The horses cast long shadows in the late afternoon. They had gone only about 600 meters when they started taking fire. Its like a casting call for The Dirty Dozen. Now, in a scene that has been repeated over and over for the past 2,000 years, a warlord is arriving. Over 5000 Taliban remained hidden in surrounding villages. Men wept as the imam prayed and thanked Dostum for deliverance. 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. His lack of combat experience is pointed out in the movie. (19 Dec 2001) 1. Paul here is busy shooting at guys. I soon learn that yesterday some 400 foreign Taliban prisoners overpowered their guards, broke into arsenals, and took over part of the fortress. There are twelve Green Berets here and two Air Force forward air controllers. 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 The task inspires him to try to express his feelings about the past two months. 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. The soldiers stay well away from the al Qaeda prisoners as I interview them. They use simple wooden saddles covered with a piece of carpet, and short stirrups that put our knees up by our heads. Toward the end of September, the word came down: Pack your shit., Fifteen days later, the team boarded a C-5 Galaxy with a secret flight plan. It was put on display across from Ground Zero in 2012. Finally after two weeks they admitted they could not smuggle me across. What else do you expect my enemies to say? he asks. However, he had been deployed in the Middle East and around the globe. Perhaps theyll convince any surviving prisoners to surrender. 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. The madrasah was surrounded for about a mile on each side by identical buildings, which made it difficult for the pilots to pick out the school. Dostum tells me that he has fought on every inch of Afghan soil and can recite the names of his men who have died, describe each battle in detail, and tell you what he has learned from every encounter. -The Fayetteville Observer, Yes. Dozens of dark-eyed men in turbans scramble into battered Toyota pickup trucks and assorted four-wheel-drive vehicles. The doctors huddle around a steel-drum stove, smiling and talking, oblivious to the pain and suffering around them. We had two days to plan, another Regulator says. 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. I had jumped a train in Tajikistan, snuck into Uzbekistan and remained holed up in a dusty border town. They moved and attacked mostly at night, riding small, wiry Afghan horses that are well suited to steep slopes and long desert walks. The 12 Strong true story reveals that they finally left Kentucky on October 5, 2001. Dostum chuckles and denies the allegation. What made working with him particularly dangerous was that he was known for switching sides during several conflicts with Afghanistan. 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. Bill and the team were wearing armor decorated with my logo when he died. And that ended the resistance. As the three of us climb back into our vehicle, I glance at the battlefield. A typical meal at Dostums guesthouse. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. He waves the accomplishment aside with a shy smile even as he promises to introduce me to his new trophiesthe mullahs. Nutsch said that the movie leaves out a key river that the men often had to swim across in the freezing cold water with their horses, one of the bigger obstacles they faced on the mission. Some are in pieces; others have been flattened by tank treads. Three years of drought have broken: A cold rain pours down in gray sheets. (Within a week, he will be named deputy minister of defense for the new interim government of Afghanistan.) During the press conference with filmmakers and cast members after the movie screening, all expressed their pride in relaying the story of true-life heroes that had been classified until recently. 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. Theyve just finished installing a satellite TV. Yes. Mitch Nelson, scanned the dark landscape around the landing zone. He confesses that he had worried at first how the Americans would handle Afghan warfare: It was cold; the food was bad. 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. Payback was certainly on the minds of some members of the team, while others focused primarily on the mission at hand. Even the CIA was reticent to land paramilitaries and officers to set up the conditions for an Special Forces ODA to be inserted. Mullah Faizel, commander of the Taliban Army in the North. Now we hope that America will not be cruel to the Afghan people.. By the time the team had arrived in Qali-i-Jangi they were gaunt, sick but eager to keep up the fight. The real-life base wasn't built up at that point and amounted to little more than a series of Soviet-era bunkers. They have Beretta pistols strapped to their thighs like gunslingers and short M-4 rifles slung across their chests. This included Detachment Commander Mark Nutsch (Chris Hemsworth onscreen) and Assistant Detachment Commander Bob Pennington (Michael Shannon in the movie). Dostum, a former Communist general, had a reputation for violence. Not long before Im to leave, Dostum asks for help with a letter of condolence to the widow of Mike Spann. The people of Dostums village were so impressed with his leadership that they recruited 600 men for him to command. 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. 