Horse Soldiers Part 1: Going to War

Part 1 of this series lays out the groundwork for the Horse Soldiers mission in Afghanistan in response to the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda and the Taliban at the command of Osama bin Laden.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey history on the rocks podcast listeners, this episode is sponsored by the Art of Manliness

(00:05):
podcast. If you're sick of having to wade through two hours of fluff in order to get a few good
takeaways, tune into the Art of Manliness podcast. They glean and distill the very best insights
from the world's experts in self improvement, philosophy, practical skills, history, and more,
and do so in under an hour without all that eye roll inducing filler. You'll walk away from every

(00:27):
episode of the Art of Manliness podcast with actionable insights you can start implementing
today to improve your life. You can listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other podcast players.
The following four parts of this series are an adaptation of Doug Stanton's
Horse Soldiers, a number one New York Times bestseller. Paraphrasing of the published work

(00:49):
is used with credit to the author. Some of the names in this story are pseudonyms to protect
the identity of those involved. The comments and reactions displayed in this podcast do not
reflect the opinions or views of the author. There is no God, but one God. And Muhammad is his
messenger. Little bird recited laying back flat on the bed, wearing jeans and a blue polo.

(01:18):
Jetliners roared outside the comfort and motel next to the busy airport, which was sending off
its first flights in the early morning. It was a clear, crisp fall day in South Portland, Maine,
and today Little Bird knew he was going to heaven. Two weeks ago in Las Vegas, Little Bird had
purchased his plane ticket from South Portland to Boston's Logan Airport, where he would then

(01:43):
transfer planes for his flight to Los Angeles. In Las Vegas, Little Bird was meeting with his
comrades to finish organizing the deadliest attack on American soil in history. His real name
is Muhammad Atta. Muhammad Atta was given the nickname of Little Bird by his father, a gruff

(02:03):
lawyer back in Cairo, Egypt. He believed his son was too soft and sensitive, but today,
September 11, 2001, Atta would go down in infamy. He stood in the terminal of Boston's
Logan Airport at 6.50 a.m. when he received a phone call from his comrade Marwan, who was also
waiting in a nearby terminal. They spoke shortly, confirming everything was ready and in place.

(02:31):
At 7.40 a.m., American Airlines Flight 11 pushed back from the gate as Atta and his team sat comfortably
in first class. At 8.15 a.m., Marwan Alshahee and his team pushed back on United Airlines Flight
175. At the same exact time, Muhammad Atta, airborne on American Flight 11, began his assault,

(02:54):
taking control of the aircraft. Atta and his comrades made crew and passengers with mace and
threatened that there was a bomb on the plane. Up in the first class cabin, a passenger had been

(03:27):
slashed in the throat and two flight attendants stabbed with box cutters. Around 8.45 a.m.,
Atta pushed the controls down and flew low into the landscape of New York City.
Betty Aung, a flight attendant on board, had called her colleagues on the ground.

(03:49):
With the cupcakes not answering, somebody stabbed in business class and I think there's mace that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we're getting hijacked.
Just one minute later, the line dropped. American Airlines Flight 11 cruising at 500 miles per hour
slammed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center, letting off an explosion that
amounted to 7 million sticks of dynamite. Just 17 minutes later, at 9.03 a.m., United Flight 175,

(04:23):
now taken over by Marwan Al-Shahi. Hey, can you look out your window right now? Yeah.
Can you see a guy about 4,000 feet, about five east of your pole right now? Looks like he's...
Yeah, hi, Sam. You see a guy? Look, is he just standing for the building also?
He's just standing really quick, too. Yeah. Well, that's...
He's flying 500 feet now. He just dropped 800 feet in like one, one, three. That's another situation.
What kind of plane is that? Can you guys go? I don't know. Read it out in a minute.

(04:46):
United Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. Another one just hit the building. Wow.
Wow. Another one hit it hard. Another one just hit the birth site. All buildings just stuck in the park.
Holy smokes. Another one. Another plane just hit.
Right. Oh my God. Another plane has just hit another building.

(05:07):
Floor right into the middle of it. Explosion.
Oh my God. It's right in the middle of the building.
Around 9.37 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon.
And just a half hour after that, United Flight 93 went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
So, Number 11, 2001 would become the deadliest terrorist attack in world history,

(05:28):
causing mass chaos and killing roughly 3,000 American citizens within one hour of a clear
East Coast morning. We will never forget.
This episode is dedicated to those who lost their lives on 9-11,
and to the brave men and women of the United States military who fought and continued to fight
to rid of this evil from the world.

(06:18):
All right. And welcome back to the History on the Rocks podcast.
This is your host, Cody, along with me, my lovely wife, Audrey.
Hello, everybody.
And I know that's a heavy opening, but it's where our story starts today.

(06:38):
But let's start on a more fun, positive note before we dive into the aftermath of 9-11.
What are we drinking for this episode?
We are drinking horse soldier.
We are drinking horse soldier. Yes, we are. And I said on Facebook and Instagram that we had,

(07:01):
this is a special episode. This is going to be a few parts.
I think it's going to be three parts in total. I'm still writing some of it
as we record this first episode. But I think it's going to end up being three parts.
And yes, we are drinking horse soldier, which is the whiskey that is actually created for the men
in their legacy in our story. If you head over to their website, horsesoldierburden.com,

(07:25):
I found my bottle at high V after looking at a or looking in a local liquor store that I thought
would have a lot of different whiskies and they didn't have it. I went to high V and they had it.
They also sell it at Jewel because that came up as well.
But there's three bottles. The straight bourbon whiskey, it's about $50.

(07:45):
We're drinking the small batch straight bourbon whiskey, which is the, oh no.
On their website it says $74.99, but I got it for $59.99.
Well, then you got a deal. I think I got a deal.
I know, high V was having a lot of sales. Maybe it was on sale.
Maybe it was. But we are drinking the small batch straight bourbon whiskey.
And then they have their barrel strength straight bourbon whiskey,

(08:08):
which is a $90 bottle. So there are three different bottles that they have,
cheaper to that mid range, to that top shelf type. And we found this again in Galena.
Galena, yeah. Galena keeps popping up on our podcast a lot.
At Champagne on Main.
Yeah, Champagne on Main. Pretty cool place.

