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Prism

Officials Say That 200 Tons Of Aid Is Being Distributed Today, To 95,000 People, Many Quake Victims Are Still Going Without

Aired January 18, 2010 - 12:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

STAN GRANT, CNN INT'L. ANCHOR, PRISM (voice over): Aid is now on the ground in Haiti, but it is still not reaching many quake victims.

Gun battles and suicide bombings: The Taliban launched deadly attacks in the heart of Kabul.

And the Taliban in neighboring Pakistan are the focus of our "Prism Segment" today. Could the militant group play a positive role in Pakistani politics?

From CNN Abu Dhabi in United Arab Emirates, this is PRISM, where we take a story and look at it from multiple perspectives. I'm Stan Grant. :

Critical aid is pouring into earthquake stricken Haiti, but getting it to the people who need it most still presents a massive challenge. CNN's Twitter page is being contacted by people who say they've gone without food, or water, for days. Desperation has definitely set in. Haitians are tangling with police as looting spreads through the capital. The U.N. secretary-general says coordination is key to aid distribution.

BAN KI-MOON, SECRETARY-GENERAL, UNITED NATIONS: This is the most important issue at this time. How to coordinate by delivering aid effectively and current (ph) and without any waste. And without wasting any time and humanitarian assistance.

International community supports the United Nations to take a leading role as a coordinator. That is, there is no doubt. There is no question about that. And the U.N. will continue to do that. And we will try have a mechanism established in a more structured way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GRANT: Meanwhile, CNN has obtained some disturbing video, which records the moment when the quake hit.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(BLACKNESS, CRASHING NOISES, WOMEN SCREAMING, MEN YELLING)

GRANT: As you can hear, screams echoing through the darkness as the terrified couple struggles to make sense of what happened. The couple, and everyone in the house, survived.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

In Haiti, delayed aid, overflowing hospitals, unrelenting need and many heavy hearts. Our Jonathan Mann joins us now from Port-au-Prince - Jonathan.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN INT'L. CORRESPONDENT: You know, Stan, in some respects it is so obvious what the problem is, but you have to use your mind to get a sense of the scale. There are 250,000 people homeless in this city, according to the government's estimate. For people who are still in their homes, the stores are closed, it is tough to find money. Literally, the banks are closed. The money transfers have stopped. So imagine all of the people who want food, many of them desperate for it.

Well, the World Food Program, of the United Nations, has been extraordinarily busy trying to get it to them. Today, alone, we're told 200 tons of food will be handed out to 95,000 people at eight different locations in this city - 200 tons, 95,000 people. That's a good day's work by any estimate, except for the fact that is what a third of the people that we know want that food. Even before this disaster Haiti imported half of the food that its people ate every day. Its imports have been slowed to a trickle because the port is closed. The airport is bottlenecked. So, the scale of what needs to be done here is enormous; even as the whole world rushes to Port-au-Prince to try to help.

But what about outside of Port-au-Prince? Places where the whole world is not rushing? There the situation is even more bleak. Our Karl Penhaul drove, literally, just a short distance. We are talking about 20 miles, what is that, 30 kilometers? It is an hour from here, an hour west of here. A place called Leogane, where things are still as bad as they were here in just the first days after the earthquake.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(PEOPLE SHOUTING, MAN SOBBING)

KARL PENHAUL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Video shot minutes after Tuesday's quake. Classmates carry a friend through the streets of Leogane. A local cameraman records others, dazed, bleeding, shrieking. A woman throws up her arms and asks why.

(WOMAN CRYING, SHOUTING)

PENHAUL: More students offer a prayer, moments after escaping the ruins of their school.

Five days on, relatives carry loved ones on doors to a makeshift clinic. Patients wait their turn for treatment on the grass.

(On camera): In Leogane, until today, until Sunday, saw no sign of international aid. So this emergency center was being run by a group of nurses and trainee nurses all from Haiti. And they say that in the course of the week they have treated almost 5,000 patients.

(Voice over): This is five-year-old Sandu LaPierre (ph). She has to clutch a toy bear in her left hand. Her right is now a stump. She is trying to be so brave. But it hurts too much. This was never intended to be a hospital. It's a nursing school. After the quake, nurses say they ran around town begging supplies. They still lack vital medicine and have only cardboard to make temporary splits for shattered limbs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anytime we see (UNINTELLIGIBLE) we could go somewhere to get it. We keep asking. We keep asking.

PENHAUL: Leogane is an hour west of Port-au-Prince. Until this weekend, the relief effort focused on the capital, leaving earthquake survivors elsewhere to fend for themselves.

Leogane Mayor Santos Alexis says the town has no heavy lifting equipment.

