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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Peter Tomsen
Aired November 10, 2001 - 08:04 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network has responded rapidly to President Bush's Thursday-night speech, sending a tape to Al Jazeera, the television network office in Kabul. The tape was broadcast just 20 hours after Mr. Bush's addressed, that is, in Atlanta.
On the tape, bin Laden's top lieutenant, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, comments directly on the president's speech, criticizing it for ignoring what he calls "the main engine" for what happened in New York and Washington -- America's 50 year support for Israel. In addition, Al-Zawahiri criticizes the announcement made just Wednesday afternoon by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that the president will not meet with Yasser Arafat at the U.N. meetings in New York that are scheduled for this weekend.
Al-Zawahiri says that al Qaeda doesn't fear the U.S. military force. He says they will fight until the last American soldier is out of Muslim territory.
Peter Tomsen was the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan's Mujahideen under the first President Bush. He is now a professor of international studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and he joins us now to talk about dealing with Afghanistan and coalition building.
Good morning to you, sir.
PETER TOMSEN, FORMER U.S. ENVOY TO AFGHANISTAN: Good morning, Martin.
SAVIDGE: Let's talk first about what Jonathan Aiken was pointing out, and that is the psychological advantage to the capture of Mazar-e Sharif by the Northern Alliance forces. How significant is that?
TOMSEN: It's very significant. It's going to feed a lot more defections from the Taliban forces. Clans and tribes who have never been comfortable with the Taliban have wanted to leave. This will be a signal that it is the right thing to do to leave, to go over to the side from which the fresh wind is blowing. As the humanitarian assistance pours into Mazar-e Sharif and moves out on the road systems east, west and south, there will also be a perspective of rewards to come with defections.
When the communist regime fell in '92, it collapsed within two months. It start in the north as one commander after another defected to the Mujahideen. When Dostum, one of the commanders that's in the coalition that took over Mazar-e Sharif, switched over to the Tajik commander Massoud, a very famous Mujahideen leader, as you know, the balance of power completely shifted in the north.
I expect within the next couple weeks to see a string of victories like Mazar-e Sharif coming mainly from defections, mainly from the political/psychological side. It won't be strictly military, but military pressure is important.
SAVIDGE: Well, let me ask you this, Mr. Tomsen. What are the prospects now for perhaps exacerbated division in the Northern Alliance when they get these victories? It has never been a monolithic force. Is it possible now that there could be some infighting?
TOMSEN: Exactly. In fact, there's two possibilities here that could bring difficulties. One is what does the Northern Alliance and other groups, what do they do? How do they perform when they liberate these areas?
The first city after the Soviet pullout to fall in 1990 was Khost. And when it was seized by the Mujahideen, the different groups descended into looting and attempting to take out other parts of -- other groups in the coalition that seized Khost.
So there has to be cooperation among the groups on managing these liberated areas, again, to show the population not only in the liberated areas, but elsewhere in Afghanistan, that they can effectively govern and not once again, as in the Mujahideen period from '92 to '96, fall to fighting among themselves.
I believe that they've learned a lesson from that period, '92 to '96, of when they had internecine differences and fighting among themselves, which opened the door for the Taliban to march in, and that they're more ready to cooperate. The Rome process led by former monarch Zahir Shah is the track, I think, that should be emphasized. It's a broad-based track that brings all groups and regions together in Afghanistan onto a political settlement.
In Turkey in the upcoming weeks, there's going to be a high council meeting with candidates chosen from the Northern Alliance and Rome and the king, will meet together, about 120. It might grow to 200. That group then will presumably choose an interim government to replace the Taliban when they are driven from Kabul.
SAVIDGE: Well, on that...
TOMSEN: So this broad-based approach is important.
SAVIDGE: On that front, as far as driving the Taliban from Kabul, Secretary of State Colin Powell pointed out earlier this week that if that, in fact, happens, Kabul should be made a neutral city al a Berlin. What do you think of that idea?
TOMSEN: Well, I think that's exactly right. I think the Secretary is correct. This, too, back in '92 was the route of the internecine fighting among the Mujahideen as each group tried to dominate Kabul. If there is broad-based cooperation among the different groups and if there is a consensus among the outside powers surrounding Afghanistan -- Pakistan, Iran, Russia, Uzbekistan -- not to interfere in the process of the Afghan selection of an Afghan government to replace the Taliban, then there could be a stable transition.
The big danger, Martin, is that as in the first Afghan war, the Soviet Afghan war, the seeds of the second Afghan war were sowed with the support for the extremists. Now there could be seeds sown for a third Afghan war, Pashtun versus non-Pashtun, with the non-Pashtuns in the north supported by Russia, Iran, Uzbekistan and the Pashtuns in the south supported by Pakistan. If that happens, there could be another inning of conflict in Afghanistan.
SAVIDGE: Are there indications that you have seen that the Taliban are losing their grip on power?
TOMSEN: Yes. I think these -- it's basically a political/psychological war. Where will the fence sitters go? Which way will the Taliban tribal leaders who have been uncomfortable in the Taliban coalition go? Will they defect? Will this wind blow in the south as well as the north, in the Pashtun areas in the south as well as the non-Pashtun areas in the south? That will decide victory.
And so far I believe overall things are going quite smoothly. Mazir has fallen. Other cities in the north will fall. Hamid Karzai and other Pashtun tribal leaders are creating ink spots in the south. They're extremely anti-Taliban Pashtun leaders. We should support them as well.
Our combination of American air support and Mujahideen or anti- Taliban resistance groups on the ground is a deadly combination and I think you're going to continue to see military victories.
SAVIDGE: Well, you mentioned the Pashtun. The Pashtun and the Taliban had, at one time, gotten along fairly well. Now they seem to be having a falling out and that's significant, isn't it?
TOMSEN: Yes, it is. The Pashtun leadership dominates the Taliban. The Taliban are a Pashtun movement as well as an extremist movement, so their base is in the south. When they lose the north, they'll fall back to the south.
However, there are the tribal aristocracy elements, the dynasties that have run Afghanistan for 300 years have always been opposed to the domination of the mullahs. The Taliban represent more or less the mullah, the religious, extremist religious level in Afghan society, which has never been on top. People like Hamid Karzai and Abdul Haq, who unfortunately was executed recently, and many others, there's hundreds of other Pashtun commanders who are from the non-mullah sectors of Pashtun society. If they get the right support from our side, they will then seize Jalalabad and Kandahar just as the non- Pashtun anti-Taliban groups are being victorious in the north.
SAVIDGE: Peter Tomsen, former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
TOMSEN: Thank you, Martin.
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