(08:29):
My cousin gave us a gift card to go there Christmas of 2022.
But little did I know on Christmas day, I was pregnant.
Two days later, found out I was pregnant. So we could not use our gift card.

(08:53):
We literally used it on the last week before it expired.
Yeah, because it only was for a year. It's not on the gift card, I'm sure.
They might have understood if I said, he gave this to us in the two days later, found out I was pregnant.
Well, it was awesome. But we finally did get to Galena to Champagne on Main.

(09:16):
And this was one of the tasting bourbons. And it's really good. I really liked it.
Yeah, this was your favorite out of the four.
Oh yeah, easily.
You had four or three?
I think there was four.
Yeah, because I did the champagne tasting.
Right. I think there was four of them, but this was definitely the best one.
And then I looked at like they told us or did the I think the waitress told us like

(09:42):
the history behind it, right? Like it's made after they said something.
I thought she said something about like it's made in Kentucky.
But it's really cool if you go to their website and you go to the
the menu and you click on our legacy, it tells you all about the distillery and
how they got started and their story and the origins of the horse soldier.

(10:05):
They have a little excerpt on here.
Horse soldier bourbon stories woven into the fabric of one of America's most historic moments.
Just days after 9 11 elite teams of Green Berets were inserted into Afghanistan,
some on horseback dubbed the horse soldiers.
Their exploits were retold in the Hollywood blockbuster 12 strong, which I have not seen.

(10:25):
Which is shocking because we watched like all those
those war movies and I think I've seen 12 strong and I kind of just went past it without even giving
you a second like thought. And then next on our movie list.
Yep. And then the CNN documentary Legion of Brothers memorialized it as well.

(10:46):
And there there's a giant horse statue at ground zero that I can put on our website here.
You can go see it on their website.
But it's the America's response monument located at ground zero in New York City.
And it's it's one of the soldiers with his M4 strapped on him riding horse.
I don't remember seeing that.
I don't remember seeing that either.
So I wonder if that's newer since I mean, but we haven't been to New York City and

(11:09):
that was was that pre COVID.
Oh yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, that was I don't remember what year it was.
That was like only a couple years into like tower one or dating or something like that.
One one World Trade World Trade.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, like I said on our Facebook Instagram, this is an exciting episode because we have a bourbon
that goes straight along with our story.

(11:29):
And I've been so pumped to do this one.
Yeah, I'm excited about this one because you haven't, you know, obviously told me anything about it.
So it'll be all new information.
Now, the really cool thing about this is I went even a step further and I put together
a Google Earth presentation together for everyone listening.

(11:50):
Now, if you pull up your phones and you download the Google Earth app, okay,
you can pause right now, go to our website.
If you go to the horse soldiers page under full episodes, there is a little like pin icon
that you would see on a map.
If you click on that, it should take you to the app store to download Google Earth.
But if you already have Google Earth downloaded, it'll take you right to our interactive map

(12:13):
for this episode.
And you can follow along on the map from start to finish of all these places we're going to be
talking about from Fort Campbell at the Tennessee Kentucky border all the way
into Mazar Al Sharif, the final city of their mission.
Again, go ahead.
You can take a pause right now and go download that because it's going to be really easy

(12:36):
for you to follow along with us as we kind of fly over Google Earth during this story.
This is part one going to war.
After 9-11, George W. Bush need to quickly figure out who is responsible for the 9-11 attacks.
So he wanted to react immediately by declaring war on those responsible.

(12:57):
At this time, we all know the name of Osama bin Laden.
His group Al Qaeda, consisting of about 3,000 trained soldiers, had merged with the Taliban,
which was made up of 15,000 men who were mostly farmers, butchers, teachers, and lawyers.
Your everyday person.
The main goal of these two groups was to bring the Middle East back to its golden age

(13:18):
when Islamic law ruled the land just like it did in its prime of the 14th century.
However, in Afghanistan, there was no major resistance against the Taliban by Afghanis
and this effort was led by Ahmed Shah Masud, who absolutely hated the Taliban
and their extremist version of oppressive Islamic laws.

(13:38):
The first step for Al Qaeda and the Taliban was to assassinate Masud
and have the Taliban take full control of Afghanistan.
Masud was the commander of the Northern Alliance.
Okay, so that's a very important group.
The Northern Alliance is our ally in this story.
Okay, I was going to ask that.
Like they're on our side.
The Northern Alliance is a coalition force made up of anti-Taliban fighters.

(14:02):
The coalition was an alliance of three rival generals and their tribes.
Abdul Rashid Dostam, Atam Muhammad Noor, who is not the same terrorist responsible for 9-11.
Obviously.
Is the same name?
So the terrorist from 9-11 is Muhammad Atta and this is Atta Muhammad Noor.

(14:23):
Okay.
Okay, but I want to clarify that this is not the terrorist.
Obviously he's dead, but don't get that confused as we tell the story
because Atta Muhammad Noor is a general of a tribe.
And the last general is Najee Muhammad Mohakek.
Now these three generals were after their own control of Afghanistan.

(14:44):
But they all knew that if they were too busy fighting each other,
that the Taliban would easily take over.
So they put their rivalries aside and formed this Northern Alliance.
Okay.
Just going forward in these episodes, I might say Northern Alliance.
I might just say NA.
So for listeners and you obviously, just short-handing NA is the Northern Alliance.

(15:09):
That's our allied fighting force that are working with the Americans.
Yes.
So in the same area though, those, how are those three rivals?
Like, I mean, I know like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, they're going against them.

(15:34):
But why were those three all against each other?
Because they all have different political beliefs, but they all don't believe in the Sharia law,
being the law of the people.
They don't believe in Islamic law being the center, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda do, because it's oppressive.
These men are partiers.

(15:54):
They like drinking, they like smoking, they like music.
Like they like stuff that the Taliban won't let you do.
Okay.
These three though, these three generals are the head of different tribes who are rival tribes.
In these regions.
Okay.
And they're fighting for control.
They were once fighting for control over Afghanistan to be the top dogs, to be the head governments.

(16:18):
Okay.
Does that make sense?
Yes.
But now that the Taliban and al-Qaeda have taken such control, all three of them decide that their rivalry isn't worth it and that they should pull all the resources together to out the extremists and the terrorists.
Okay.
Back to Ahmed Shah Massoud.
This is an important name.
Massoud had been fighting the Taliban for seven years and also fought the Soviets for 10 years during their invasion of Afghanistan.

