real general dostum and mitch nelson

It took about an hour to get the aircraft. 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. And that ended the resistance. As the three of us climb back into our vehicle, I glance at the battlefield. At first, the planes wouldnt fly below 15,000 feetthe brass was worried about surface-to-air missilesso targeting was sketchy. Power is not given to anyone forever. He talked for half an hour. Dostum, portrayed brilliantly by Navid Negahban, comes off as a kind of Obi Wan Kenobi, the ancient-wisdom-dispensing warrior. Dostum has decided to clean up the regions last remaining pocket of Taliban himself. "I was on his command element and worked with him in November of 2001 in Afghanistan. I asked for a few Americans, he says finally. The 12 Strong movie has Chris Hemsworth's character (Mark Nutsch in real life) being given the candy-bar-sized piece of metal by Colonel Mulholland. Theyre polite but wary about having their pictures taken as they set up their night-vision scopes. This article on ODA 595, General Dostum, John Walker Lindh and the battle at Qali-i-Jangi was originally published in the March 2002 edition of National Geographic Adventure, THE LEGEND OF HEAVYAND THE BOYS By Robert Young Pelton. The crumpled bodies of prisoners, frozen in agony, are scattered everywhere. And that is a story worth telling. It feels even more odd when I discover that these are Green Beretssoldiers who truly specialize in the worlds hot spots. It was indeed as much of a surprise to the real team as it is in the movie. Questioning, sad children. I had jumped a train in Tajikistan, snuck into Uzbekistan and remained holed up in a dusty border town. -Den of Geek. Like in the film (available to watch here), at first they tried giving him horse feed but General Dostum wasn't impressed. The Regulators final destination turned out to be Uzbekistan, where they spent a week building a tent city and waiting for a mission. 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme. 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. A good reminder for all Americans are the scenes portraying the oppressive lives the Afghan people were subjected to under Taliban rule. Some American soldiers are billeted upstairs in the guest houses; men in camo pants run up and down the stairs. I looked at Lahl and said, Bombs away. We had 30 seconds till impact; meanwhile, the Afghan horde is screaming down this ridgeline. He freely admits that in two decades of war, abuses have been committed by the troops of every commander. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! The CIA gave us a briefing. Although the Regulators were among the first, other small teams of U.S. forces would soon be airlifted in for similar missions, a response to Dostums request for American assistance to be sent to other Northern Alliance commanders. The sound of canon firecontinues without a break but at a slower pace. ODA 595 Prepares to retrieve the body of Mike Spann from Qala-i-Jangi Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. That afternoon, Dostum and I set off for the fort, where the uprising has been all but quelled. 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. When he returns, the dark weariness has lifted. By the time they come up and look, you are on them. The latter approach was well suited to Dostums style of attack. It never happened in real life, though Pennington says that he still suffers from back pain from riding the horse. Yes. What we are doing now has not occurred since Vietnam. When war first came to Afghanistan, two decades ago, he built his first stronghold here to guard the village. 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. -Horse Soldiers book, Yes. His father is old. When the television begins to blare, the men stare at the screen. Later, several months after the Taliban fell, the special operations teams returned to Mazar-i-Sharif to bury the piece of the World Trade Center. He was quick to defend the weak and if negotiations failed he had no shortage of armed men that would stand beside him. The rest mounted up and rode north. But the story gradually emerges. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Dostum and Mitch Nelson remain close friends to this day. Planning a one-day live-ammo training exercise can require six months of paperwork. Dostum and the Green Berets drove by them as they headed for Kunduz. Since I was a guest of General Dostum it was a little difficult for the men to avoid me. An odd case of alack of evidence being brought forward as the evidence. Mitch Nelson," a. The soldiers on the U.S. Special Forces teams were used to state-of-the-art warfare. On another truck are the seriously wounded. 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. I wondered if they could adapt to these circumstances. 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. However, one was dropped due to a lack of confidence in the team. It was right at dark. 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. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. 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. "Very Good," replied Dostum. The next morning, about 60 Afghan cavalry came thundering into the compound. Our Team Once the ODA 595 linked up with Dostum, they were to "render the area unsafe for the Taliban and terrorist activity," says Green Beret Mark Nutsch, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie. "They weirdly are a formidable force that will continue to fight, no matter what.". When team leader Nelson presented Dostum with a gift of horse feed, Dostum was obviously offended. 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. The real-life Special Forces officer he represents is Mark Nutsch, who asked that his name be fictionalized in the movie. Support Dostum. Contact Us Despite knowledge of the mission being available to the public, it had remained largely unheard of until the book. Newsweek, The New York Times and other outlets insisted that eyewitness had seen American soldiers laughing and shooting into containers. If there is no enemy, then bureaucracy is the enemy, he says. Commanders, clergymen, womenthey would all tell me very bitter stories. -The Fayetteville Observer, Yes. Newsletter Dostums men load RPGs and check their ammo drums. Almost immediately after the bombs exploded, the horses swept across the objectivethe enemy was so shell-shocked. 