Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Just How Elaborate Are Caves in Afghanistan, and How Are U.S. and Allies Attacking Them?

Aired December 03, 2001 - 07:25   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: We have been hearing about how the Taliban and al Qaeda have been hiding in elaborately structured caves. Just how elaborate and how are the U.S. and its allies attacking these caves?

For more on that, let's go back to Miles, who's standing by at the CNN Center in Atlanta. Good morning again.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning again, Paula.

Talking about the caves once again, and there's a report this morning in the "Times of London," actually, from yesterday, which details a very dramatic assault by British SAS forces on an undisclosed cave inside Afghanistan. It offers a very dramatic tale about some of the tactics which might be employed when used to assault such caves.

And to help us understand a little bit more about this very dirty business we turn now to our military analyst, Major General Don Shepperd, retired U.S. Air Force.

Good to have you with us again, General Shepperd.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Now, first of all, let's get a graphic up first and give folks an indication of what we're talking about. We've been talking a lot about this Tora Bora complex, which it's probably safe to say that if everybody in the United States thinks that Osama bin Laden is in Tora Bora, he is probably not there, right, General Shepperd?

SHEPPERD: Good guess. Good guess, Miles. That's my rule for intelligence, if intelligence says it's for sure, then you should doubt it. And if they say they doubt it, they say you say for sure.

But you've got to look at it all and you've got to zero in on your indicators, which come from your sensors, and then put together a final Intel picture before you start throwing people into the fray.

O'BRIEN: All right, but it's safe to say, or we can probably make the assumption, I should say, that these caves which dot the Pakistan-Afghan border, are an area that is being well focused on by the intelligence apparatus. And what they might be looking for is of great interest.

Let's take a look at some animation which shows you the kind of structure. And we're not talking about Fred Flintstone caves here. We're talking about very, very complicated caves with incredibly underground infrastructure here involving places to live, places to store weapons, ventilator shafts to allow air to come in, all kinds of modes of access and egress, an entrance which is sloping to make it harder for a bomb, for example, to cause some difficulties for people inside.

General, when you get a sense of how complicated these underground structures are, many of them built during the Soviet occupation in the '70s, you realize how formidable the task is for an offensive force trying to go after that defensive position.

SHEPPERD: Yes, indeed. Your animations, as usual, are really great and they show the difficulty of this. We know a lot about these caves. We built some of them with United States money, helping the Mujahedeen during the Soviet era war. And we've also gotten a lot of information from people that have defected.

But these are very, very difficult targets. That's why I look with great, well, I doubt the story that was presented in the "London Times." It makes great reading out of a novel, but you're not going to send a team of 60 people into a very complicated cave complex.

In the end, you might have 60 have to go in, but you're going to surround this area, you're going to pound the heck out of it by air and you're going to have a well coordinated plan involving a lot of troops. And this whole area is going to be defended by another 2,000 or 3,000 troops if it's like what we suspect.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's take a quick look and remind folks, we've been telling them a lot about the SAS. The SAS is a very venerated part of the British military service, incredible desert raids in WWII against Rommel. You see the depiction there of the 1980 embassy raid in London, which was something they're very well known for, one of the world's most oldest and respected units.

I guess one thing which I think is worth pointing out here is if you find people that are holed up in a cave and you know where the entrances and exits are, there really is no hurry, is there?

SHEPPERD: There really isn't. That's why it's really easy to get troops in in any military operation. And that's the problem. You get them in, you have to resupply them. You have to be able to get them out. So you want to have a plan. And I'm sure that the things that General Franks that are doing -- is doing by establishing the marines in the southwest part of the country by Kandahar, by having the Pakistanis close the Pakistan border, all of this is tightening the noose very carefully into a well coordinated plan.

So when you say OK, we think he's in this area and he's in this cave, you're going to have a lot of troops that go in surround that are. You're not going to toss a few men in the middle of several thousand to try to smoke people out of a cave. It's going to be a well planned, well coordinated military mission.

O'BRIEN: Major General Don Shepperd, military analyst for CNN, thanks, as always, for your insights on how difficult this business becomes as the focus moves toward these caves -- Paula.

ZAHN: Thanks, Miles.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com