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. The doctor yells in halting English, What your name? He jabs at the half-conscious mans face. Moments later Mike would be murdered by prisoners. This was a guy we considered part of our unit, says Mark. 12 Strong: Directed by Nicolai Fuglsig. -The Fayetteville Observer. In exploring how accurate 12 Strong is, we learned that some members of the ODA 595 Special Forces team had been involved in a nighttime training exercise along the Cumberland River. At the time, General Dostum did have a reputation for violence and turning on allies during battle. When a local singer wrote a song about Dostum, the name stuck. 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. Finally, the pilot says he has the target in sight. Faizal has his prosthetic leg off. "They didn't expect us to survive," Mark Nutsch said. In the morning Villagers come out in the crisp, golden light of morning, shivering and tired. He lies staring at the ceiling. 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. The men were thrilled; they were so happy. 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. Nutsch is portrayed by Chris Hemsworth in the movie and renamed Mitch Nelson. 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. Also, there was hardly any assurance that the team would be safe with the Afghan fighters they were working alongside. It was like that scene in Close Encounters where the aliens meet humans for the first time, one soldier says later. In seconds, 250 men on horseback were thundering toward the Taliban position a mere 1,500 meters away. 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. The then-secret Uzbekistan air base, also known as K2, is depicted as a sort of tent city in the movie. Under intense pressure, the Regulators had called in a perfect surgical strikea bomb drop in a crowded urban area without a single civilian casualty. Until a group of 480 al Qaeda and talibs showed up at the gates of Mazar. You see the village; you see the bunkers, says a second Steve, one of the two Air Force men attached to the team to help coordinate air strikes. It was somewhere between harassing and accurateenough to keep our heads down. The book is the inspiration behind the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film called "12 Strong" that was released in 2018 and stars Chris Hemsworth as Capt. The two Afghan leaders study a map with Captain Mark, just in case air strikes are needed. It was pretty painful, Paul says. 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. The B-Team had already set up shop at theTurkish School in Mazar and was getting ready for the push to Tora Bora. 2023 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme. He has two weeks of beard, beetling eyebrows, and a graying brush cut. He says it was an area sympathetic to the Taliban and that his heart went out to them. 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. "If they got in trouble, there was very little I could do and nothing I could do quickly. Only Paul and Andy are able to appreciate what happened here. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. We called in a couple of bomb strikes. Military families will relate to the goodbyes. 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. Prisoners were so hot that they had to lick the sweat off each other one man said. Drop a bomb on that grid. Pretty straightforward stuff.. Then theres Steve, a well-mannered southern medic; Pete, the burly chaw spitter; Mark, their blond, midwestern captain; and so on. William Fichtner portrays Mulholland in the movie and Homeland's Navid Negahban plays General Dostum. 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. 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.. Then the concussion: ka-RUMPH! I am surprised, then, to see Dostum wrap his blue turban around his head and chin and stride into the village . He is so sincere; whenever I see him, I feel joy. He pauses for a moment, lost in reflection. 12 Strong - Navid Negahban "General Dostum" [On-Set Interview]Subscribe and click the notification bell HERE: http://goo.gl/SrrTlTSubscribe to Filmisnow Movi. The heavy shooting, the worried soldiers, the rapid radio chatterall signal that something ugly is going on over there. The money was hardly enough for feeding my horses, Dostum says. My opinion is an unequivocal yes. Then came September 11. Three or four bombs hit right in the middle of the enemy position, says Will. You can bomb it until there is no resistance, or you bomb and, as soon as the bomb goes off, you charge. Capt. We must honor their truth not the fiction that creates more wars. I have been to America and know the quality of life they enjoy. Up on the parapets, Dostums troops stream toward a gap in the ramparts created yesterday by an errant American 2000 lb bomb. "We had seven years of rehearsal for that relationship," says Hemsworth. The team had been working together for two years and the average age was 32 years old. You could see horses falling. An outcrop obscured views of the last 250 meters to the target. They were all quitting demanding to be sent to other units rather than put up with new commander ideas on what soldiering was. After the bombs hit, I peeked over the side of the bunker; our horses were gone. I'm playing Lieutenant Colonel Max Bowers in the movie. Images of them doing this can be seen below and in Alex Quade's short documentary Horse Soldiers of 9/11. The videotape cuts to the next morning. 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. The men know their story and I wrote it down. 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. Down below, small Afghan horses are nipping the dry grass on the safe side of the hill, their riders chatting while awaiting the order to charge. 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. 