Return to Transcripts main page

Greenfield at Large

Truth and Shifty Loyalties in Afghanistan

Aired January 08, 2002 - 23:01   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.
JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST: Has the U.S. military put too much trust in Afghan leaders, whose loyalties are for sale and whose intelligence may be suspect? And are U.S. troops and U.S. missions in danger because of that? Truth, trust and the fog of war in Afghanistan tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE.

That phrase, fog or war, it was not invented for Afghanistan. In fog, after all, you can still feel the ground under you feet, you still know the sound of your friend's voice. Not so in Afghanistan, where the ground can shift as fast as money changes hands and friendship is just another commodity. Some Afghan soldiers go for $30 a pop.

It is a lesson the U.S. is learning the hard way. We learned yesterday that a 14-year-old boy somehow escaped from the Afghans holding him on suspicion he shot a U.S. serviceman.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The body of Army special forces Sergeant First Class Nathan Ross Chapman is heading back to the U.S. today. The boy thought to have shot him has disappeared. A familiar story in a war where Afghan forces claimed at various times to have surrounded Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, only to have them somehow melt away into the mountains.

Were they ever there? Or were they allowed to escape? The answer may lie in the web of tribal warfare, local feuds, and paid grudges that fuel and depend upon Afghanistan's chaos.

RICHARD MYERS, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHMN.: I don't know how many times we've stood up here and said, "This is a dangerous places that allegiances sometimes change, and that you've got to be very, very careful." And our people on the ground are probably some of the smartest in that regard.

GREENFIELD: But just today came news from "USA Today" that some U.S. air strikes may have killed innocent civilians because informants had supplied targets that had nothing to do with al Qaeda, everything to do with fulfilling personal grudges.

So if the hunt for bin Laden and other al Qaeda requires putting more troops on the ground, who are they supposed to trust for information, for watching their backs? And in the long run, what happens to the U.S. mission, to the entire country, if the rival Afghan tribes now cooperating with the U.S. decide that peace and stability are bad for business?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Joining us now from Washington is CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, author of "Waging Modern War." With us from Islamabad, "USA Today" foreign correspondent, Steve Komarow, who broke the story we just mentioned about how bad information may have led to deadly U.S. attacks on the wrong targets in Afghanistan.

Steven, tell us what it is that you suspect actually happened in these attacks?

STEVE KOMAROW, "USA TODAY": Well, what happened is I went down to the site where two families 52 people in all, were killed by U.S. bombing. And we heard about this from the U.N. They were getting reports from folks. But of course, we wanted to go down and find out for ourselves what happened.

And talking to local people there, we asked them, "Are you angry at the U.S. for bombing these families?" And surprisingly, the answer was, "No." And the reason the answer was no is they suspect that the U.S. were called into strike this compound, this family compound, by enemies of those families.

In the aftermath of the war, like what we've got, there's a lot of instability and a lot of people vying for power. And it looked like the rivals were using the U.S. fire power to their own aims.

GREENFIELD: Steven, were you able in any sense to walk this back to the Americans and say, "Where did you get this information? How did you know what targets to strike?"

KOMAROW: No, not in a direct path. There's only very limited coverage allowed of the U.S. operations in this area. It's special forces agents on the ground who are doing the targeting. And we're not allowed to do business with them.

The Pentagon's made the decision that coverage that close and personal of the U.S. operation is not a plus. And so, basically, we had to put the questions to the Pentagon and have them bring it up their chain of command.

GREENFIELD: Now General Clark, as you listen to the story from Steven Komarow, does it -- I hate it put it this, you know, cavalierly, but does it ring a bell? Is this the sort of thing that you are familiar with happening, say in the Balkans, where you were the Nato commander?

WESLEY CLARK, FMR. NATO SUPREME COMMANDER: Of course. Any force on the ground or in the air is vulnerable to being manipulated by the inhabitants. And they all do it. It's inevitable. When you come in there with a force, you're not neutral. You're on somebody's side. You're against somebody else. In this case, we're clearly on Hamid Karzai's side. We've tried to -- we're going to try to help shape a cohesive national government there. We're going to try to put stability. And that means certain people are going to take offense at that.

