His lack of combat experience is pointed out in the movie. It works against tanks, but its plain stupid in this terrain. 12 Strong: Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig. 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. We get out of the jeep and stand in the rain and slick mud. After a while we soon got along. 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. (Though in my opinion, much more time should have been given to family homecoming scenes!). 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. Before the arrival of the Americans, Dostum fought mostly at night. We were receiving more fire. We had unrestricted movement into the gap, which gave us the high ground.. How the 'Horse Soldiers' helped liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban The problem is that the the Convoy of Death story is false. Bill and the team were wearing armor decorated with my logo when he died. He told them his name was Abdul Hamid. Privacy Policy He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. How do you love your family and leave them to go to war? 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. 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. 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 don't need food for my horses," he said. I grab my cameras and ask Bill, a pensive Green Beret medic, to come with me. At a full gallop, its a smooth ride. When the videotape of my interview with Walker hits the airwaves back in the U.S., the country focuses its white-hot anger on him, and some of that anger spills over onto me. 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. 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 movies portrayal. On October 7, 2001, ODA 595 arrived in Karchi-Khanabad (K2) Airfield, Uzbekistan. I watch a fighter go up to the top, then crumple into a black pile of rags. Men wept as the imam prayed and thanked Dostum for deliverance. General Dostum knew the area and how to reach the goal faster by cutting through the mountains and finally communicated this when he felt more trusting of Captain Nelson. 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. Dostum implores the mullahs to call down to the bunker and tell the remaining men to surrender. Finally, the pilot says he has the target in sight. 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). We set up in a bomb crater and used it as our bunker. This scandal would tarnish General Dostums very realaccomplishment of being Americas most aggressive and stalwart allyagainst the Taliban and al Qaeda. He also used to compete in collegiate rodeos. real general dostum and mitch nelson - diagrammix.com Various close ups of American Specia. Shannon's character is wounded in the movie for dramatic effect. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. It turns out theyre staying next door, guests in Dostums house. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. Anticipating more fireworks, I head there with him and move into another of his residences, a huge, high-walled compound that includes a mosque and, improbably, an unfinished health-club complex. ", Yes. In seconds, 250 men on horseback were thundering toward the Taliban position a mere 1,500 meters away. He would take a village by getting the mounted guys up close. In the 1980s, as a young army officer in the Soviet-backed government, he fought against the mujahidin. Some are provided by Dostum and others. We could see a bunch of Taliban come out of another bunker complex off to the south and disappear behind a hill. Dostums men kick the corpses into the trenches and cover them with the tan dirt, not bothering to count the dead. They range in age from mid-20s to early 40s. Beyond that, all I know is that Dostum, born a poor peasant, grew up to be a brilliant commander, a general, and a warlordone of the many regional leaders across Afghanistan whose power derives both from ethnic loyalties and from military strength. Note that there is strong language throughout, as well as violence. We were at the right place at the right time, says Steve. Dostum and troops bid farewell to US special forces. - YouTube The first thing we wanted to do was to say to Dostum, The Americans are here, Paul explains, and to make it a fearsome prospect to mess with us. The Americans set up their gear at Dostums command postwhich overlooked Taliban positions about six miles awayand immediately began the process of calling in close air support, or CAS. -Den of Geek. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. Every time the plane would circle, the Taliban would run behind their bunker. Arent you the guy who goes to all those dangerous places?. Dostum chuckles and denies the allegation. They also need blankets.". 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. There were roughly 200 paid Afghan soldiers under General Dostum's command and an undetermined number of part-time militia. A typical meal at Dostums guesthouse. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. It was pretty painful, Paul says. And that ended the resistance. As the three of us climb back into our vehicle, I glance at the battlefield. 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. This is the first close-air-support strike in years in an urban area, says Air Force Steve. 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. The rounds are zinging over my head. He knew that he had to put in his time shuffling papers in order to move up in rank. The deadline is noon. Yes. When the council broke up, Dostum stood and motioned toward the horses. When war first came to Afghanistan, two decades ago, he built his first stronghold here to guard the village. I ride in the warlords communications truck, a white Land Cruiser. 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. 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. But on the ground in Afghanistan, theyre on their own. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, on the decision to make the movie: Remarkably enough, there have been very few films made about the Armys Special Forces. 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. Where you from? The man finally answers. He never sacrificed his men. I whip my horse, it takes three steps, and stops. 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. He rose through the ranks quickly becoming a paratrooper in 1973, an armored unit in 1978 and Battalion 734 KhAD by 1983. Then the radios are jammed with Dostums men shouting and celebrating. I head downstairs and discover a group of soldiers bantering cheerfully, mostly in southern accents. 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. 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. Blackened, twisted vehicles are perforated with thousands of jagged holes. There are tanks. 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. I am surprised, then, to see Dostum wrap his blue turban around his head and chin and stride into the village . 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. The warm smell of gangrene and human waste hits me as I open the door to the triage room. The horses cast long shadows in the late afternoon. The old men are frail, with deeply lined faces. At 16, he started working as a laborer in the government-owned gas refinery in nearby Sheberghan, where he dabbled in union politics. Dostums lieutenants would call him in Turkey and tell him how difficult life had become. Armored personnel carriers jerk to life in clouds of black diesel exhaust. Yes. With Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Navid Negahban. My attempts to convince the Afghans took place in a building in which men with dark beards sat in from of Tony Montana style palm tree sunset wall paper murals. As we approach the village, the men and boys are lined up in a perfect row a hundred yards long, waiting to greet Dostum. Their rooms are filled with green Army cots, dirty brown packs, and green flight bags. Wrapped in blankets, members of the mullahs entourage fix me with soulless stares. Santos pointed out that with Massoud dead, and no Pashtun resistance, Dostum was Americas only hope. "12 Strong": The Inside Story of the Making of a (Refreshingly Accurate Now we hope that America will not be cruel to the Afghan people.. We thought Kunduz was [going to be] a full-scale attack, says Captain Mark. In the last two semi-wars we have been in, every time American soldiers get killed we pull out. 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. 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. 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. And theyd been told that he was the most powerful anti-Taliban leader in northern Afghanistan. "For all of our teams, the risk was extraordinary," Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland said. A local mullah sings a prayer of deliverance and thanks to Dostum. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. Dostum and the Green Berets drove by them as they headed for Kunduz. I wondered if they could adapt to these circumstances. What else do you expect my enemies to say? he asks. 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. Captain Mitch Nelson (played by Chris Hemsworth) refuses. They had tanks, air force, and artillery. Perhaps theyll convince any surviving prisoners to surrender. It took about an hour to get the aircraft. -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. I waited for it, that inevitable politicization of our troops presence in Afghanistan, but was happily surprised when it never came. And that he became the first Afghan commander to take over a major city when he entered Mazar-e Sharif on November 10. The then-secret Uzbekistan air base, also known as K2, is depicted as a sort of tent city in the movie. What made working with him particularly dangerous was that he was known for switching sides during several conflicts with Afghanistan. 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 is an emotional landscape here I cannot see. 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,. Two Soldiers Tell the Real Story Behind 12 Strong | Paul Asay Up on the parapets, Dostums troops stream toward a gap in the ramparts created yesterday by an errant American 2000 lb bomb.
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