And theyd been told that he was the most powerful anti-Taliban leader in northern Afghanistan. Wide four members of American Special Forces and General Abdul Rashid Dostum of the Northern Alliance2. Nutsch is portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie and renamed Mitch Nelson. who will play the wife of Mitch Nelson opposite her real-life husband, Chris Hemsworth. 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. 12 STRONG Rebeca Aguilar-Diaz PROFESSOR - Course Hero Images of them doing this can be seen below and in Alex Quade's short documentary Horse Soldiers of 9/11. These are two of the Taliban who chased Dostum out of Mazar in May 1997, but still he treats them more like honored guests than prisoners of war. Weve all been there. In a tiny, sparse room are his father, Dostums former teacher, and a village elder. Rashid later admitted that not only did he not witness it but it the event wasfictional. It works against tanks, but its plain stupid in this terrain. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Washington, D.C.. Dostum points to the fresh dirt of new graves in the cemetery. We havent seen a TV or news in two months, one soldier says apologetically. They reach out to shake his hand, to embrace him. Nutsch commented: Were humbled that a movie has been made about our teams mission in that pivotal post 9/11 period. This time I had less worries with just a few hours waiting for Uzbek guards to look the other way while we hustled our kit over the blockade Friendship Bridge at night. 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. He says it sadly. They just cant figure it out. By the time they come up and look, you are on them. The latter approach was well suited to Dostums style of attack. 12 Strong: Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig. Its a gritty reminder of who our common enemy wasone that not only strove to kill Americans, but also attempted to force its archaic way of life on whole countries. The old men are frail, with deeply lined faces. At the same moment he was trying to flee Mazar from the Taliban assault. The mission was also chronicled in Doug Stanton's 2009 book, Horse Soldiers, on which the movie is based. 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. Open your eyes! Each member had an average of eight years experience and most had combat experience in either Desert Storm, Kosovo or Somalia. Some cry out in pain, some are weeping, and others lie still, their faces frozen in deathly grimaces. The steel gate to the guest house opens, and Dostum strolls out, hands in pockets, and is ushered into a black Audi Quattro with tinted windows. Who were the 12 strong in real life? - JOUNIMARTIKAINEN Mitch Nelson, scanned the dark landscape around the landing zone. And if they became overwhelmed by the enemy, little could be done to save them since they would be roughly nine hours away from help. Shattered, bearded men lie everywhere on stretchers, covered by thin blue sheets. 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. It was indeed as much of a surprise to the real team as it is in the movie. It is rated R for violence and language throughout. 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. My opinion is an unequivocal yes. The next morning, about 60 Afghan cavalry came thundering into the compound. In the words of director Nicolai Fuglsig: This is a movie where you can rally around both the Americans and the Afghans because, together, they took an epic ride into the mouth of hell. The trapped Taliban volunteers, it seems, remain hungry for martyrdom. In an air attack, says Air Force Steve, you do one of two things. More than 400 prisoners are said to have died; I count only about 50 bodies in the courtyard. They placed it in a body bag and lowered it into the ground. Within hours, they are gone. Travel and accommodations were provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. They spend every day training for war, teaching other armies about war, and waiting for the call to fight in the next war. They formed an alliance with Afghan rebels led by Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, played by Numan Acar. Captain Nelson was determined to get the mission done in a timely fashion because of the promise he made to his superiors. At the time, General Dostum did have a reputation for violence and turning on allies during battle. Newsweek, The New York Times and other outlets insisted that eyewitness had seen American soldiers laughing and shooting into containers. According to historian and author Doug Stanton, who spent five years. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved, The scene at the hospital is ugly. Even the CIA was reticent to land paramilitaries and officers to set up the conditions for an Special Forces ODA to be inserted. Mitch Nelson | Historica Wiki | Fandom 12 Strong Best Quotes - 'We're on our own.' - MovieQuotesandMore Surprisingly Dostum agreed. "The threat of capture, torture was very real." 