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. He is a kingmaker who works the ethnic minority to choose who will rule and who will fail. 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. 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. There were some deep unresolved internal conflicts because of the death of Mike Spann and why they over their protests had been sent to Kunduz. Once we hit Keshendeh-ye Bala, we picked up a road and followed it north in a truck Dostums men had captured from the Taliban. To this day the war continues and Dostum as First Vice President remains a staunch ally of America. Although I spoke out on behalf of the team the media, didntpublish my eyewitness photos and testimony because it would go against a narrative thata Pashtun backed by a European-backed central government must rule Kabul, not a coalition of regional leaders.We did not want the Taliban voting themselves back into power, yet we restrained the grass roots power of the ethnic minorities. Its more like, I am coming to get youwhether I hit you is another story. Its Old World combat at its finest. -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. We fought for an idea, says Nuri. Dostum was very concerned about us getting too close to the battlefield, Captain Mark had told me back at the barracks. 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. Although nighttime gunfire is normal in Afghanistan, there is an urgency to the sound of the deep explosions that come from the 19th-century fortress of Qala Jangi, just over a mile east from Khoda Barq, a Soviet-era apartment complex west of Mazar. And that is a story worth telling. Interestingly, actor Chris Hemsworth's real-life wife, Elsa Pataky, portrays his character's wife in the movie. At first, their mission was one of personnel recovery, tasked with rescuing any pilots shot down during the air war in Afghanistan. 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. Nutsch commented: Were humbled that a movie has been made about our teams mission in that pivotal post 9/11 period. I whip my horse, it takes three steps, and stops. 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. There is aneed to never forget the sacrifices men make in war. 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. In the courtyard, a soft-eyed cow tries to eat spilled oats just beyond its reach. I asked for a few Americans, he says finally. Up until now the CIA has been hog-tied. There are 86 al Qaeda fighter in the basement, including John Walker Lindh. We roll past weathered villages unchanged in two millennia. Next door, in Dostums pink house, Mullah Faizal and Mullah Nuri sit on pillows in a small room. 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. The man is terribly thin and severely hypothermic. What happened to General Dostum in Afghanistan? He described the building we were sitting on to a T. Finally, Air Force Steve guided the pilot to the correct building, and he dropped the ordnance: direct hit. -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. The bread we ate was half-mixed with dirt. Various close ups of American Specia. The trapped Taliban volunteers, it seems, remain hungry for martyrdom. I tell the prisoner where he is and who hes talking to. Then Bob Pennington (played by Michael Shannon in the movie) announced they had another gift and handed Dostum a bottle of Russian vodka. They have been blowing themselves up with grenades. There were roughly 200 paid Afghan soldiers under General Dostum's command and an undetermined number of part-time militia. Shannon's character is wounded in the movie for dramatic effect. Paul points to a misty, triangular peak that forms one side of the gap. 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. The gear seemed to float from the landing site under a procession of brown blankets and turbans. 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. (Though in my opinion, much more time should have been given to family homecoming scenes!). The Uzbeks and Hazara took to the mountains to escape the mechanized columns of the Taliban, Those among Dostums men who had remained in Afghanistan now became guerrilla fighters, moving on horseback holed up in the mountains under the command of his former number two La. We fought with nothing but hope.. 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. You call in an airplane; you say, Can you see that place? In 2014, General Dostum became Vice President of Afghanistan. Newsweek, The New York Times and other outlets insisted that eyewitness had seen American soldiers laughing and shooting into containers. Dostums men have been throwing down grenades and pouring in gasoline and lighting it, but the foreign Taliban refuse to come up. At 3:30 a.m., I go to bed. 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). Again he began integrating mujahideen into the political military ranks among them his number two against the Taliban Lal Kamadan. 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. The team set up on the roof of a building about 400 meters from the madrasah and called in a strike. I convince the staff to move him to an upstairs bed, where Bill inserts an IV of Hespan into the mans dehydrated body to increase blood circulation. The warm smell of gangrene and human waste hits me as I open the door to the triage room. It feels like a scene out of a bad Mexican movie. The mission was also chronicled in Doug Stanton's 2009 book, Horse Soldiers, on which the movie is based. 