MAYOR SANTOS ALEXIS, LEOGANE, HAITI: I feel weak. Nothing I could do. There was nothing I could do. I think 90 percent of Leogane is destroyed. And the other 10 percent is only surviving, trying to make it.

PENHAUL: Rue D'Emphere (ph) means the Street of Hell in French, and after the quake, every street here deserves the same name. It's no better on the outskirts, dogs pick away the flesh of the unburied.

Back at the clinic, at least now the exhausted nurses have backup from international aid group, Doctors Without Borders.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape and in good spirits.

PENHAUL: But as hard as they try, it's tough to soothe the pain of broken bones and broken lives. Karl Penhaul, CNN, Leogane.

(END VIDEOVIDEO)

MANN: How many people died in Leogane? Well, the mayor says more than 4,000 that he was able to count. But the truth is he says he doesn't know. People who got no help, got no -had no place to bring their dead, simply buried them themselves. So, Leogane is one corner of the country where we really don't have a good picture of what is going on and how great the suffering may still be.

But the truth is, even here in Port-au-Prince, just a short distance from the ruin of the presidential palace, there are people who say they have received no aid, have no indication of when they will get any. And as we found out, through the city, people are asking us where is the aid and when will they get it? We don't know what to tell them, Stan.

GRANT: Critical questions. Thank you very much for that. Jonathan Mann joining us from Port-au-Prince.

Well, that question of aid will be discussed, no doubt, when the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon appears on "AMANPOUR". Tonight it is his first interview since returning from Haiti. That is midnight, in Abu Dhabi.

Militants attack in Afghanistan's capital. Gunman and suicide bombers hit civilian targets and government offices. What it says about the Taliban.

And across the border Pakistani troops tread on Taliban territory. In today's "Prism Segment" we'll look at another tact. Should militants be given a say in politics?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(GUNFIRE, EXPLOSIONS)

GRANT: A brazen attack in the heart of Kabul, running gun battles stretch into hours with Taliban militants after they attack government offices. There are questions about security and the whereabouts of the attackers. And what message the Taliban are trying to send to Afghan and NATO forces. CNN Dan Rivers has this report from Kabul.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAN RIVERS, CNN INT'L. CORRESPONDENT (voice over): A pitched battle in the center of Kabul. Afghan forces fought for more than three hours with Taliban insurgents who were hold up in several buildings.

(On camera): We have been listening to sustained gunfire coming from down the road. You can see in the distance there is a building on fire, which we believe may be a market. And we are being told that there are a number of Taliban fighters who are attacking near the Serena Hotel, right in the heart of Kabul, and a lot of gunfire and explosions going on.

(voice over): People in the center of Kabul were running for their lives. Women and children terrified and confused. Some angry they hadn't seen any ISAP troops.

SHUKRIA BARAKZAI, AFGHAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER: You can see all these Afghan soldiers. There are no one from foreign troops. Counter- insurgency, there are the insurgents. And there is the place that they should cooperate, should to should with us, with the government of Afghanistan.

RIVERS: And it is still going on?

BARAKZAI: That is going on. You can hear.

RIVERS (voice over): But it wasn't just gunfire that filled the air. Wails of grief as the first bodies were recovered. A shopkeeper killed as a market became a battle zone. The market building was left to burn as the fighting petered out. After three and a half hours, finally the Afghan army appeared to have control. The fire brigade were able to move in.

Government workers left the scene, they had been pinned down in the ministries of justice and finance, among those targeted.

This man says, "It was terrifying. Children, women, everyone was in the basement. We thought we could be shot at any moment."

(On camera): This is the market building that we believe that some of the Taliban suicide bombers entered, across the floor here is littered with bullets, shell cartridges, you can see how fierce the firefight was. And just down here is the presidential palace.

(voice over): As all of this was unfolding, inside the palace, President Karzai was swearing in new members of his cabinet. His weakness underlined by parliament's repeated rejection of earlier candidates.

In 10 days he will address and international conference in London, on the future of Afghanistan, designed to provide political momentum to match the military surge here.

Today's brazen attack will leave many Afghans wondering whether Hamid Karzai is capable of overseeing a decline in the violence that is ravaging this country.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRANT: Dan Rivers reporting there, from Kabul,. Well, in neighboring Pakistan there have also been attacks by and against Pakistan Taliban militants. Militants are blamed for 600 deaths in the past three months. Amid the attacks the Taliban has released a second audiotape. On it, reportedly, is the voice of their leader, declaring he is alive and well. Intelligence sources, last Thursday, said Hakimullah Masoud had been killed or wounded in the missile strike in the tribal region..