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. Finally, the pilot says he has the target in sight. What made working with him particularly dangerous was that he was known for switching sides during several conflicts with Afghanistan. Families back home monitor the news, not wanting to look but more afraid to turn it off. One key point noted repeatedly (and military spouses already know this!) 12 Strong | JH Movie Collection Wiki | Fandom When the two aircraft were on location, the Green Berets radioed Alliance commanders to evacuate civilians from the area. The actions of the ODA 595 helped lay the groundwork for that victory. -Legion of Brothers, No. 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. Accused of Rape and Torture, Exiled Afghan Vice President Returns Dozens of dark-eyed men in turbans scramble into battered Toyota pickup trucks and assorted four-wheel-drive vehicles. After four days of bombardment, the interior of the fort is a scene of utter devastation. Arent you the guy who goes to all those dangerous places?. In real-life, Dostum became the Vice President of Afghanistan, as stated prior to the movie's end credits. An NGO insisted that thousands of corpses were dumped at a graveyard calledDasht-i-Leili outside of Shiberghan but refused to actual exhume them. Military families cant escape the fact that weve now been at war nearly 17 years. The U.S. refused to work with Dostum until former UN envoy Charlie Santos pointed out to the CIA that the only functioning fighting group besidesthe Panjshiris ofMassoud wereDostums Uzbeks. He also used to compete in collegiate rodeos. It was put on display across from Ground Zero in 2012. 12 Strong | On-set visit with Navid Negahban "General Dostum" We were receiving more fire. -ABC News. Theres one time Ill never forget, he says. On another truck are the seriously wounded. Our mission was simple, another soldier says. Where you from? The man finally answers. It served as Pauls command post. The only sign that something is about to happen is a white contrail high in the sky. I soon learn that yesterday some 400 foreign Taliban prisoners overpowered their guards, broke into arsenals, and took over part of the fortress. Battle of Bescham | Historica Wiki | Fandom Power is not given to anyone forever. In the afternoon, when I visit the 1985 fort called Qala i Jangi or Fort of the Soldiers, bullets sing over my head. 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. It never happened in real life, though Pennington says that he still suffers from back pain from riding the horse. We must honor their truth not the fiction that creates more wars. In the last two semi-wars we have been in, every time American soldiers get killed we pull out. This is where Alexander ruled, where Zoroaster was born, where Buddhists came on pilgrimages, a center of art, poetry, and study where lions were hunted and where Genghis Khan came to conquer. 12 Strong, from Warner Bros. Pictures, will release on January 19, 2018. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. In the morning Villagers come out in the crisp, golden light of morning, shivering and tired. They chose not bullets or grenades but ordnance that ranged from Maverick missiles to laser-guided bombs. It was like that scene in Close Encounters where the aliens meet humans for the first time, one soldier says later. 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. None of these guys are clean actors." He says it was an area sympathetic to the Taliban and that his heart went out to them. 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. I get off the horse and say, Screw this; Im walking.. They landed near a mud-walled compound in the remote Darra-e Suf valley in northern Afghanistan. A few minutes later, one of Dostums men runs up breathlessly, saying there is an American in the hospital. Right next to where I am staying. The crumpled bodies of prisoners, frozen in agony, are scattered everywhere. All I see is brown dirt and men on donkeys leading camels along the road. When it looked like they would break the back of the position, he would ride through as fast as he could and keep the Taliban on the run., With their knowledge of military history, the Regulators appreciated the ironies of this strange war: The Taliban had gone from the muj style of fightingin the mountains, on horsebackto working in mechanized columns, says Will, another member of 595. The crowds quickly grew; people threw money in the air for good luck. show Dostum the chapter in Rashids book that includes the account of the gruesome execution of the thief. 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. Perhaps we really ought to think of the Star Wars icon as an. We thought Kunduz was [going to be] a full-scale attack, says Captain Mark. Mark Nutsch and his team had to gain Dostum's trust and convince him that 9/11 had changed things. 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. If you drive west from Mazar, past Qala Jangi, past Khoda Barq, past the ancient, crumbling city of Balkh, and head south toward a ridge of snow-dusted mountains called the Alborz Range, you will see a gapthe Tingi Pass. Perhaps theyll convince any surviving prisoners to surrender. Some hide their faces, others convulse and shiver. 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. They put the prisoners back on the truck. "The battle at the end was not depicted accurately," says the real Bob Pennington. The mission stopped being a secret on November 16, 2001, a mere two months after 9/11. 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