We're going to undercut their power. And this raises the risks to our forces, but there's really no alternative. It's what happens when you get involved in another country. And it's the same pattern we've seen elsewhere.

GREENFIELD: Well, I can -- I think it's understandable how if you -- if the United States comes in, it's, as you often point out, it's going to be on one side or the other. But the story that Mr. Komarow is at least suggesting is that the people who died, didn't die because they were on the wrong side of the United States. They died because literally, somebody held a grudge, might be personal, might be financial, might be who knows romantic?

And under those circumstances, isn't there some obligation to double, to triple check in so uncertain a terrain?

CLARK: Well, I think there is that obligation. And of course, I don't know. I'm not on the inside of the Pentagon. I'm not part of the operation in any way. And I don't -- I couldn't begin to explain what the procedures are that they're using. But in any operation like this, there have to be -- you have to be very sensitive to people's motives on the ground when they give you information. And then you have to cross-reference that information.

I would assume there's a process to do that in this case. Whether it worked and whether Steve's information -- Steve Komarow's information's correct or not, we just don't know. And hopefully, the Pentagon can clarify it for us.

GREENFIELD: All right, Mr. Komarow, one of the questions this story raises, and I suppose it's like the -- an infinity of mirrors is, how do you know that the people who told you this story weren't telling the story for their own bad motives?

KOMAROW: That's a good question. I don't know how to answer that question. I don't know what their motive could've been, because they didn't say, "Look, you guys ought to go after these other fellows across the hill." They didn't seem to have any goal in mind, except to tell us the story.

These problems get more and more difficult, as the war moved to southern part of Afghanistan. You know, things started out in the north, where there were people who were obviously allied with the U.S., because they wanted to throw out the Taliban. Now the U.S. is operating almost entirely in what was Taliban territory, stronghold territory. And people may or may not be supporting the goals that the United States has.

GREENFIELD: But does that suggest to you that if the picture is this certain, that there's anything to be done, other than either do the best you can or cease all military operations that might create the situation that you've described, where people are attacked for the wrong reasons?

KOMAROW: I don't know that I'm qualified to really answer that. I can tell you that one of the issues raised by local commanders in that area was why bomb? They thought that it would be more precise and less change of large civilian casualties, if there were peacekeepers sent down that way. In other words, ground troops, who could work without the bombing, because bombing is obviously a crude instrument.

A pilot in a plane at 30,000 feet can't see that there are 25 children asleep in a compound.

GREENFIELD: General Clark, that also raises some familiar sounds. But one of the things, it seems to me, that you did not have to face in the Balkans was, it was very unlikely that, you know, in terms of shifting loyalties, that a Serb would one day wind up on the side of a Muslim or a Croat. I mean, you did have those kinds of distinctions that you could pretty easily rely on, which I take it may not be the case in Afghanistan?

CLARK: That's true. You did have those strong allegiances. But you also had factions in the group. And some of the factions were more hostile than others. For example, in the Bosnian-Muslim side, we had some mujahideen. We had some Iranian influence. And we never could trust those people. We knew they were hostile to the American troops that were in the area.

GREENFIELD: So what -- I mean, I realize that asking for an answer is ridiculously simplistic, but is it really, does it come down on the fact that you just do the best you can and hope that there is American intelligence on the ground that can sift through all these potential conflicting pieces of advice?

CLARK: Jeff, I think that's exactly right. You do have to put enough of an intelligence, what we'd call an architecture in place, so that you've got multiple sources of information. And as the people are there longer, our special forces troops I'm talking about, as they know the people more, as they get feedback, they're going to go and develop also.

We've got some very savvy people in our special forces. And they're not going to be manipulated. They may manipulated once, but they're not going to be manipulated again and again and again by these people, because their motives, if they are being manipulated, their motives will be transparent. And they'll see through this.

And so, I think it's a matter of a growing and learning how to do this. Putting a lot of U.S. troops in there is an option, but putting peacekeepers on the ground is no assurance of any security. We already had one man killed there in an ambush of some type or some shooting engagement. And the more people you put on the ground, really, the more vulnerable you are to misunderstandings and getting involved in other people's feuds, and causing problems as well.

So it is a tight rope that the American command is walking there.

GREENFIELD: OK.