(16:44):
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were destroying Massoud's resistance and he knew it would be hard to win this war.
He was assassinated on September 9th, 2001, just two days before the terror attacks in New York City by bin Laden's men.
Captain Dean Nasser Agh of the US Special Forces was on his honeymoon into Hedi when the planes hit the towers.

(17:06):
And he also saw the news article from September 9th in the hotel lobby about Massoud being assassinated and Osama bin Laden being responsible for it.
And he knew that this was not a coincidence at all.
He knew that he had to get back to the States because we were going to war.
Right when the Taliban killed Massoud, this guy has nothing to do with the three generals.

(17:27):
Actually, we'll get to it, but two of these generals fought for Massoud alongside him while he was fighting the Soviets and the Taliban.
But he's like head honcho.
Yeah.
So the Taliban knew that they had to kill him to bring down the Afghani government so they could take control.
So before he was assassinated, did we have like the United States Osama bin Laden already on our radar?

(17:53):
Yes.
Okay.
We knew that, I mean, not to get into this, but we knew that 9-11 was going to happen.
Not exactly that how it was going to happen, but we knew that there was a big terror plot against the United States.
It's all in the report.
It's all in the report that the FBI, the CIA, they knew something was big was coming and we failed to stop it.

(18:15):
It's one of the biggest controversies of 9-11.
Yeah.
I remember that being a controversy that there was...
Bin Laden was public enemy number one since I think the 70s or 80s.
Okay.
Yeah, that's a long time.
Like he was, yeah, he was the head of al-Qaeda and forming these terror cells and we knew who he was and we knew what they were doing.

(18:37):
But we, I think we were naive to think that they could pull something so big off.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think anybody would have expected what did actually happen.
No.
I don't think anyone could dream of that possibility and that magnitude of a terror attack.

(18:57):
Not at all.
The one that just happened in Russia, unfortunately, at the concert hall, 190 people, that's a big terrorist attack.
Yeah, definitely.
In New York City's 3,000.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Well, 9-11 in general is 3,000 when you add the Pentagon, the planes and all that stuff.

(19:19):
This is huge.
Like terror cells don't pull off this big of attack ever.
They like to go after hundreds of people, but thousands.
Thousands, yeah.
And infrastructure, the center of the world trade, literally, obviously that's what it's called, the World Trade Center.
Yeah.
But like this is like unforeseeable.
Like there is some defense I'll give to the US government because they had a lot of intel, a lot of information, but at the same time you're going,

(19:45):
there's no way someone's hijacking planes and flying them into buildings.
Yeah.
You know, it's easy to be like, oh, they're going to take a backpack and blow up a bomb at a concert or a sporting event or, you know, big rally, whatever.
Like that kind of stuff is like, okay.
Yeah, flying commercial planes.
Not hijacking commercial planes and throwing them into the world's biggest economic center.

(20:07):
Yeah.
Like it's, it is unfathomable when we talk about it.
Yeah, for sure.
It's like, what's that song again?
When the world stops turning.
Yeah.
Is that Ellen Jackson?
Yes.
Where were you when the world stopped turning?
Yeah.
Fifth grade, getting on the bus.

(20:28):
Yeah.
I tried to start a Facebook thread on the event page for this.
And I said, where were you on 9-11?
And my post was, I was in fifth grade sitting in the hallway waiting for the day to start.
Yeah.
You were on the bus because our district shared buses.
Yeah, I didn't start until 9-10.
And you started school later.
Yeah.
And I think we started at 8-45 or something like that, 8-30 maybe.

(20:51):
But that would have been a half hour after the first plane hit because it was New York time is 9-01 when the first plane hits.
And that would have been 8-01 central.
Yeah, 8-01.
Yeah.
Crazy.
All right.
Well, we're going to head to the map.
All right.
So if you're following along with our Google Earth, we're starting at Fort Campbell, which is right on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

(21:15):
And if you're looking at the map, you can zoom in and kind of see the layout of the base there.
This is where a lot of military families live, especially the 101st Airborne and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.
They are all stationed at Fort Campbell, located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, that also crosses into the border of Clarksville, Tennessee.

(21:39):
The men that are key players in this story are stationed along there with their families, as I just said.
Many of them were out doing training missions on 9-11 and didn't hear of the attacks until later in the day.
Many of them sped back to base at a frenzy seeking orders and wondering when they were leaving.
There's a part in the book where actually one of the wives was out.

(21:59):
And she had left the base to go do some errands or something.
She came back and the line to the base was like two miles long of people trying to get back in.
And they are checking everyone's IDs, everyone's cars, trunks underneath.
You know, like they are locked down.
Yep.
Don't want anything else to happen anywhere else.
DEF CON 5.
Like we are locked down, so we don't want anyone coming into our military bases.

(22:23):
So this is a very chaotic time for a lot of these guys because they know they're going to war now.
Many of them do.
And also they're trying to get back to their base to go get ready.
Yeah.
President Bush took many suggestions in the following days of the 9-11 attacks in order to plan the best course of action.
CIA director George Tenet first proposed sending the NCIA operatives along with Special Forces soldiers.

(22:48):
Major Mark Mitchell, ground commander of Special Forces and Chief Warrant Officer Cal Spencer,
assisted team leader, would follow the planning process closely throughout the upcoming days.
The final decision was that the United States would primarily use air power utilizing cruise missiles and laser guided bombs
with Special Forces on the ground spotting and calling out targets.

(23:10):
Special Forces and CIA operatives would also be responsible for building relationships among the Afghan tribes
and training the Northern Alliance's forces to be the main ground support.
So instead of us sending our whole military over, what we're doing is we're sending a select few of special operators.
You know, our top dogs.
There are ghosts.
Like they're the guys you wouldn't ever see on the street and be like, oh, that guy's a soldier.

(23:36):
They might be built like one, but at the same time these aren't the guys in military fatigues and easy to spot.
These are our ghosts of the US military.
They're badass as hell.
Like seals?
Yeah, but these are green berets that we're going to be talking about.
So that's the army.
We're talking about army special forces.
So that's like the compare of Navy seals.
Correct.

