real general dostum and mitch nelson

Mark Nutsch's team, ODA 595, was dropped in Dehi, roughly 100 miles from the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Blackened, twisted vehicles are perforated with thousands of jagged holes. Dostums men had finally flooded them out by sluicing frigid water into the subterranean room. At night we sit around talking over stainless steel cups of coffee. 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. In real life, they learned of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center over the truck's radio on their way back to the base. After our time in country, I became friends with the men and defended them when they were accused of war crimes by the media. They told us, If Dostum wants to go to Kabul, you are going with him. The doctors huddle around a steel-drum stove, smiling and talking, oblivious to the pain and suffering around them. 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. After a while we soon got along. And we were going to oblige them.. Chris Hemsworth's character's real-life counterpart, Mark Nutsch, had worked on a cattle ranch when he was younger and was one of the few members of the 12-man team who had experience riding horses. In real life, Bob Pennington wasn't badly injured by a surrendering enemy fighter who blew himself up with his own grenade, an act that leaves Michael Shannon's character clinging to life as his fellow soldiers hurry to extract him. Some cry out in pain, some are weeping, and others lie still, their faces frozen in deathly grimaces. It is also rumored that there are many dead and at least two live prisoners holed up in the subterranean bomb shelter. In a tiny, sparse room are his father, Dostums former teacher, and a village elder. It feels like a scene out of a bad Mexican movie. It never happened in real life, though Pennington says that he still suffers from back pain from riding the horse. This is the first close-air-support strike in years in an urban area, says Air Force Steve. At the end of the Soviet period Dostum had 45,000 troops with about half of them as village reserves. Dostum dismounted and shook everyones hand, then sat on a mound covered with carpets. At first, their mission was one of personnel recovery, tasked with rescuing any pilots shot down during the air war in 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. After the seventh grade, Dostum left school to help his father on the family farm. He is a thick man with a pug nose, bad skin, tiny teeth, and a cruel stare. First arrival on the Observation Post. real general dostum and mitch nelson - diagrammix.com 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. 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. There are 86 al Qaeda fighter in the basement, including John Walker Lindh. "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. 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. 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. "We knew nothing about these guys," retired Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland said. Captain Nelson was determined to get the mission done in a timely fashion because of the promise he made to his superiors. Then the radios are jammed with Dostums men shouting and celebrating. 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. The crowd of men follows Dostum into his fathers compound. He is a kingmaker who works the ethnic minority to choose who will rule and who will fail. Yes, Bob Pennington, portrayed by Michael Shannon in the movie, had a herniated disc and suffered from excruciating back pain during the mission. He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. What we didnt realize was that the Taliban who we saw coming out of the bunker had gone into the low ground and were sprinting up the hills at us in a flanking maneuver. 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. You can bomb it until there is no resistance, or you bomb and, as soon as the bomb goes off, you charge. The sound of canon firecontinues without a break but at a slower pace. We will never end wars if we dont understand how to win them. Also, there was hardly any assurance that the team would be safe with the Afghan fighters they were working alongside. Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. As for why the names were changed, one article stated that the studio did not want to have to pay all of the real-life people for the rights to use their names. First, a soft gray cloud of smoke rises in a lazy ring. Over the next few weeks I privately coin for him a nickname based on the medias fear and his in person good humor: I call him Heavy D, after the 1980s rapper. But 9/11 changed all that. 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. The conflict we expected to be over in months inexplicably continues on. "We dispersed the team at several positions along the ridges of the Tiangi." The people of Dostums village were so impressed with his leadership that they recruited 600 men for him to command. Nothing of the war, death, exile, and victory that have shaped the man sitting in the front seat. The B-Team had already set up shop at theTurkish School in Mazar and was getting ready for the push to Tora Bora. With Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Pea, Navid Negahban. 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. After all, can Hollywood do this topic justice? Like in the 12 Strong movie, the real Horse Soldiers were able to liberate Afghanistan's fourth largest city, Mazar-i-Sharif, in just three weeks. I have been to America and know the quality of life they enjoy. Within hours, they are gone. Their closest call came toward the end of the campaign, before theyd reached the Tingi Pass; Id gotten an account of it last night from Mike, a big, bearded, soft-spoken soldier. I waited for it, that inevitable politicization of our troops presence in Afghanistan, but was happily surprised when it never came. They were all quitting demanding to be sent to other units rather than put up with new commander ideas on what soldiering was. 