CLARK: But I think it's a -- we're going to grow and we're going to get better and better at this.

GREENFIELD: All right, General Clark, you'll stay with us, please. And Steven Komarow, thank you. Have a good morning on the other side of the world. Thank you for joining us.

As I said General Clark will stay with us. And we will also hear some first-hand accounts about Afghanistan's tribal leaders that may curl your hair.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: We're joined now by author and "New Times" magazine contributing writer, Peter Maass, who just returned from spending more than three months in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He's here in New York.

In Washington, Bob Drogin. He is the national security correspondent for "The Los Angeles Times." Still with us from Washington, CNN military analyst, General Wesley Clark.

Mr. Maas, reading your account of these warlords, and one in particular that was in the magazine in "The New York Times," it really did sound like something out of another century, if not millennium. Give us a thumbnail sketch, please, of at least one of these folks that you sat down and broke bread with?

PETER MAASS, "THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE": Well, the one that I broke bread and rice and chicken with mustard sauce with is named Gulaga. And he's the new governor of Kandahar province, where he'd also been the governor, actually, for 1992 to '94. And he's famous for, not only his own personal ruthlessness, but the ruthlessness over which he presided.

And one of the kind of famous incidents, among many others, in his life is that his father was a commander. And his father was killed by a cook, who put arsenic into lunch. And when Gulaga found out about this, he found the cook. He tied the cook to a tree, shot the cook dead with a Kaloshnakov (ph), and then had the cook's body tied to a branch of the tree for one week, so everybody would know what happens when you mess with Gulaga. This is the sort of gentleman that he is.

GREENFIELD: Well, and I take it that kind of ruthlessness is not uncommon among the warlords of Afghanistan? But the question is, when we look to see who has the power, who the United States can rely on, let's say, and we talk about Mr. Karzai, the new head of the interim government, if you were weighing the relative power of a gentleman like Gulaga and a gentleman like Mr. Karzai, who has the real power?

MAASS: 90 percent of the power would be in the hands of people like Gulaga, because they're the ones that have the troops. And they're the ones who are actually in control of territory.

Hamid Karzai is in charge of the central government in Kabul, which really doesn't have much authority beyond Kabul. Gulaga's in charge of four provinces, actually, in southern Afghanistan. He has soldiers on the ground. And there's really nobody who stands in his way.

He doesn't wake up in the morning, wondering what Hamid Karzai is thinking.

GREENFIELD: But -- and to go back to what we talked about a few moments ago, so if Gulaga, who I take it, is in some sense on the side of the United States now?

MAASS: Well, very much so, because the United States put him in power.

GREENFIELD: Right. So if he were to say to an American, to a special forces fellow, "Listen, there's this guy 10 miles south and you really -- I mean, that's your enemy. He's really hiding the al Qaeda forces. He's Taliban through and through, how much reliance would you suggest that the United States place in that kind of guidance? And how much would you say he may have another agenda?"

MAASS: Well, I think like General Clark was saying, that the special forces soldiers who were Gulaga and who have been him all along the way, know him well enough and know his history well enough that they would, if they could, check on these sorts of things.

But you know, very often when there is a report of al Qaeda people being somewhere, they have to react quite quickly. And they might not even time to check.

GREENFIELD: Now Mr. Drogin, are you -- do you share, I guess you could call it skepticism or the concern about the nature of this sort of intelligence coming to the United States forces in Afghanistan?

BOB DROGIN, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Well, I don't think there's any question that it's coming in from all sides and with all kinds of motivation. Remember, there's a $25 million bounty on Osama bin Laden's head. So there are an awful lot of people calling in with tips and reported sightings and hopes and dreams that they're going to get a piece of the action. That's part of it.

And in addition, the special forces and the CIA have handed out satellite phones and other equipment, so that they can communicate with people on the ground. And as a result, you know, I think that's being used. We're being told it's being used to settle old score, to settle grudges, to basically resume the kinds of feuds and power struggles that exist that are over land and water and other issues for generations in Afghanistan.

GREENFIELD: But is it also being used to get authentically valuable intelligence, that it's helping the United States effort?