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 . Fifty tents later, they told us to pack our shit again.. Andy chimes in. Dostums lieutenants would call him in Turkey and tell him how difficult life had become. The conflict began with several hundred Taliban troops moving into positions on an adjacent hill. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Copyright 2023 HistoryvsHollywood.com, CTF Media, Horse Soldiers Documentary & Related Videos, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. He studied Arabic in Yemen and then enrolled in a madrasah, or religious school, in northern Pakistan. General Abul Rashid Dostum Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Shannon's character is wounded in the movie for dramatic effect. Instead, 12 Strong simply tells a storya true one. "And to me, that was a plus when you got saddled with a mission that was going to be as complex as this one." Only two characters in 12 Strong . 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. Theres the erratic chatter of AK-47s and the deep dut dut dut dut of Taliban machine guns. Dostum must now change his focus from fighting to rebuilding his country. Now the CIA and spec ops have been let loose., Dostums men were a loose alliance that grew with every victory against the Taliban. General Abdul Rashid Dostum is a man who has rarely been interviewed but has often been typecast as a brutal warlordusually because of his reputation for winning. 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. Washington, D.C.. Captain Nelson was determined to get the mission done in a timely fashion because of the promise he made to his superiors. His lack of combat experience is pointed out in the movie. That group was disbanded and then re-formed in the early 1950s as Special Forces, which John F. Kennedy later nicknamed the Green Berets. Yes, and that's why Gen. Dostum kept the American soldiers back from the front lines at first. Paul points to a misty, triangular peak that forms one side of the gap. They reach out to shake his hand, to embrace him. Mark Nutsch and his team had to gain Dostum's trust and convince him that 9/11 had changed things. It wasnt done perfectly, but it will never be forgotten., Over 3200 prisoners were kept in Sheberghan Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. 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. Dostums father talks to his son as though he were a child, telling him that he and the teacher have been praying for his success. Every time the plane would circle, the Taliban would run behind their bunker. At first he is hostile, like a kitten baring its claws. Dont I know you? one of them says. However, at least 3 false starts delayed their deployment for almost a month. "If they got in trouble, there was very little I could do and nothing I could do quickly. 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. -The Fayetteville Observer, Yes. The mission was also chronicled in Doug Stanton's 2009 book, Horse Soldiers, on which the movie is based. This part of Afghanistan is ancient, arid, windblownand is the real cradle of its history and wealth. 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. Twenty Urgan missiles point toward the village. 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 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. Captain Mitch Nelson (played by Chris Hemsworth) refuses. The only sign that something is about to happen is a white contrail high in the sky. The man is terribly thin and severely hypothermic. 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. They use simple wooden saddles covered with a piece of carpet, and short stirrups that put our knees up by our heads. We roll past weathered villages unchanged in two millennia. All I see is brown dirt and men on donkeys leading camels along the road. Drop a bomb on that grid. Pretty straightforward stuff.. It didnt seem to matter that there was no actual evidence. But 9/11 changed all that. 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. They are direct military descendants of the Devils Brigade, a joint Canadian-American unit that fought in Italy during the Second World War. I figured I could whip my horse and run across an open area, Mike said. At least two Red Cross workers who descend into the bunker are shot and wounded. We are alive thanks to you. As Dostum stands on the porch, looking at the place of his birth, he chokes up. We were surprised at how good they were, says Captain Mark. 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. Next door, in Dostums pink house, Mullah Faizal and Mullah Nuri sit on pillows in a small room. The doctors huddle around a steel-drum stove, smiling and talking, oblivious to the pain and suffering around them. It was the finest sight I ever saw. The first monument to CIA officer Mike Spann, the first casualty in the war on terror was erected by General Dostum. 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. A typical meal at Dostums guesthouse. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. A clock sounds loudly. 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. 12 Strong tells the story of the first Special Forces team deployed to Afghanistan after 9/11; under the leadership of a new captain, the team must work with an Afghan warlord to take down the Taliban. I thought the guy was this ruthless warlord, one soldier says. The Taliban are running. Its more like, I am coming to get youwhether I hit you is another story. Its Old World combat at its finest. 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. People demanded that I do something, says Dostum. But coordination soon improved, and the improbable allies fell into a rhythm: The Americans would bomb; Dostums men would attack. 