(23:56):
It's comparable.
And I'm sure there's going to be fighting about this.
If Navy and Army are listening to this podcast just like everything else, green berets are better.
Seals are better.
I don't care.
I think they're both badass and they're unbelievable.
They are unbelievable.
But yeah, they're going to use the Northern Alliance's men as their ground support.

(24:18):
As the special operators carry out bombing missions and get closer to targets so that the air force can come in and lay their payload.
Getting into Afghanistan was going to be tough.
However, General Tommy Franks, very famous general all through the Gulf War in the 90s through 9-11 in Afghanistan.
He's in charge of US command in the Middle East.

(24:41):
He had gone and convinced the president of Uzbekistan.
So that just lies north of Afghanistan, country of Uzbekistan to allow a US air base to operate there.
This would be key to the whole retaliatory plan.
The mission would be classified and top secret.
Now, Major Mark Mitchell, Captain Dean Nosarag and Chief Warrant Officer Cal Spencer were now arriving at work at four in the morning and staying all the way until midnight preparing for this.

(25:07):
Life as they knew it was now canceled.
They were in full preparation mode for they could get called in to leave any minute, right? Like they're on the clock.
Yeah, for sure.
Special Forces 5th Group was constantly training, taking inventory on broken equipment and making lists of things they would need before they headed out.
The 5th Group commander was Colonel John Mulholland.

(25:27):
Colonel Mulholland was doing everything in his power to get his men what they needed.
He had a connection at the Pentagon in D.C. General Lambert, who he served under as a lieutenant in the Special Forces.
With this general's help, the Pentagon granted unlimited spending on whatever new gear the group needed.
They call it the gold credit card.
The American Express.

(25:49):
Yeah, the literal American Express.
They needed radios, laptops, GPS's, gloves, tents, sleeping bags, you name it.
The Army is not well known for having, you know, the best equipment for their soldiers or buying new stuff.
Really?
On a dime. Well, they are now.
I'll say it.
I think they're better now.
What I've heard from friends that have been in the military and stuff, it's like you're working with a lot of broken, you know, gadgets and...

(26:15):
Yeah.
And you need stuff not broken when it comes to this.
Well, exactly.
Or really anytime, but especially then.
Yeah. So they needed all this stuff and camping stores like Cabela's, you know...
Bass Pro Shop.
Bass Pro Shop, thank you. That's the other one I was thinking of.
Camping stores would be bought clean out of supplies and FedEx was delivering to the base constantly on rush orders.

(26:37):
Captain Mitch Nelson would not take no for an answer.
And he demanded that he be back with his team for this mission after being promoted up to the 5th group headquarters working a desk job, which he absolutely hated.
So, Mitch Nelson, he had gotten a promotion, but he likes to be in the field.
He likes to be on the ground.
He doesn't want to work a desk job.
And he says like, this is such a big moment right now that I need to be with my team going into this.

(27:02):
Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people that are in the military don't prefer a desk job.
That's not what you go to the military for.
No, you can go get a desk job anywhere.
People go into the military because they want to make a difference and they want to fight.
And the people that do the desk jobs are still extremely important.
I'm not taking any credit away from them, but these kind of guys, these guys who are a group of braids, they want to go.

(27:26):
They want to go.
With the help of Chief Warrant Officer Cal Spencer and Master Sergeant Pat Essex, Lieutenant Colonel Max Bowers was convinced to give Captain Nelson his old active duty job back.
He then ordered them that they had six hours to be on an inbound aircraft on their way to K2 Air Base in Uzbekistan.

(27:47):
So, if we're looking at our map and we click on the arrow, alright, you're going to see it.
It's going to fly you over.
And yes.
And then if you hit the arrow again, it's going to bring you in on the K2 Base.
Kashi Kanabad Air Base, better known as K2.
So that's what we're looking at now at a satellite image.

(28:08):
You can see there, there's a couple buildings, runway, little town, little village.
Kanabad is right there.
It's so crazy to look at this.
It doesn't...it looks like something you would see in the middle of nowhere America.
Very rural.
This is the base. K2 is the base that General Tommy Franks had talked into the Uzbekistan president about for them to be able to operate into Afghanistan from.

(28:37):
Yes.
Now, entering Afghanistan, General Mohamed Moakek, one of the three generals heading the Northern Alliance, was relieved that Americans were finally on their way.
He knew that the Americans had felt the anguish and terror that the Afghans had been feeling under the thumb of the Taliban.
In the streets of Mazar al-Sharif, orphans begged for food, goats were slaughtered, carcasses laying in the streets, doors of homes were kicked in, and the innocent civilians of Mazar slaughtered.

(29:06):
Moakek wanted revenge on the Taliban for these atrocities, and most importantly, he wanted to clean his city back.
So if you go ahead and click the arrow again, it's going to fly you into Mazar al-Sharif.
This is a pretty big city in Northern Afghanistan.
It's pretty far away.
Oh, yeah.
This is going to be like, I think it's like a five hour helicopter ride into this area.

(29:32):
Oh, okay.
Okay.
So from Uzbekistan, yeah, I mean, this flight, that green path right there goes from K2 down to where their infill point's going to be.
However, Mazar al-Sharif, I wanted to show you at the beginning of this, because this is their objective.
This city is their objective to take this city back from the Taliban.

(29:53):
Okay, okay.
And Moakek, he has seen what the Taliban has done to the people.
Like I just said, there's kids orphaned in the street because their parents have been killed.
There's goats slaughtered so that the people can't eat them.
There's dead animals laying on the streets, houses are destroyed.
Yeah.

(30:14):
And people are dead in the streets, so he wants revenge and he wants to claim his city back.
Now, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, our other general of the Afghan tribes, he's a very dangerous man.
He visits Moakek and tells him that they were going to be visited by some quote, special friends, unquote, and inquired as to how he felt about that.

(30:36):
Moakek replied that for the last year, he had written the Americans some 300 letters begging for help and that the Taliban would kill everyone who denied them or stood in their way.
Dostam told Moakek to go home and light up 14 light bulbs.
14 light bulbs would show their quote, special friends, unquote, that it was safe to land there.