DROGIN: Well, clearly, the war has gone very well on a military sense, in that we now -- Taliban has been pushed from power. And friendly forces control the bulk of the country. But to the extent that they have not achieved their primary goal, which was capturing or killing bin Laden and his top commanders, or Mullah Omar and his top leaders, then you'd have to say the intelligence has not succeeded so far.

Just on one last thing. On the warlord, who you were just speaking of, there was a report tonight, just before I came over, that kind of personifies this, in which he apparently has captured three of the Taliban ministers and is refusing to turn them over to the United States.

GREENFIELD: Now General Clark, when you read and hear these stories and you recall your own experiences. Does -- well, let me put the hypothesis. It suggests, at least, that the idea of thinking that you can actually do nation building in a place like Afghanistan, is something out of an Eva and Wong novel. That is, that it sounds like Westerners, under a complete delusion that somehow, if they find the right people, they'll be a bicameral legislature and judicial review.

I mean, doesn't this suggest we better be awfully modest in what we think we can accomplish there?

CLARK: I think that's exactly right. This is a very, very tough group of people. They've been through 20 years of conflict. They've got a legacy of feuding with each other. They're different ethnic groups, different religious sects.

Now this is not going to be put together in any way that resembles a functioning Western parliamentary democracy. I think that's clear.

GREENFIELD: So Peter, what ought we to shoot for? I probably shouldn't put it that way. What ought we to -- what can we realistically hope with people like these warlords, as the people who are now in power?

MAASS: Well, I think the most realistic thing to shoot for, if we can use that word, which we probably should, is just to make Afghanistan to whatever extent possible, a secure country. So that people can travel safely from Kabul to Kandahar, without having to worry about being robbed. So people don't have to worry about being robbed at their homes, so women don't have to worry about being raped.

These are things which are all going on in spades between 1992 and 1994, when Gulaga was in charge. And so, that should be the main principal goal of the United States government really, is just to do what it takes. And whether that means directly paying police forces, local police forces, so they, at least, are honest and don't have to steal from the people. That's what needs to be done.

GREENFIELD: And is that realistic?

MAASS: Well, I think in terms of paying local police forces, yes. And that's not being done. I mean, when I was there the local police, they were getting their food paid for by the local leaders, but they were not getting any salaries. And unless you pay these people, they're not going to do their job. And in fact, what they'll do is they're prey upon civilians, because it's the only way they can get money.

GREENFIELD: Mr. Drogin, you offered a provocative notion to one of our producers. You said the CIA knows who its real enemy is. And your explanation for the CIA as a real enemy was -- surprised us. Who do you think the CIA -- when you say they know who their real enemy is, who'd you mean?

DROGIN: Well, that was a bit of a joke.

GREENFIELD: I realize that, but...

DROGIN: Yes, the reference there was that at least in the early stage of this campaign, that the inter service rivalry between the CIA and the FBI did not go away. What we've seen since then, I think is a great deal more cooperation and coordination, but in the early stages of this, and as you know, there's just a long history in which the CIA and the FBI have been loggerheads. And that did not stop on September 11.

GREENFIELD: I also, Mr. Drogin, want to explore one point, which may sound like inside baseball. In terms of how the media can find out for themselves what's going on in Afghanistan, is it totally limited or just mostly limited or how restricted is it, do you believe?

DROGIN: You know, my sense is that this is just been extremely difficult, where it's a kind of a kabuki war, for those of us on -- trying to figure it out. There's a lot of clashing and banging and flashing lights, and very hard to know, because so much of it is being done by the special forces, by the green berets, by the Delta Force, by the Air Force tactical units.

And of course, by a CIA Army that, you know, really very much hides in the shadows. So we've only in the last few days begun to get any picture of what the special forces operations on the ground are like. We've never yet had anybody, you know, flying at B-52 or riding those horses with the special forces guys that we saw in the beginning of the war.

So I just think we really know very little about what's happened out there.

GREENFIELD: Is that your experience, Peter?

MAASS: Yes, it was very frustrating, because in Kandahar, for example, there are all sorts of special forces soldiers roaming around. And you see them at gas stations filling the tanks of their pickup trucks, that have "I love New York" bumper stickers in the back. And then you see them at restaurants. And you see them shopping for car parts, things of that sort.