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,. They linked up with Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and his Uzbek fighters. He wont tell me who to contact, or provide any information that would get him out of the crudely equipped hospital. He knew that he had to put in his time shuffling papers in order to move up in rank. -The Fayetteville Observer, Only two of the characters in the film actually have the same names as their real-life Green Beret counterparts. Dostum and his commanders wanted to negotiate, but the foreign Taliban shot and killed their peace envoys, which left Al-liance leaders with little choice. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. While researching to answer the question, "How accurate is 12 Strong?" But on the ground in Afghanistan, theyre on their own. When noon comes and goes, I expect the order to fire. John, he says. Theres one time Ill never forget, he says. Perhaps we really ought to think of the Star Wars icon as an. They landed near a mud-walled compound in the remote Darra-e Suf valley in northern Afghanistan. Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. Here, the 12 Strong movie and the true story match up. Not exactly. 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. Even the CIA was reticent to land paramilitaries and officers to set up the conditions for an Special Forces ODA to be inserted. "There was nothing built up," Mark Nutsch said. -SOFREP, In the movie, Chris Hemsworth's character's wife is not pregnant. None of these guys are clean actors." Both of the named Green Berets are commanding officers, John Mulholland and Max Bowers. The two Afghan leaders study a map with Captain Mark, just in case air strikes are needed. -NPR, No. We had unrestricted movement into the gap, which gave us the high ground.. They chose not bullets or grenades but ordnance that ranged from Maverick missiles to laser-guided bombs. We did all that we could. This included using horses to navigate the mountainous region. Three years of drought have broken: A cold rain pours down in gray sheets. Their home base is Fort Campbell, Kentucky, but they spend only a few months of the year there. 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. Based on history and dossiers full of Pakistani provided intelligence, theAgency wanted nothing to do with Dostum. Again he began integrating mujahideen into the political military ranks among them his number two against the Taliban Lal Kamadan. In the movie, another team member arrives to pick them up and tells them about the attacks. The task inspires him to try to express his feelings about the past two months. 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. It was September 12, 2003. Is Captain Mitch Nelson still alive? 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. "All of these guys have blood on their hands. We were at the right place at the right time, says Steve. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. show Dostum the chapter in Rashids book that includes the account of the gruesome execution of the thief. Paul picks up the story, raindrops dotting his gold-rimmed, government-issue glasses. Were not about to stand up and watch whats going on. Airstrikes, AC130s and Hazara guards had killed all but 86 al Qaeda and Taliban fighters Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. They had to kill their horses for food. In an effort to trim Dostums control the CIA would insist that rival commander Ustad Atta Mohammed get his own Green Beret escort several weeks later as he raced Dostum to claim Mazar. Bill finds a shrapnel wound in the emaciated mans right upper thigh and wounds from grenade shrapnel in his back; he also finds that part of the second toe on his left foot has been shot away. 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. It feels like a scene out of a bad Mexican movie. The real-life base wasn't built up at that point and amounted to little more than a series of Soviet-era bunkers. A small group of CIA that included Mike Spann, flew in to the Darra-e Suf the day before ODA 595 would land. Military families will relate to the goodbyes. We had two days to plan, another Regulator says. -The Fayetteville Observer. 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 . 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. Dostum proves to be significantly more expansive in conversation than his scant press clippings would suggest, and hes happy to fill me in on his background. We moved our targeting up along the ridgeline to the second bunker. Ten minutes later, another 40 riders galloped up. No one individual was the model for the statue. The moments of shockIs this really happening? They were all quitting demanding to be sent to other units rather than put up with new commander ideas on what soldiering was. After a cinematic pause to allow the implications of his arrival to sink in, Dostum phones the village leadership from the Audi: Send out your weapons and any fighters or were going in. When Dostum frowns, his features gather into a dark, Stalin-like scowlhis usual expression for formal portraits. With Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Navid Negahban. "We dispersed the team at several positions along the ridges of the Tiangi." In a tiny, sparse room are his father, Dostums former teacher, and a village elder. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. 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 Spotlighting a Special Forces unit that went to Afghanistan soon after 9/11 to hunt and destroy al-Qaeda, "12 Strong" follows this dirty dozen led by Hemsworth's "Capt. Some stayed behind to handle logistics and supplies. The CIA had begun to work with Massouds people in October of 1999 hoping to pay him to kill Osama bin Laden. We will never end wars if we dont understand how to win them. When the two aircraft were on location, the Green Berets radioed Alliance commanders to evacuate civilians from the area. 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. After all, can Hollywood do this topic justice? And I believe it will mean a lot to the Afghan people because it shows their service in that conflict..
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