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CNN Sunday Morning

Taliban Turn in Weapons by the Truckload

Aired December 23, 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: There are two developing stories out of Afghanistan this morning. First, pockets of Taliban fighters are turning in their weapons by the truckload. Plus, U.S. Special Forces teamed with Eastern Alliance fighters continue to scour the caves around Tora Bora looking for Osama bin Laden.

CNN military analyst General Don Shepperd joins us again this hour.

Let's get right to it. General, good morning.

MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Kyra.

PHILLIPS: All right, so these Taliban fighters that are surrendering their weapons, how do you keep a situation like that or a process like that secure?

SHEPPERD: Well, basically, the whole idea is just collect them in a pile and then sort them out later. But then you got to guard the pile. And the whole idea behind this, of course, is to get this country disarmed and then to take these weapons and turn them over to a new Afghan police force and also, an Afghan military.

It is a daunting task. Thousands, even hundreds of thousands of weapons and ammunitions spread all across that country. So again, the basic idea is you collect it, collect it in a pile, store it, protect it, and then sort it out later for the military and the police that follow.

PHILLIPS: How do you know though that those weapons are getting into safe hands?

SHEPPERD: Well, we've got a lot of liaison going with the opposition forces, of course, because of what's gone on on the ground there. So it's a pretty well sorted out now as far as who the good kids and who the bad guys are that we can trust on the ground there, especially with the establishment now of an interim government.

So the structure, the basic structure is there for the Afghans to put their society back together again. But it's always a dicey game in Afghanistan. You can always get surprised. You always have to be careful. PHILLIPS: Well, talking about dicey, U.S. Special Forces now scouring the caves. That's a very dangerous process I would assume. A number of booby traps.

SHEPPERD: Yeah, it's dicey as it gets. This is about as dangerous. Now, think of clearing a building in the city but doing it at night and underground and that building filled with booby traps, perhaps mines on the floor. You have to expect all of that. Not all the caves are that way.

But you're going to basically, perhaps strike the entrance from the outside and then you're going to talk to -- you're going to yell at people inside and tell them to come out with their hands up and they're you're going to start in. You're going to have night vision goggles on. You're going to have to be very, very careful. It's amazing that we've got people to do this and people that are trained to it. But thank goodness for them, let's put it that way.

PHILLIPS: Yeah, General and I want to get to you to respond to this article that came out in the "Washington Post" this morning about four years prior to September 11, the terrorist attacks, the CIA paid a team of about 15 recruited Afghan agents to track Osama bin Laden on a regular basis in Afghanistan. If this is the case, then why is it so -- because there was another part here in the article that said, "bottom line, we had eyes on him most of the time." Why is it that he cannot be found now?

SHEPPERD: Well, first of all, let's assume that the article is correct. This is what the CIA does all over the world, unseen, unheralded, no pats on the back for it, but that's what they get paid to go. And a lot of it is they pay local indigenous people to do this around the world. So it would be very logical that they tracked bin Laden, they track Omar. They have people watching him all the time. But you can't just have one of these people pop up and shoot him in the middle of a whole bunch of other people. It's a suicide game. So you know, we don't send people on suicide missions.

The reason you can't find him right now, he's a very elusive guy. He's got a lot of money. He may be underground in Afghanistan. He may have escaped. He may be paying people to hide him. He's just a real difficult guy to find.

Think of Texas and think of Afghanistan as Texas. If you took Texas and took Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso and Austin and you got those cities secure, but the rest of Texas is still available to you, lots of places to hide in Texas and that's why he's hard to find.

PHILLIPS: General Don Shepperd, thanks so much, sir. We'll see you again next hour.

SHEPPERD: Right.

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