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CNN Live At Daybreak

America Strikes Back: Latest on Four U.N. Workers Killed in U.S. Airstrikes; Some Cracks in Coalition

Aired October 09, 2001 - 08:39   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: Right now, it is time to take you inside Afghanistan for the latest on the four U.N. workers killed in the U.S. airstrikes.

CNN's Kamal Hyder joins us on the phone from Eastern Afghanistan.

Good morning.

KAMAL HYDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. How are you?

ZAHN: I'm fine, thanks.

HYDER: Tell us what's going on where you are?

ZAHN: Well, it's very quiet here at the moment. Every night, every evening in fact, people start bracing themselves for an attack, and darkness brings basically a salvo of cruise missiles and exiles dropping bombs on key targets. It is a pattern emerging here. Radio Shahir (ph) goes off the air, and then the antiaircraft batteries opens up, and people know that an attack is coming. The antiaircraft artillery surprisingly has enough ordinance because the Taliban never fought a war against air attacks, so they have adequate stocks of antiaircraft artillery ammunition.

The other pattern that is emerging here is that some of the people have left the city. They closed their houses with everything intact inside, so the security forces, the police forces, they go from street to street to avoid looting and looking after these houses, so that is going on now, and so far, there is no panic. There are no reports of looting in the neighborhoods -- Paula.

ZAHN: Kamal, we were speaking with a reporter from Al Jazeera yesterday, who was also in Kabul, and he said in spite of the fact that small numbers of people tried to leave Kabul in anticipation of the attacks, they went to neighboring villages, that there were still a lot of people that had to stay in Kabul because they are so poor. Do you have any idea how many families, how many Afghans remain in Kabul?

HYDER: Well, Kabul, unfortunately is a city that has suffered most. I mean, there are a lot of people in Kabul. They don't even have enough money to be able to pay the transport to get their families out, and some of these people that we meet will tell us that they had the same sort of scenario last time, when there was fighting in Afghanistan during the Mujahideen. They said they are too poor to move anywhere, and so therefore, they decide stay to in their houses.

So Kabul, there is a pattern that very few people would leave Kabul, but in the more affluent cities of the south, like Kandahar, families have now moved out, but they have left everything behind. They have only the clothes on their back -- Paula.

ZAHN: Kamal, what is the reaction to four aid workers having lost their lives in these airstrikes?

HYDER: People are very sad, because de-miners they are considered heroes in Afghanistan. Afghanistan must be remembered as one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Every day, scores of children and innocent people get maimed by mines across the country. And every time, you know, a de-miner dies, whether an accident, during a de-mining operation, or in the attack last night, unfortunately, people feel very sad, because these people are saving lives here.

ZAHN: Kamal Hyder, thank you very much for the update.

As part of the war on terrorism, President Bush assembled an international coalition, but there appear to be some cracks in that coalition.

Joining me right now to talk more about that is Joshua Cooper Ramo of "Time" magazine.

Where are you seeing the cracks?

JOSHUA COOPER RAMO, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Well, I think we are starting to see not necessarily the open fissures of cracks, but early indications that the alliance may not be as strong as the Bush administration hoped. A couple of areas to look at.

First of all, inside of the Islamic world itself, there has been less rhetoric supporting the airstrikes than the administration would have liked, and they're going to work hard to try and ramp that up.

ZAHN: But that is publicly, but privately, some of these countries can say more?

RAMO: Privately, they can say a lot, but unfortunately, what happens to be the most important thing right now is what they say publicly, that the administration is very, very worried that they are getting into a position where it is starting to look like a U.S.- British war on Islam, and the only way to counter that position, the only way to make it look like that is not the case, is to have these moderate Arab states step up and publicly say as much as they can without putting their own regimes at risk, that they support the U.S. action.

ZAHN: Which countries right now is the U.S. most concerned about? is Egypt on the top of that list? RAMO: Yes, Egypt is very high on the list. They're very eager to try to get Mubarak out publicly, saying he supports the process, that he understands what's going on, that he believes it's not an American war on Islam, but instead is a war of all nations against a threat to all nations.

ZAHN: Politically, can he do that?

RAMO: Well, that's the challenge, and they are pushing very hard to get rhetoric out of it. The argument that they are making, and some of the people in the State Department has said, is look at what Musharraf has done in Pakistan. It's hard to imagine a guy who is more politically, maybe even physically in jeopardy, by making this stand and supporting the United States. If he can do that, certainly other regimes in the area can certainly come out and at least offer some support, but it's superimportant going forward, because the longer these strikes go on, the longer the attacks continue, the greater the pressure there's going to be on the Islamic regime.

So the premise in Washington is, the sooner they can get out with these kinds of arguments, the sooner they can establish the position with their people, the easier it's going to be to maintain.

ZAHN: I don't know whether you see this, but I see a great deal from Americans who are saying, hey, wait a minute, the U.S. gives Egypt more aid than any other country. How can that be?

RAMO: Absolutely. I think there's that, and the U.S., as you know, is the largest donor to Afghanistan, so part of the challenge that the Bush administration has right now is figuring out how to get the propaganda message out into the Arab world that they are not declaring war on Islam, that this is a war against terrorists, but it's about delivering the high quality of life to people in the Arab world that they believe they deserve, which includes democracy, and capitalism and other things. That message is not getting out right now.

ZAHN: Which other countries is the U.S. concerned about perhaps having softer support for coalition activities?

RAMO: Well obviously, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are the two countries that last week, the White House was working very aggressively to keep in line. They seem so far to have been pretty supportive of it, but they would like to see more rhetoric out of Saudi Arabia, and I think particularly some more help on the intelligence side. Again, that's something that may be done privately, and it turns out to be particularly valuable.

ZAHN: But I am sitting here saying, are they going to get the rhetoric? I mean, do you expect that? Is the U.S. going to get what it wants?

HYDER: I don't know, but it's a really good metric for all of us to sit and watch, which is, are they getting public support for this action? Because the longer it goes on -- and Musharraf said yesterday, that he hopes for a short, intense campaign that will be precisely targeted against people in Afghanistan who are evil.

Now, what the White House was saying at exactly the same time, there's going to be a long, protracted campaign. This is going to take many years, and so the only way in which you're going to have political stability in that kind of situation, where you have a long, drawn-out campaign, is for these folks to clearly get out and articulate some sort of position which will be sustainable in the public, in their own countries.

ZAHN: I need a quick thought on this, because we have to move on, just reaction from the U.N. to the loss of life in Kabul?

HYDER: The people in the U.N. are very upset about this. They're frustrated about the fact that this target was not somehow probably approved for the U.N. These were Afghani workers evidently, working inside of Afghanistan, but still, the U.S. has problem with the U.N., and this is not going to help them.

ZAHN: We apologize for the acoustics you're hearing this morning. Somebody decided to do a renovation, I think, right below us, so if you've been hearing drilling, it's not your imagination. There is some work going on below the studios here this morning.

Joshua, as always, good to have you with us. We always appreciate your insights.

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