(30:58):
Moakek struggled to figure out where he would get the electricity in the middle of the Daria Suf River Valley.
This is a very deep into the mountains part of Afghanistan, just for clarity.
Yeah, not a lot of electricity.
The only running water is from the river, which we'll get into more Moakek figures it out.
He purchased a generator on the black market and got those light bulbs lit.

(31:23):
Just as the light bulb started to glow, a chopping sound from above started to approach.
Jumping off this chopper were several men dressed in American style clothing, flannels and cargo pants, carrying their computers and weapons strapped around them.
These were the CIA operatives that are going to work with the special forces.

(31:44):
After an offering of food and some sleep, Moakek drove the men up to the village of Dehi.
I didn't know you could do this with these maps. It's really cool.
To be able to just look at it all and it's all labeled.
See how you can create this. It's really cool.
Where the river bends, they stopped at a mud building with high walls held together by heavy pieces of wood.

(32:08):
This safe house would be called the Alamo by the Americans.
Staying at this camp was General Abdul Rashid Dostam, who seemed to already have a close relationship with the American CIA.
The other general, Atam-O-Haman Noor, was also present there.
The Northern Alliance, led by these three gruff and fearsome men, were helping attack from the south, as Masoud, when he was alive, was fighting fearlessly in the north.

(32:37):
After Masoud's death, however, things started to get tougher for the anti-Taliban fighters.
The Northern Alliance had a steadfast goal.
They wanted to divide the Taliban front, which was stretching from the city of Konduz, all the way to Mazar al-Sharif.
If you go past Dehi, it'll take you to Konduz, and it'll show you that is also an objective there.

(33:01):
The main objective was to take Mazar.
Mazar was the key to ruling the northern part of Afghanistan.
From there, the NA could move south into Kandahar and eventually all the way to the Pakistan border.
Then take Kabul, completely wipe out the Taliban, and rule Afghanistan.
All of those cities, if you click through, you can see where they are.

(33:24):
Kabul is the capital of Afghanistan.
Just so if you don't know that, that's the capital city.
That's the end goal.
However, they have to start somewhere.
The city of Mazar al-Sharif is the northern part where they want to lock down first before they can move south again.
Now, Mazar was not an easy city to infiltrate.

(33:47):
With the outer limits of Mazar, the Taliban were holding on to a large fortress called Kali-Ijangi.
They've had this since 1998 when they overtook the city.
Prior to that, it was General Dostom's headquarters in 1997.
Mazar is so important because of the oil and gas deposits near the city.
The longest paved runway in the country was at its airport, and the bridge over the Auxus River was a strategic way to move men and materials to and from Uzbekistan.

(34:13):
Atta, Dostom, and Mohakak's men had ridden horses into harsh battles against the Taliban, and now their supplies are running low.
The climate of this geographic area was also important for timing.
It would soon be winter, and the Hindu Kush Mountains, which towered about 25,000 feet from the desert floor, would soon turn into a freezing tundra.

(34:35):
This isn't like a desert area?
We're in the mountains now.
Oh.
So just north of the mountains is Mazar al-Sharif, but we're starting in the mountains.
Okay.
Afghanistan is not like Saudi Arabia, where it's mostly desert. It's very mountainous.

(34:57):
Yeah, sorry, I'm just trying to look at the map a little bit more.
Because I see like, I see the map, I don't know, maybe because I can't see like the terrain. It looks like the mountains are just more west.
Is that, is that my looking west? Yeah.
The area that we're looking at is all mountains.

(35:20):
Yeah, you're looking in the valleys here.
I think it's just hard to tell on this map.
You can hit 3D.
Oh, that might help.
You can hit 3D and see the ridges of the mountains.
If you zoom in.
Whoa, it's like circling.
Okay.
Oh, this is cool.

(35:41):
Yeah. Okay.
If you hit next and go to Kali, Kala Ijangi, it'll show you, it'll zoom you into the fortress that we're talking about.
Okay.
Now, in this region, the Taliban have tanks and other heavy machinery left over from the Soviet invasion.
The Northern Alliance men were on horseback with very little ammunition to use against the Taliban.

(36:02):
More supplies and ammunition were needed in order to keep pushing the Taliban back.
They made some advancement by capturing a Taliban bunker and taking ammunition and grenades, but how long would this really last them?
Now back at the Alamo in Dehi, okay, it's just south of Dehi.
And again, these are approximate locations I'm talking about because obviously I don't know the exact areas.

(36:24):
Oh yeah. And the exact pinpoint data points on a map.
So I'm giving a general area as to how I read the book and looked at the map and just giving you an idea of what this area looks like and where we're talking about.
And I mean, it was 23 years ago.
Correct.
It's probably looking a little different because I'm sure these satellite images are a lot different than they were in 2001.

(36:50):
So back at the Alamo in Dehi, the American CIA operatives Dave Olson, JJ Sawyer and Mike Spann were settling into their new environment.
General Moakhek found himself disappointed that these men were not soldiers and spent much of their time on laptops working diligently.
However, what these men did bring was an abundance of cash.
American cash.

(37:12):
The good stuff.
That is the good stuff over there.
This was meant to be given to Atta Mohamed Noor's sub commander, Faheem Khan, who was based in the village of Barak.
Khan was to use the money for food and ammunition for Atta's men.
Faheem Khan was not fond of American soldiers.
He once fought with Masood and believed that there was nothing an American could teach him about Afghans fighting against enemies in Afghanistan.

(37:38):
His attitude would change, however, after getting the hwad of cash from the Americans.
Atta was pleased to get American supplies, but what he wanted most was the respect of the United States military.
So he wanted to be taken seriously.
Which anybody would.
The problem Atta had was that in October, the United States was dropping bombs that were missing Taliban targets and he believed the Taliban were gaining morale while they made fun of the American bombings over radio.

(38:04):
The Northern Alliance and the Taliban, now this is important to the story, they can hear each other and they communicate with each other over these handheld, like Motorola radios.
But they're against each other.
Correct.
And that's like the funniest part here, is that they literally talk shit to each other through these handheld radios.
And trust me, in this story, we're going to see it multiple times.

(38:26):
But like that's what they use to communicate with each other.
But because they're using handhelds, they can pick up each other's frequencies.
So they literally like talk shit to each other.
I don't want to say it's funny, but it is funny.
Yeah, I think it is funny.
And we'll get to a story about that in part two.
I feel like your plans and what you're going to do, they'd be able to hear that.