Well, in our "Prism Segment" the Taliban's role in Pakistan, and Afghanistan, can - and should they be part of the solution? First we turn to Reza Sayah, in CNN Islamabad. He's been looking into this for us, and has one man's perspective -Reza.

REZA SAYAH, CNN INT'L. CORRESPONDENT: yes, Stan, I think first off we have to clear, talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan is very different from talking to the Taliban in Pakistan. They have used very different strategies. And when you the notion of -the talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan, you have to look at the violence here. The question is, will they end their violence.

And one way to predict what they will do in the future is to look at what they have done in the past and if recent history is any indication the answer is no, they won't end the violence. If you look at the past few months you have seen wave of suicide attacks all under the leadership of Hakimullah Mehsud, their strategy has been more aggressive, more coordinated. They are no longer doing suicide attacks, at times they are engaging security forces in long-running gun battles. And they are not just going after security forces anymore. They are going after mosques, markets, that are loaded with women and children. That is why when we spoke to leading political analysts. Pervez Hoodbhoy, here in Islamabad, and ask them will the Taliban, here in Pakistan, end the violence. He wasn't very optimistic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PERVEZ HOODBHOY, PAKISTAN DEFENSE ANALYST: I see little prospect that the Taliban would want to behave as a normal political party, because their entire strength is based upon terrorism. They want to show their strength by blowing up people in bizarres, at funerals, in hospitals. And this is the way that they have made their presence felt in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAYAH: And you can't forget the Pakistani Taliban, so called Form of Justice, which is beheading people, flogging women in public places. And when you listen to the Pakistan Taliban, what they say is there is two conditions that need to happen for them to end the violence. And that is, one, for the Pakistan government to cut ties with Washington. And that is for the U.S. forces, and international forces to completely leave Afghanistan. And, Stan, for the time being, it doesn't look like that is going to happen for a while.

GRANT: And Reza, when you talk about trying to negotiation with the Taliban, you mention there some of the more brutal tactics the Taliban employ. We saw that in the Swat Valley, and we saw the negotiations, the peace deal that was knotted out, turn sour. Any lessons learned from Swat?

SAYAH: Well, I think a lot of people look at what happened in Swat last year and they see it as a litmus test when it comes to talking to the Taliban. Last year, of course, the Pakistani Taliban, the Pakistani government went to the Taliban and said, look, you can have Sharia law, in the Swat region. You can have your strict interpretation of Islamic law, but laid down your weapons and stop fighting. Did they do that? They did not. That appeared to embolden them. They continued to fight and move for more territory. And when you talk to Pervez Hoodbhoy, he says the lesson there is not to negotiate from a position of weakness. Here is what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOODBHOY: Swat has been a tremendous learning experience. First, the Pakistani government allowed them to grow, and then when they got out of control it had to act. It had to crush the Taliban. And it did so with, I'd say, 70 percent success. Yes, they are still out there, but at least life has returned, more or less, to normal in most areas of Swat. Now, from this we learn that giving into the Taliban, negotiating from a position of weakness has happened many, many again in Swat. That doesn't work. What you have to do is assert yourself, get back the control of the state, and say that we do not compromise on sovereignty.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAYAH: And of course, when you look at Pakistan right now, it is clear that the government does not have control of the entire nation. And many analysts, including Professor Hoodbhoy, agree, those are no circumstances under which you talk tot the Taliban, Stan.

GRANT: Reza, thank you very much for that. Reza Sayah, joining us live there from Islamabad.

Another voice now, perhaps best known as a world-class cricketer, Imran Khan is also a politician, an activist and a former member of the Pakistani parliament. It has been suggested that he act as a go-between. And help facilitate talks between Islamabad and the Taliban. We caught up with him earlier in London. I asked what it would take for him to mediate.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

IMRAN KHAN, FORMER PAKISTANI PARLIAMENT MEMBER: The way I would enter into any negotiations with the Taliban is, that whatever the agreement, firstly must be within the constitution of Pakistan. And secondly, it is ratified by the parliament.

GRANT: Some have also said that before any negotiations begin, under any circumstances, there must be a complete renunciation of violence. Is that your bottom line as well?

KHAN: Well, it is not going to happen. If Pakistan army is in the tribal areas, if there is bombardment going on, there are drone attacks. Already in about 14 days there have been nine drone attacks. Last year 42 drone attacks killed 708 people. And according to the Pakistan government, 700 were civilians. So, if there is a bombardment by Pakistan army, drone attacks, there is not going to be any chance of asking them to give up their arms.

