threat of capture, torture was very real." I am surprised, then, to see Dostum wrap his blue turban around his head and chin and stride into the village . That, says Dostum, was when the war against terror began., Living in caves and raiding Taliban positions, Dostums men slowly began to harass the well-entrenched Taliban along the Darra-e Suf. Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. The credits claim that General Dostum and Captain Mitch Nelson have remained friends in real life . As we approach the village, the men and boys are lined up in a perfect row a hundred yards long, waiting to greet Dostum. A typical meal at Dostums guesthouse. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Its like a casting call for The Dirty Dozen. Each night, Dostum would sit down with the Americans and lay out the battle plan for the next day. 2018 Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved, Copyright 2013 DPx Gear, All Rights Reserved, ious article:Finding Bergdahl The Final Chapter, article:Erik Prince An American Commando In Exile, The Hack Part Two: The Hunt for Clinton Dirt, The Hack Part Three: Deception and Deceit, The Hack Part One The Attack On America, The Story of How Robert Young Pelton Created DPx Gear, Erik Prince An American Commando In Exile, General Dostum and 12 Strong: THE LEGEND OF HEAVY D AND THE BOYS. Power is not given to anyone forever. Families back home monitor the news, not wanting to look but more afraid to turn it off. However, when the 2009 Horse Soldiers book was being written, Mark Nutsch had requested that his name be changed to protect his identity, as was the case with most of the other Horse Soldiers. By the time they come up and look, you are on them. The latter approach was well suited to Dostums style of attack. An NGO insisted that thousands of corpses were dumped at a graveyard calledDasht-i-Leili outside of Shiberghan but refused to actual exhume them. A story of how 12 Americansand a Afghan warlord won the war on terror, if only for a brief time still remains to be told. Newsweek, The New York Times and other outlets insisted that eyewitness had seen American soldiers laughing and shooting into containers. The old men are frail, with deeply lined faces. And that is a story worth telling. "All of these guys have blood on their hands. I asked him to describe it, just to be sure, says Will. So I approach a war movie set in the days after 9/11 with a certain amount of skepticism. Some huddle together to watch the gray pillars of smoke from the bombing runs. Astoundingly, after two days of bombardment, the prisoners still control the fort. The Afghans shoot from horseback, but there is no aiming in this country. As Bill checks for wounds, he talks to the young man briefly in Arabic. "My men are hungry. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! They were potentially facing about 50,000 Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. "And to me, that was a plus when you got saddled with a mission that was going to be as complex as this one." He would take a village by getting the mounted guys up close. I watch a fighter go up to the top, then crumple into a black pile of rags. But on the ground in Afghanistan, theyre on their own. 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. However, the rugged Afghan terrain forced them to adopt the rudimentary practices of the Afghan horse soldiers. More hits: Tall, fat smoke plumes cast moving shadows on the grass. Some are provided by Dostum and others. And we were going to oblige them.. Dostums meetings do not end until well after midnight. But 9/11 changed all that. Most of the fallen look as if they were killed instantly. I targeted a spot right next to this guys head. The pilots, however, could not lock in on the laser-sighting device that the team was using to identify the target. 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. 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. They are men with wives, children, mortgages, bills. Now, in a scene that has been repeated over and over for the past 2,000 years, a warlord is arriving. The team was ordered to exile to meet Donald Rumsfeld and be interviewed by Robin Moore. Down the road at the Regulators make-shift barracks, a call comes over the Motorola: Pack your shit. The men quickly gather their gear, as they have so many times before. They huddle in brown blankets, trying to avoid the soaking rain. But the story gradually emerges. General Abul Rashid Dostum Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Captain Nelson was determined to get the mission done in a timely fashion because of the promise he made to his superiors. Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. After the American bombing campaign decimated their forces, Walker and members of his unit fled on foot nearly a hundred miles west to Kunduzall for nothing, as it turned out. At least two Red Cross workers who descend into the bunker are shot and wounded. Our warhad been big footed by Iraq. 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. We roll past weathered villages unchanged in two millennia. They reach out to shake his hand, to embrace him. Yes, and that's why Gen. Dostum kept the American soldiers back from the front lines at first. Mazar-i-Sharif was the stronghold for the Taliban's northern force and once liberated, the northern provinces quickly fell. We were receiving more fire. The entrance to the bunker was pierced by cannon shots and is blackened from explosions. At 3:30 a.m., I go to bed. His father is old. The bomb lands and hits and bam! . Their subcommander has told us at least six times over the radio to get out of there. We jumped in the back of a truck and drove up to Dostums HQ here in this house.. The twisted rag doll bodies of dead Taliban fighters lie heads back, fingers clutched, legs sprawled as if they fell running. Images of them doing this can be seen below and in Alex Quade's short documentary Horse Soldiers of 9/11. He is a kingmaker who works the ethnic minority to choose who will rule and who will fail. The crowds quickly grew; people threw money in the air for good luck. According to historian and author Doug Stanton, who spent five years. 