(38:50):
That's the best part is you're going to find out they don't care.
Like they're going to tell them basically like we're going to bomb the shit out of you right now.
This is what's happening.
And then they're like making fun of them, and then boom, American bomb has dropped.
And then they see the Taliban scurrying back into these caves and shit.
I'm reading the book, it's just so funny.
In my head, it's like watching one of those old cartoons with the Keystone cops.

(39:14):
Like just running around all like goofy and stuff, because they're like literally just talking shit to each other,
telling each other what's about to happen.
And then like it happens and then they're like surprised it happened.
It's funny.
But what's in my head is now that I know it's more of a mountainous area.
And I am now blanking on the movie, but it's one that we watch.

(39:38):
Loan survivor.
Yes.
Is that this type of, is that this situation?
But it's not part of the situation.
The different story.
But it's after 9 11.
Yeah.
Okay.
It's like same areas.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.

(39:59):
Like location wise.
Yep.
The Americans would not trust an Afghan with spotting targets for them and really needed American personnel on the ground to guide the bombers.
Atta would not be getting any American assistance at the beginning, which infuriated him.
Instead, the Americans would be working with General Dostom and his camp instead.
Now remember, Atta and Dostom are bitter rivals.

(40:21):
However, Dostom assures Atta that their cause was greater than their rivalry and assured him Atta would receive 50% of what the Americans supplied him.
Atta came around when CIA operative JJ Sawyer handed him a package with 250,000 US dollar senate.
Again, money talks.
For sure.
He's like, oh no, no, we're good.
Yep, it's all good.

(40:42):
I'll take a quarter mil.
At this point, Atta agreed that he and Dostom would work together as allies in the fight against Taliban.
Now, 250 miles north of Dehi, back at K2 Air Base in Uzbekistan, the team was going through their pre-flight briefing.
Colonel John Mulholland was direct and brief.
The mission was to get into Afghanistan and link up with General Dostom and Dehi.

(41:06):
The team was to work with the CIA team who had been up there preparing and getting familiar with Dostom's capabilities and intelligence networks.
If they could survive the first part of this mission, the next part was to capture the city of Mazar Al-Sharif.
Mitch Nelson's Special Forces team were loading into a Chinook helicopter headed to Afghanistan.

(41:27):
The men knew that this could be a suicide mission, but they all knew that this mission was bigger than themselves.
The flight into Afghanistan was deadly enough.
Gunners on each side knew to look for flashes of anti-aircraft missiles from the ground, same with RPGs or rocket-propelled grenades headed to destroy the aircraft.
The 160th Night Stalker pilots were the men hired to get this team as safely as possible into Afghanistan using the cover of night.

(41:54):
These are some of the best pilots we have in the world.
Now, the Special Forces unit, they were hauling feed for horses and other supplies because they knew that this is stuff that the Afghans needed.
And most importantly, they had Roshan Vaka as a gift for General Dostom, his favorite, their new ally.
Master Sergeant Pat Essex fully expected to be met with an ambush or a mortar attack once they landed in Afghanistan.

(42:18):
He had been part of many different infills over his career in the military, but this was the most dangerous one yet.
Essex was a simple man who actually was pissed off at the thought of getting shot at when they landed because he wanted to be a National Park Ranger when his military career was over.
He looked at war as a business in that he was putting food on the table and clothes on his kids, nothing more, nothing less.

(42:41):
Master Sergeant Essex would let history tell of his career in the military and wouldn't want his children to follow in his footsteps.
Interesting.
Now, Essex had a photogenic memory and a can-do attitude without being a know-it-all.
He never had to look at a map twice and playing many different roles he was a leader men looked to for guidance.

(43:02):
As the choppers rumbled toward Afghanistan, a strange weather anomaly occurred at the border of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.
This anomaly is called the Black Stratus and is not detectable by weather radar, so when pilots first started flying this route,
they were pissed at the meteorologists, the weathermen, because they obviously didn't know about this.
You can't track it on a radar.

(43:24):
I'm curious to know what it is.
However, pilots now knew that they were going to fly blind through this Black Stratus and had to rely on their equipment to make it through the Whiteout.
They call it the Black Stratus, but it's actually because they're flying at night.
So it would look black at night.
Exactly, but if you were to fly through it during the day, it would look like a Whiteout.
It's a mixture of sand, snow, and other debris that fills the air in this region from getting kicked up from the desert floor and the mountains.

(43:50):
It's like a dust, like the dust bowl.
It's like a giant dust storm.
Exactly, yeah.
Now packed into the back of a Chinook, which is the banana helicopter with the two rotors on top, for those of you who don't know what the Chinook is,
each operator carried as little as they possibly could.
Each had a rucksack filled with extra magazines and ammunition.
Magazine's a put in a rifle, not the magazines you read.

(44:12):
For those of you who might be confused there, they're not just reading on the chopper.
They had enough food for five days, drinking water, a compass, batteries, and a radio.
I mean, like maybe a magazine would be kind of nice.
It would be nice.
You know, some reading material.
Yeah, I think you're supposed to be paying attention, though, to what's happening around you.
Each man is strapped with an M4 carbine rifle, badass power load, and on their load bearing vests ammunition for a 9mm pistol which was strapped to their legs and grenades.

(44:42):
They were ready for a gunfight right when they landed near the safe house, which is the Alamo.
Now usually, each team of six men would fly on separate choppers, but on this night both teams, all 12 men were going in on one bird.
Each team has a team leader, medic, engineers, intel sergeant, comm sergeant, and weapon specialist.

(45:03):
Nelson reminded the men that they would be operating just as the terrorists do.
Attack, bomb, and report everything.
With this squad of 12, Nelson knew that he could split them up into four teams of three, if need be. That's how they trained minimally.
So in their training, they can operate in teams of three.
It's better to be a team of six, obviously.

(45:24):
But if they had to split up, they could operate in teams of three, and he can make up those four teams of three men if they have to go separate ways.
Now the Chinook helicopter shook, rose, and dropped in the dark, thin air of night. All 12 men going in on one ship was a high risk,
but Colonel Mulholland made the decision to get boots on the ground in Afghanistan after getting chewed out by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the phone all day.