And the most you can get out of them is hello. And very often, that's just through gritted teeth, because they're under orders not to talk with us.

GREENFIELD: General Clark, before we break, do you have any sympathy at all for these journalists and their woes?

CLARK: Well, I do have some. I think, first of all, I think that it's very important for the military to be able to tell its story. I think it's important for the American people to understand it. I think the Pentagon functions well when there's scrutiny from the press and when it can answer these kinds of issues. So I think all of this is constructive.

But I would say the real point on this story is judge the war by the results. Those results are already becoming evident. And it'll become more evident over time. And then, it's going to be possible to sort of back track it and find out who, what and why. That's the basis for judging it. You can't second guess the commander. You don't have all the information he does, but you can see the results. They're visible.

GREENFIELD: Thank you. I want to thank Peter Maass and Bob Drogin for joining me. When we come back, we're going to ask General Clark a question that we haven't asked him yet, at least on this show, how exactly does a retired general analyze the current generals anyway?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GREENFIELD: We're back with General Wesley Clark. And general, I confess that I asked for this extra segment because I'm very curious about this. We've seen you so often, particularly since September 11. And it's always been a matter of curiosity to me. When we see you, are we seeing you as someone who is still, even though you're retired, tied by institutional loyalty to your one-time colleagues in the military? Or do you have a sense of detachment, that you can look at what they're doing and say, "Yes, this is a good idea. This is not such a good idea?"

CLARK: Well, it's a good question. First of all, I think when you served as many years in uniform as I did, you never -- your heart never leaves it. And so, I know a lot of the people personally. I know the families personally. And I love those men and women in our armed forces. And so, I definitely have strong ties there.

But in the military, you're also taught to be a critical analyst. And you're taught to use your judgment. And there are lots of different ways to go after any kind of a plan. But when I look at something like this, I try to approach it with a lot of humility because I was on the receiving end of a lot of press commentary, as you may recall, only about 2.5 years ago, Jeff.

GREENFIELD: Yes.

CLARK: And a lot of my former colleagues, and some people I'd actually worked for, were on the tube. And they were making a lot of comments that were baseless. They didn't know what they were talking about. They didn't have the inside information. I didn't have time to give them the information, even if I'd wanted to and so forth.

And they said some things that were wrong, misleading, and not very helpful. So what I learned is that from the outside, you can't always tell what's happening on the inside. So you judge it by the results. You know what the alternatives are. But you know, a question was asked to me today, said, "Should we have more special forces troops here in the ground?"

Well, really, the commander, I don't even know how many people there are. I don't know how they're broken out. The commander has to answer that. And he has to be held accountable for the results, along with the chain of command.

GREENFIELD: Now I understand that. And the word humility is something that we journalists probably could, you know, look up and learn from a lot. But my question is more, I guess specific, which is if you saw something, if you saw a military strategy being deployed, that you deeply believe was going to harm the effort, would you feel comfortable in coming on CNN, "I've got some real problems with us." Or I noticed you told "The New York Times" a couple months, you might have a quiet word with an active duty general?

CLARK: It depends on what it is. I mean, I think one of the things that all of us have learned going through military operations is, there's no single best plan. There are plans that might work and there are plans that won't work. You got to get a plan that might work and you got to make it work.

And there's point in standing on a hilltop and saying, you know, "He drew the axis of advance slightly too narrow, and the tip of the area should have pointed this hill, rather than that hill. Let's see how it works."

And so, I think that it's always difficult to criticize abstractly. But I have made comments during this campaign. I really believe in the importance of communicating with the press. I'd like to see the results of the investigations on some of the civilian casualties made more public and more discussed.

And I've talked to some people behind the scenes, before decisions were made, about some of the tactical alternatives, but I don't have all the information either. And part of being an experienced professional is your realize what you don't know. And you don't try to act as if you knew it.

GREENFIELD: Right.

CLARK: And so, you've got to be a little humble in what you say on this. But I think it's very clear that you judge by the results. And one of the things the administration and the military has to do is convey its intent and the results to the public.

GREENFIELD: We've got to wrap. General Clark, thank you for joining us. I appreciate your time. I'm Jeff Greenfield. Thank you for watching. Lou Dobb's MONEYLINE is next. We'll see you tomorrow.

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