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. An old man yells, God bless you. Under intense pressure, the Regulators had called in a perfect surgical strikea bomb drop in a crowded urban area without a single civilian casualty. In between conflict there was time to celebrate. More than 400 prisoners are said to have died; I count only about 50 bodies in the courtyard. Before the arrival of the Americans, Dostum fought mostly at night. Newsletter The real-life Special Forces officer he represents is Mark Nutsch, who asked that his name be fictionalized in the movie. 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. Like in the film (available to watch here), at first they tried giving him horse feed but General Dostum wasn't impressed. Officials had been unaware that Dostum's army still used a horse cavalry. -The Fayetteville Observer, Only two of the characters in the film actually have the same names as their real-life Green Beret counterparts. Travel and accommodations were provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. So we haven't even taken the southern part of the country and we're still working with the Northern Alliance. The heavy shooting, the worried soldiers, the rapid radio chatterall signal that something ugly is going on over there. By the time the team had arrived in Qali-i-Jangi they were gaunt, sick but eager to keep up the fight. 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme. A bizarre story called The Convoy of Death surfaced and painted Dostum and the team in a negative light. ODA 595 and its commander, Capt. '12 Strong' turns heroic tale into generic war movie The only sign that something is about to happen is a white contrail high in the sky. The estimated 30 Alliance soldiers who died have already been taken away by their friends. The post was in an uproar, says Paul. The doctor yells in halting English, What your name? He jabs at the half-conscious mans face. 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 . Questioning, sad children. 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.). A day laterThursday, five days since the uprising broke outthey are still firing sporadically at soldiers removing bodies from the courtyard of the fortress. As he leans into the Afghan wind, the light falls, and a moment in history fades. Our Team Dostum, portrayed brilliantly by Navid Negahban, comes off as a kind of Obi Wan Kenobi, the ancient-wisdom-dispensing warrior. I looked at Lahl and said, Bombs away. We had 30 seconds till impact; meanwhile, the Afghan horde is screaming down this ridgeline. When a local singer wrote a song about Dostum, the name stuck. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! These are the soldiers I saw back at Qala Jangi preparing to go in and retrieve the body of the dead CIA agent, Mike Spann. But on the ground in Afghanistan, theyre on their own. His lack of combat experience is pointed out in the movie. -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. 12 Strong Best Quotes - 'We're on our own.' - MovieQuotesandMore We are alive thanks to you. As Dostum stands on the porch, looking at the place of his birth, he chokes up. 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. I head downstairs and discover a group of soldiers bantering cheerfully, mostly in southern accents. 12 Strong - Wikipedia Arent you the guy who goes to all those dangerous places?. We had hardened fighters holed up in the middle of an urban area who wanted to die, says Will. Based on history and dossiers full of Pakistani provided intelligence, theAgency wanted nothing to do with Dostum. Then he rides up on horseback with one pant leg untucked, looking like Bluto.. "It's your city, general. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. At the last minute the Agency was told by the SF ground commander that his men were going in with or without the Agency. 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. Mitch Nelson, a character based on Nutsch. We thought Kunduz was [going to be] a full-scale attack, says Captain Mark. July 22, 2018. Paul points to a misty, triangular peak that forms one side of the gap. How the 'Horse Soldiers' helped liberate Afghanistan from the Taliban That afternoon, Dostum and I set off for the fort, where the uprising has been all but quelled. When Dostum frowns, his features gather into a dark, Stalin-like scowlhis usual expression for formal portraits. Mitch Nelson, a U.S. Army captain with Green Berets Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595, . There is aneed to never forget the sacrifices men make in war. Mark Nutsch, portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie, had recently been promoted out of the job he loved, serving in the field as a Special Forces team captain. Since I was a guest of General Dostum it was a little difficult for the men to avoid me. When the regime fell in 1992, three years after the Soviets departed, Dostum fought alongside the mujahidin and helped the Northern Alliances legendary Ahmad Shah Massoud battle the fundamentalist Pashtun forces of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and gain control of the capital. I target the third bunker. So, I'm playing my old boss in the movie." A man whois said by some journalists to define violence and treachery. Mitch Nelson, scanned the dark landscape around the landing zone. (In his book Taliban, author Ahmed Rashid reports a tale he heard that Dostum once ordered his men to drag a thief behind a tank until all that was left was a bloody pulp of gore. This part of Afghanistan is ancient, arid, windblownand is the real cradle of its history and wealth. The first monument to CIA officer Mike Spann, the first casualty in the war on terror was erected by General Dostum. The Regulators have served in the gulf war, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and in other places they cant talk about. To this day the war continues and Dostum as First Vice President remains a staunch ally of America. He talked for half an hour. Theres one time Ill never forget, he says. who will play the wife of Mitch Nelson opposite her real-life husband, Chris Hemsworth. We jumped in the back of a truck and drove up to Dostums HQ here in this house.. But I never travel without a few Mr.
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