(45:48):
The heaters of the aircraft were turned off to keep any heat signatures from being detected by the enemy on the ground,
because they have SAM missiles and those missiles when they're fighting on the air, they're anti-aircraft missiles.
They pick up on the heat detection, the heat source, and they follow the heat source and then hit it.
Oh, interesting.
So turning off the heaters is a big deal here.

(46:11):
Mountains passing rapidly just below the belly of the chopper kept nerves on edge.
The men in the chopper were freezing at high altitude, but somehow many fell asleep during the ride in.
All doors, hatches, and the rear ramp were open in case they needed to make a quick emergency exit.
Any airspace above 9,000 feet is what's known as the hypoxic zone.
This is the altitude in which your brain literally begs for oxygen, and it makes soldiers flying at this altitude with no breathing apparatus,

(46:38):
get goofy, and eventually pass out.
Because they're in a helicopter, they're not in a plane.
Correct. It's open air. It's not a compressed cabin.
Yeah.
Like you would fly commercial, right?
Yeah, yeah.
They're in open air, and when you get up to that height, if you don't have an oxygen mask,
you're losing oxygen.
You're losing oxygen, right?
It's better for the men to be passed out in the back while they get through this,

(46:59):
because it can make you act like you're on drugs.
Oh.
Like is that safe to just lose oxygen and pass out?
These guys got to do what they got to do.
Like for what would you say, or what would you think, like as the time frame of like,
we're up here, we're going to get through it.

(47:21):
It has to be quick.
Like minutes.
I would say minutes.
Yeah.
Before you like started to go brain dead from lack of oxygen.
Yeah.
I'd have to go back into the book to actually get to, but there's a, there's a story about
this of how like a co-pilot that's flying with our pilot we're going to talk about here
in a second.

(47:42):
They literally had to give him like a fidget spinner to play with because he was acting
like a child.
Oh, wow.
That's what this hypoxic zone does to your brain with that lack of oxygen.
Well, and I feel like that's so crazy because I mean, before this, were they training for

(48:03):
doing that?
I mean, I guess you have to, that's what you are in the military for.
You do trainings and stuff, but this is all new to a lot of these people, right?
Or a lot of these soldiers.
This is probably new to these guys because they used to, I mean, these were combat veterans
of the Gulf War in the nineties, many of these guys, which was only 10 years prior to 2001

(48:28):
when they went into Afghanistan right after 9-11.
So these guys have military experience, but I'm not sure how many of them actually entered
the hypoxic zone before like on a helicopter, probably not.
It's not something that you normally, it's not, no.
Well, in the special forces, you might, I'd have to look at the trailer like in buds,
like in buds for the Navy SEALs, they literally drown them to make sure that they can.

(48:51):
Yeah, I'll say that.
I mean, that's like intense, intense training.
There's not many situations where you're going to be flying above 9,000 feet with open doors.
Going into maybe getting just totally shot up as soon as you land.
Exactly.
Pilot Alex McGee was at the controls flying at 12,000 feet.

(49:12):
Each man in the back passed out suffering from this hypoxic zone.
McGee had to use his instruments on board to navigate the mountains and make sure the
chopper didn't crash into us like a surprise peak.
So he's literally flying blind here.
After two hours of flight, the chopper refueled in the air.
It was now time to enter that daunting whiteout of the black stratus.

(49:33):
So it took two hours from them to get to K2 airbase, just to that border of Uzbekistan
and Afghanistan.
So again, this way, I feel like I sound so ignorant, but the pilot has a breathing apparatus
to not pass out.
He's wearing like his oxygen mask, but no one else's because they don't...

(49:57):
I said, why doesn't anybody else get that?
Because they would waste the oxygen and the pilot needs it to get there and back.
There's only so much oxygen in the tanks on board.
So all of them breathing oxygen is going to run out for the pilot who has to go all the
way back with his co-pilot, I guess, but they're both going to need it.
Yeah, they need the oxygen more than the passengers.
The Black Hawk helicopters that were flying alongside of the Chinook now turn back to base.

(50:20):
So these Black Hawks were flying with as like security detail, just in case something happened,
like missiles or something like that.
They were there to help protect them.
But these Black Hawk helicopters, they don't have the equipment to fly blind through the
storm anomaly.
The Chinook was now all on its own until its final destination.
When the Chinook finally broke out of the particle storm, the chopper was flying just

(50:40):
a hundred feet from the ground.
Rocks and pillars zipping past the Chinook as it raced for the landing zone.
CIA officer Mike Span had thrown an infrared strobe beacon on the landing zone so McGee
could pick it up in his night vision goggles.
Now the strobe cannot be seen with the naked eye, right?
When you have like the infrared laser on a weapon.

(51:01):
You remember at the end of 13 hours when he's doing the lasso in the air?
Yeah.
You can see that through the night vision goggles because of the spectrum that it's
picking up, the light spectrum that it's picking up.
So it won't attract the enemy.
Like you're not seeing a flashing light, only the pilot seeing it through his night vision
goggles as he's flying.
Yeah.
McGee yells back to the operator sitting in the back that there's 60 seconds out.

(51:24):
The landing zone is as big as a professional baseball field.
And McGee aims straight for that light.
30 seconds, each man pulled their stocking caps down and prepared to hit the ground with
their 100 pound rucksacks and supplies.
Remember when I said they were traveling light as possible?
Yeah, that's not light.
One of them even shaved their pencils down to three inches to cut ounces of weight off

(51:48):
their backpack.
I was going to say like that's not going to make that much of a difference.
But how much weight they're carrying?
It does.
It's still a hundred pound like backpack full of your shit.
Oh yeah.
That's just amazing.
The ammo and a nine millimeter is not light necessarily.
The landing zone sat surrounded by three cliffs, the perfect position for an enemy ambush.

(52:12):
McGee pushed straight for the landing zone on a single approach.
The Chinook hovered for a brief second and lowered toward the ground shooting up the
dust.
The gunners on board began to pivot ready to fire at any enemy that may attack them because
this is that pivotal moment where they could get hit by mortars, they could be ambushed.
This is what they're all fearing right now is that they're not even going to get into
Afghanistan safely that they're going to get absolutely just destroyed.

