Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Operation Anaconda Finished, But Not Hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban Fighters

Aired March 19, 2002 - 11:07   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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Operation Anaconda is finished in eastern Afghanistan, but not the hunt for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Here now, CNN's Martin Savidge with a final report from Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Operation Anaconda officially came to an end earlier today what when the last of several hundred coalition forces lifted out of the of the lower Shah- e-Kot Valley. CNN photographer David Albright spent final hours with the troops as they worked in an area that is referred to as "Ginger Pass." It's an interesting place, because that is almost essentially where Operation Anaconda began, 18, almost 19 days ago. It was the scene of some very intense, very brutal and sometimes very bloody fighting.

But it was a different story today, but still very difficult and potentially dangerous, as soldiers had to scale very high, sometimes very tall cliffs sometime covered with snow, finding Al Qaeda and Taliban positions, compounds, caves, bunkers that they were destroying, large supplies of ammunitions, and occasionally even Taliban fighters. They had a firefight with at least one of them, and he was killed. There were a number of other bodies that were found on site.

General F.L. Hagenbeck, the man who is in charge of the overall operation, says that he's very pleased with the outcome. But he still found himself on the defensive regarding the body count. His reference believing that it was accurate to say that hundreds of Taliban and Al Qaeda have been killed, and he cited one specific situation where 40 Taliban fighters had been tracked from the air. Here's what he describes happened next.

MAJ. GEN. F.L. HAGENBECK, U.S. ARMY: We exploded reams of valuable intelligence. We destroyed critical terrorist equipment. We reduced the terrorist ability to launch and support large attacks from the Gardez region. However, the hunt continues. The coalition war against terrorist in Afghanistan is not over.

Commander says the end of Operation Anaconda in no way should signal that this is end of the war in Afghanistan for coalition forces. There are still further operations yet to come. They say the soldiers came here for a job, and that job still needs to be done.

Martin Savidge, CNN, Bagram, Afghanistan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: And in addition to the conclusion of Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan, we also told you this morning about Osama bin Laden's half-brother, who condemned the attacks of September 11th, but said bin Laden could not have been behind it.

Joining us now is our retired military analyst, retired General Wesley Clark, who joins us from Washington with his perspective on all these developments.

Good to see you, again. How are you?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK, (RET.) CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Just fine, Leon. Thank you. Good to be with you.

HARRIS: Let's talk about Operation Anaconda now that it has wrapped up. We were talking earlier this morning with our Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr about perhaps concerns about whether or not success there was overstated. What do you think?

CLARK: I think the operation was successful. I think we we'll never know what the actual body counts were. The United States armed forces are getting these body counts from infrared photography, from looking through the videos of the Apache helicopters, and the Cobras and the bombs that are dropped as they go in and so forth. They can see people in the target area when the ordnance goes off, they can see people lying and taking cover and probably dying. So that's where they get the count. They may have got some intercepted communications also.

No doubt the enemy there would be trying to pull his bodies out, and get them buried in accordance with Islamic law within the first 24 hours, so he's not going to leave bodies lying on the battlefield either.

So I don't think it's very fruitful to discuss how many were killed. We know a lot.

The point is that everybody agreed on is our troops did well, our tactics did well in this, and we didn't get everybody, and so we got more work to do. I think that's the bottom line on Anaconda. We're in this fight.

HARRIS: That is the other big question this morning, General Clark. I mean, something else everyone seems to agree on is many people escaped, and it was thought that -- one way to prevent what happened back in Tora Bora in the fighting in that corridor, the fighting in which lots of Al Qaeda and Taliban forces escaped, because of, we thought at the time, because of the use of these proxy forces with the Northern Alliance. Well, this time, getting U.S. troops in the front lines there was supposed to prevent that from happening, and it seems like it didn't do it.

CLARK: Well, it probably didn't do it. Probably a lot of them did get away. But it's a function of the difficulty the terrain and how many troops you put in. Maybe the British battle group that's going in today is going to give us a crucial edge. That's a big increase in combat capability when it gets there.

But we'll learn our lessons from this. And this is long-term effort. We're not going to win this war in Afghanistan in a single shot or a single blow on the frowned. It is going to take time, and we're going to all have to be patient.

HARRIS: Let's talk about that British battle group, some 1,700 British troops that are going in right now. What is it that they're going to be doing, and are they expected to do something that the U.S. troops did not or could not do?

CLARK: I think what we'll have is a fourth combat battalion. Very reliable, very capable battalion on the ground. It'll have very effective infantry. It'll have fire support. It'll have intelligence capabilities. And so it will give us the crucial augmentation we need if the next Operation Anaconda comes along to do a better job of sealing off the enemy and working against them.

HARRIS: So what is the next step for the U.S. forces that are over there?

CLARK: Well, I think the key is intelligence dominance of the battlefield, Leon. What we have to know is, where the enemy, and who is the enemy? And we know we don't have that domination right now. We don't have enough people on the ground to get it. And the electronics work, but they're not comprehensive. We really have to get human eyes and ears on the ground, and my guess is, we're trying to do that increasingly in the days ahead, not only in the province next to Pakistan there, but elsewhere in the country, where Al Qaeda may be hold up, and then hopefully we will react sooner. We won't have to wait for such a large mass of forces to buildup. We'll go after them on a more timely basis.

HARRIS: All right. And if that happens, no doubt, you will be here to talk about it with us.

General Wesley Clark.

CLARK: I hope so.

HARRIS: Good to see you. Take care.

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