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. "Sir," he said. At least two Red Cross workers who descend into the bunker are shot and wounded. When war first came to Afghanistan, two decades ago, he built his first stronghold here to guard the village. As Bill checks for wounds, he talks to the young man briefly in Arabic. The book was quietly taken out of print. Ill admit, my guard was up, as I dont expect even-handed treatment of military-heavy stories these days. Not exactly. The crowds quickly grew; people threw money in the air for good luck. Outmanned, the Green Berets decided to move out on horseback. The unexplained feeling of relief when you know your loved one is safe. Then the bombs are dropped, and I look through the scope and see body parts flying everywhere. So, I worked for him, directly," says Riggle. We only had the time it takes 250 horses to travel 1,500 meters, so I told the pilot to step on it, Will says. As for team leader Mark Nutsch, the real-life counterpart to the film's main character portrayed by Chris Hemsworth, he had no actual combat experience prior to the mission. The credits claim that General Dostum and Captain Mitch Nelson have remained friends in real life . Both of the named Green Berets are commanding officers, John Mulholland and Max Bowers. Then the war began. -NPR, No. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved, The joy was short-lived. 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. ODA 595 followed by ODA 555 were the first two teams to have boots on the ground in Afghanistan following 9/11. It was right at dark. Dostum has not been home in five years to the village of Khvajeh Do Kuh. Others begin the work of the day without even paying attention to the nearby fighting. Open your eyes! Dostum and the Green Berets drove by them as they headed for Kunduz. 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. He refused to talk to his parents and he was takenback to our guesthouse for his protection. What made working with him particularly dangerous was that he was known for switching sides during several conflicts with Afghanistan. Within hours, they are gone. 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. Dostums men are touring the battle scene. 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. "They were very mature, very family-orientated," Bob Pennington said. I talk to an Iraqi, as well as to Pakistanis and Saudisall of whom speak English. Later on he had a dark premonition. 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. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. Armored personnel carriers jerk to life in clouds of black diesel exhaust. He rolls in a John Wayne walk to Commander Lal, whos in charge of the standoff. Dostum and Mitch Nelson remain close friends to this day. Dostum, portrayed brilliantly by Navid Negahban, comes off as a kind of Obi Wan Kenobi, the ancient-wisdom-dispensing warrior. As he leans into the Afghan wind, the light falls, and a moment in history fades. They are direct military descendants of the Devils Brigade, a joint Canadian-American unit that fought in Italy during the Second World War. They spend every day training for war, teaching other armies about war, and waiting for the call to fight in the next war. Mitch Nelson, a character based on Nutsch. I screened the war drama 12 Strong with a group of military spouse bloggers recently in Hollywood. What happened next was the first of many distortions and fictional retelling of their story. The greatest restrictions they face have been placed on them by Dostum himself. However, the rugged Afghan terrain forced them to adopt the rudimentary practices of the Afghan horse soldiers. . "All of these guys have blood on their hands. Dostum implores the mullahs to call down to the bunker and tell the remaining men to surrender. "Excellent." 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. 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. Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. After all, can Hollywood do this topic justice? Dostums first stop was the blue mosque at the tomb of Hazrat Ali, the revered son-in-law of the Prophet. Matt yelled, Duck your head and get down! And that pilot dropped a shitload of bombs, Mike said. Rashid later admitted that not only did he not witness it but it the event wasfictional. Dostum enlisted in the Afghan militaryone of the few ways for poor men to escape lives of labor and hardship in rural Afghanistan. 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. ODA 595 Prepares to retrieve the body of Mike Spann from Qala-i-Jangi Robert Young Pelton, all rights reserved. I feel he is my brother. You felt the air leave. 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. In the bewildering matrix of Afghan politics, Dostum has frequentlyand nimblyswitched allegiances. 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. He would take a village by getting the mounted guys up close. Initially eschewing interaction with Nelson due to his youth and the fact that he doesnt have killers eyes, they come to trust each other and eventually work in tandem along with their teams. 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. It was at K2 that their team received new orders, after which it was no longer a mission about personnel recovery. We could see a bunch of Taliban come out of another bunker complex off to the south and disappear behind a hill. 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. I had first tried to meet the General in May of 1997. We are alive thanks to you. As Dostum stands on the porch, looking at the place of his birth, he chokes up. 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. 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. Staying off the roads and in the wilds, they could swoop down andattackthe Taliban but could not hold the ground.
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