(52:36):
The Afghan fighters in general watched on as the chopper disappeared into the cloud of
dust hovering over.
They eagerly waited.
McGee couldn't see the ground and in fear of taking too long and hovering still, he pulled
the chopper back up, flew the chopper back around for a second approach.
Now the tension is very high here because obviously a helicopter is making a lot of noise

(52:57):
and you don't want to be attracting your enemy to this noise and they're close.
The Taliban is close as we're going to see in part two.
Now as he hovered for a second time over the landing zone, one of the door gunners helped
guide him down to the ground yelling 15 feet, 10 feet, five feet ground and then the balloon
tires bounce on the ground as Chief Warrant Officer and Assistant Team Lead Cal Spencer

(53:20):
yelled, go, go, go, go, get out.
And for your life, literally.
As the team ran down the ramp, they made a formation and a crescent perimeter to defend
themselves if need be.
McGee pulled up on the stick, shot the chopper straight up into the air into the dark night.
The humming disappeared and for a moment on the ground, an eerie silence cast over the

(53:42):
team as the dust cleared.
And you're going to have to wait till part two next week to find out if they were ambushed
or not.
They were all before the storm cliffhanger cliffhanger.
Yeah.
So good.
So far so good, right?
It's really a captivating story.

(54:04):
Like when you're reading the book, it's like you don't want to put it down because there's
like the next thing and then the next thing and then it's just cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
But like this situation is just so intense from beginning to end.
And so this, this crew, these people, like they're the first on the ground after 9-11.

(54:24):
This is these are the first Americans, the CIA operators were the first ones in a week
before this team made its flight in.
And like CIA operators.
So because I'm trying to picture things in my head and I have to have another movie reference,
but like that is like.

(54:46):
Jack Ryan.
Not Jack Ryan, but the Benghazi movie, they're CIA operators, right?
Yeah.
The CIA operators.
So in that movie, they're not.
John Krasinski.
Yeah.
But they're working, they are contractors for the CIA.
So the people in the buildings working in those buildings that they're protecting are

(55:08):
the CIA, but they are not CIA operatives like John Krasinski's character.
They're hired help.
Because they're former military.
Correct.
So they're contracted, they give them a contract and say, Hey, we need security guys basically.
I don't want to say they're just security guys because they're more they're they're
lifesavers and that's what that whole movie is about is how badly the CIA.

(55:29):
13 hours.
Yeah.
13 hours.
That movie is all about how the CIA chiefs a total dick.
And those guys saved his ass at the end.
And he's, and he's like so appreciative at the end about it.
But like he treats them like dirt.
And those guys, they're, they're the, they got the biggest balls out of all of them.

(55:50):
But the CIA operatives are there to handle the money, to collect the intel, to prepare
for the special forces coming in, to build the relationships with the Afghanis.
With the Afghanis.
Yes.
Or the NA.
Yes.
With the NA and the Northern Alliance.
They're there to mend this relationship between the American military and those tribes that

(56:13):
they're going to be fighting with.
And they're on the same team.
Correct.
And they're, and they're there to prepare the special forces to come in and do their
shit.
So what was this movie in 12 Strong?
12 Strong is what it's called.
Was it just like not a big one?
I mean, like how did we miss this?
I, you know, I think it's on Netflix.
It's either on Netflix or Amazon.

(56:33):
I don't know.
I saw 12 Strong somewhere and I just never really looked at it or what it was about.
And I think it was because it was in the middle of all those like other hokey military movies
that I'm like, I'm not watching those because I know they're like, it's like D list actors
and they're not going to do a good job and they're going to piss me off watching it.

(56:56):
Chris Hemsworth.
Chris Hemsworth isn't it.
Yes.
I didn't know that.
Taylor Sheridan isn't it.
So we'll have to watch it before part two next week.
There's a lot of people in this movie.
What happened?
I don't know how we missed it.
I don't know how we missed it.
Jeff Stoltz.
What?
Audrey is very excited about the cast.
I am.
Yeah.
It's from 2018.
I have pretty much recognized it.

(57:16):
I have no idea.
I have no idea how I missed this completely.
I feel like a total goober sitting here and not have watched this movie, but I'm telling
you reading the book is going to be better than of course.
Watching that movie because the book is told by like the men that were there.
So yeah, for sure.
Pretty pumped.
Yeah, we're definitely going to have to watch this movie too bad.

(57:38):
We're going to have to watch the movie on a Monday night or I would watch it right now.
Yeah, correct.
We are recording this on Monday night because over the weekend we were pretty busy.
It was Easter.
Hopefully everyone had a nice Easter.
Yes, hopefully everybody did.
But we were pretty busy over the weekend and didn't get a chance to get behind the mics
here.
So we are, we're going to have to check it out this weekend at some point.
For sure.

(57:59):
And be ready for part two next week.
I'm excited.
Yeah.
So I hope you all enjoyed part one of Horse Soldiers.
I'm very excited for next week because we're going to get into the nitty gritty of our
heroes on the ground there doing what they do best.
And it's intense.
I bet it is.
It's intense.

(58:20):
Currently having trouble writing it because there's stuff I have to leave out that I don't
want to leave out.
But it like I got to leave out some minute details just to get it in the podcast and
you know, keep these episodes to an hour because this like I could go on with the story for
probably like five hours straight.
But if you are that interested, make sure you read the book and then watch the movie.

(58:43):
We can't speak on the movie yet, but and I can't speak on the book because I don't have
time to read it.
I will put the link to the book, the Amazon link to the book, or maybe I'll actually find
the author's page and if he sells it on there, I'll put it on his page because then he'll
make straight or you know, straight money on it and not have to pay Amazon.

(59:04):
But I will put that link up there for you guys.
And if you want to check it out, go for it because it's phenomenal.
Yeah.
All right.
All righty.
Part two next week, like I said, getting into the heart of this story.
Like I said, very intense.
Make sure you come back because you're not going to want to miss it.
I'm excited.
I'm excited too.

(59:25):
Y'all have a great weekend.
We'll see you next week here on the history on the rocks podcast.
Get some drinks in, relax.
Go get some horse soldier if you want it.
Go get some horse soldier.
It is phenomenal.
Anything else?
Nope.
All right.
Bye everybody.
Have a good weekend.
Cheers.