12 Strong (2018) - IMDb A man whois said by some journalists to define violence and treachery. We did all that we could. At 16, he started working as a laborer in the government-owned gas refinery in nearby Sheberghan, where he dabbled in union politics. Captain Mitch Nelson (played by Chris Hemsworth) refuses. 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. 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. 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. In the conservative press I am criticized for being too gentle in my questioning of an obvious traitor, on the left for cold-bloodedly tricking a helpless boy into incriminating himself. 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. But coordination soon improved, and the improbable allies fell into a rhythm: The Americans would bomb; Dostums men would attack. Was it ten thousand, five thousand, The actual number was around 3,500 who surrendered, another460 al Qaeda showed up at thegates of Mazar and around 250 300 died of their wounds, diseaseor suffocation during transport in the frigid weather. 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. However, with regard to making sure the movie didn't veer too far from the true story, only two members of the original ODA-595 detachment visited the set for a total of 2.5 days. Then he rides up on horseback with one pant leg untucked, looking like Bluto.. Mitch Nelson, scanned the dark landscape around the landing zone. "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. So, I'm playing my old boss in the movie." On October 7, 2001, ODA 595 arrived in Karchi-Khanabad (K2) Airfield, Uzbekistan. Dont I know you? one of them says. Its a high, lonely place. That he is known to be a deft alliance makerand breaker. 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. The mission stopped being a secret on November 16, 2001, a mere two months after 9/11. Yes, but the tagline is a bit of an exaggeration. "All of these guys have blood on their hands. 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. An old man yells, God bless you. He rolls in a John Wayne walk to Commander Lal, whos in charge of the standoff. "I don't need food for my horses," he said. It wasnt done perfectly, but it will never be forgotten., Over 3200 prisoners were kept in Sheberghan Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. 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. Americas finest were about to fight their first war on horseback in more than a hundred years. 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. The B-Team had already set up shop at theTurkish School in Mazar and was getting ready for the push to Tora Bora. DP hats, so I dig them out of my bag and pass them around. The movie isn't revealing anything new. As the Hespan drips into his veins, I fire up the video camera, and the man begins to tell his story. The sound of canon firecontinues without a break but at a slower pace. '12 Strong' turns heroic tale into generic war movie -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. This was a guy we considered part of our unit, says Mark. Biography Mitch Nelson was born in Alma, Kansas, and he married a Hispanic woman and had a daughter. Over 5000 Taliban remained hidden in surrounding villages. They send off steam in the cold night, their brown skin white with dust. 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. The trapped Taliban volunteers, it seems, remain hungry for martyrdom. Interestingly, actor Chris Hemsworth's real-life wife, Elsa Pataky, portrays his character's wife in the movie. "Very Good," replied Dostum. The rest mounted up and rode north. "We dispersed the team at several positions along the ridges of the Tiangi." Up until now the CIA has been hog-tied. It was the finest sight I ever saw. Trigger warnings include battlefield violence, repeated explosions and gun battles, and up-close scenes of civilian killings by the Taliban. . He says it sadly. He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. They observed how the film production was set up and talked to some of the actors, but they were never hired as consultants. 12 Strong - Wikipedia The Green Berets call it the Gap of Doom. The wholesale conversion of talibs to the government side during theKunduz surrender had created confusion in how many Taliban existed in the North. They had gone only about 600 meters when they started taking fire. Mitch Nelson," a. The people of Dostums village were so impressed with his leadership that they recruited 600 men for him to command. Staying off the roads and in the wilds, they could swoop down andattackthe Taliban but could not hold the ground. 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. 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. This story needed to be shared with the rest of the country. -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. That group was disbanded and then re-formed in the early 1950s as Special Forces, which John F. Kennedy later nicknamed the Green Berets. Then theres Steve, a well-mannered southern medic; Pete, the burly chaw spitter; Mark, their blond, midwestern captain; and so on. Nutsch commented: Were humbled that a movie has been made about our teams mission in that pivotal post 9/11 period. I asked for a few Americans, he says finally. This time there is no convoy; just a son paying his respects to his father. We are alive thanks to you. As Dostum stands on the porch, looking at the place of his birth, he chokes up. The only sign that something is about to happen is a white contrail high in the sky. Dozens of dark-eyed men in turbans scramble into battered Toyota pickup trucks and assorted four-wheel-drive vehicles.