But what can happen is, if we bring them to the negotiating table. At least we can differentiate between the real terrorists and our own tribal people who are only fighting in reaction to Pakistan army's action and drone attacks. If we can separate the two -

GRANT: That leads me to this question, actually, and that is, is there a good Taliban and a bad Taliban, as has been put about? That there are some you can negotiate with and the hardliners that you will draw a line through.

KHAN: Well, there is clearly, there is a small group of ideological Taliban who want their own system of Sharia and of their interpretation of Islam, but the majority of people who are joining the Taliban, are in reaction, on both sides of the border, to the aerial bombardment. You don't fight an idea, terrorism is an idea. You don't fight it with bombs. You have to win the hearts and minds of people. And unfortunately, the hearts-and-minds war has been lost.

So, from Pakistan's point of view, if we keep on following the same failed strategy, the country is doomed. We had 500 blasts last year in Pakistan. We can afford it the next year.

GRANT: Let me just ask you, though, can you negotiate? Can you possibly bring people into the fold who have been guilty of beheading people, torching schools, stopping women and girls from working or going to school, people with that sort of mind set. Is it possible, under any circumstances to build a partnership with them?

KHAN: I think unless you start talking how are we going isolate the real extremists? How do we know who is fighting for what reason? Unless, and until, there is dialogue, we will not be able to answer these questions. You can always have a military operation. It can always be the last resort, but clearly military solution is not the solution, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan. All it has done, is it has exacerbated the situation. It is turning more and more people towards the militants. In Pakistan, if we keep on this current strategy, the country is doomed. We have not chance. We are having an economic crisis which is unprecedented. The whole of frontier province is economically devastated. Fatah, the tribal area, completely devastated.

And if this war goes on, and this sort of devastation takes place, then there is going to be a massive number of unemployed people who are likely to join the militants.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRANT: Pakistan's Imran Khan, there, giving his view on what role the Taliban should play in Pakistan and Afghanistan. That is our "Prism Segment" for the day.

Searching for solutions in Abu Dhabi. Thinkers gather for a summit to discuss sustainable energy. We'll bring you the latest. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GRANT: Welcome back.

Sustainable energy options are on the table now in Abu Dhabi. It is the Annual World Future Energy Summit; a broad discussion of energy solutions for industry leaders, investors, scientists, and policy makers. Here is Cal Perry with a look the week ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAL PERRY, CNN INT'L. CORRESPONDENT (on camera): Welcome to the World Future Energy Summit here in Abu Dhabi, where over the course of four days more than 600 companies are going to be putting on display a variety of products all dealing with the environment, everything from solar to waste management.

Now, we are expecting over 20,000 visitors here. Now, one of the more popular items at this year's show is electric cars. And many people may have the idea that electric cars are big and bulky and ugly, well, no longer. Have a look here. The newest in electric cars is a sports car.

And Sir, I wanted to start by asking you, first, why is this particular car on display.

HAMAID ALI AL SHAMISI, AL ALIN (PH) DISTRIBUTION CO.: Actually, we have this car over here because Abu Dhabi (UNINTELLIGIBLE) authority has a social responsibility towards the community of Abu Dhabi. And to introduce future technology to the people.

PERRY: And tell me about the specifications of the car.

SHAMISI: Actually, this car is 100 percent an electric car. It goes from zero to 60 miles in less than four seconds. And it takes three hours to get it fully charged. And it could go up to 240 miles.

PERRY: Now there are certain things here that are obvious. Like, of course, wind turbines providing power, but certain things, we are technological advances by using clean energy. We are going to talk to Kinya from Mitsubishi Technologies, who is going to introduce us here to this robot.

So, Watanabe, tell me about the robot.

KINYA WATANABE, MITSUBISHI CORPORATION: This is - we developed this robot for the receptionist in the hospital or entrance somewhere. He can bring the people to the, a point, that they would like to go. So, I would like to introduce you. So, please give some salutation to the robot.

PERRY: So, I can speak to the robot?

WATANABE: Yes, please. No, problem.

PERRY: Hello.

ROBOT: How do you do? I am Wakamaru.

PERRY: So, there you have it. Technological advances -- as Wakamaru continues to speak --technological advances, taking things to another level. And this robot can work with elderly people as well, you were saying?

WATANABE: We would like to, yes, how do you say? Promote our technology to take care of the old people, and so on, at home. So this kind of technology will, how can I say, it can help the people at home, especially elderly people.

PERRY: So, there you have it, we are not just talking, of course, about the environment. We are talking about technological advances and business as well. Cal Perry, CNN, Abu Dhabi.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GRANT: Could be the future of CNN reporting, right there.

And that's it for me, Stan Grant. in Abu Dhabi. "AFRICAN VOICES" up next, after an update of the headlines.

END