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CNN Live At Daybreak
America Strikes Back: Courting the Ethnic Tribes in Afghanistan
Aired October 19, 2001 - 08:23 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: Earlier this morning, CNN confirmed reports of special operations teams on the ground in Afghanistan, and a big part of the search for Osama bin Laden will include exploiting rivalries between the various ethnic groups that make up the Afghan nation.
With more on that, let's turn to Miles O'Brien, who joins us from Atlanta -- good morning again, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello again, Paula.
We're standing in the map room, and beside me is Professor Jack Schroeder, University of Nebraska, Omaha, a geologist. We're a long way from Omaha now as we stand actually in Russia on our way down through the steps of Kazakhstan, into the area where the Himalayas meet the Hindu Kush and into Afghanistan.
And, Professor Schroeder, let's just talk briefly about the terrain differences in Afghanistan. You go from literally the top of the world to some fairly brutal desert in the south.
PROF. JACK SCHROEDER, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA OMAHA: Yes, it's over 21,000 feet high up in this part of the Wakhan Corridor. And then, over the Hindu Kush, this puts you up to over 16,000 feet. But it's only about a 1,000 feet elevation along the Amu Darya, and then there's this big lowland area here in southwestern Afghanistan.
O'BRIEN: All right. The strategic importance, then, of the southern portions of this country, obviously the capital and the power centers are there, but we do know that the Taliban's religious center is in Kandahar.
SCHROEDER: Right.
O'BRIEN: Is there a big distinct difference between the regions and the ethnic groups that belong to them.
SCHROEDER: Yes, the diversity of Afghanistan is legendary. There are ethnic groups all over the place. There are several hundred mutually unintelligible languages in this part of Nuristan here.
O'BRIEN: Several hundred, you said.
SCHROEDER: Several hundred.
O'BRIEN: Wow! Wow!
SCHROEDER: Yes, people have moved in there for thousands of years, set up camps, set up a little ethnic enclave, and then continued into the future, where we are today.
O'BRIEN: And...
SCHROEDER: People all over the place.
O'BRIEN: ... now if you're a Green Beret, a special forces of some kind, and your mission is to get on the ground and find the friendlies, and use the friendlies to exploit your foe, that actually can be a good situation for you, correct?
SCHROEDER: Yes, the Afghans are famous for fighting amongst themselves when they're not fighting an external foe, but they are also equally famous for joining a group that seems to be going in a direction -- an overall direction, and they'll switch allegiances fairly quickly to be on the winning side.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about some of the ethnic makeup. We have another graphic, which is not here in the map room, an electronic graphic, if you will. And let's just overlay some of the tribal aspects of Afghanistan.
The first group that we have to consider is the vast majority, which are the Pashtuns, and if we could show the Pashtun in there -- their prevalence. No matter what happens in Afghanistan post-Taliban, the Pashtuns have to be players, and so it seems to me it's very important for the special forces, and for the U.S. in general, to make alliances with Pashtuns who would be foes of the Taliban, correct?
SCHROEDER: Right. The Pashtuns are up on the monitor on that dark, maroon color. You'll notice a few of them north of the Hindu Kush, up to where the Northern Alliance is. They were put up there in the 19th Century by Abdur Rahman Khan, because they were really fractious down where he was, so he wanted them to get to the north.
So that red zone of Pashtuns is about 39 percent of the population in Afghanistan.
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's go that -- let's show some of the other groups as we lay them out. The Tajiks...
SCHROEDER: The Tajiks
(CROSSTALK)
O'BRIEN: ... Tajikistan, of course, is up there in the upper right-hand corner of your screen, where that big, green area is -- Tajikistan just to the north. The Tajiks generally don't get along with the Pashtuns, do they? SCHROEDER: Not too well. They did in the old coalition government pre-1978 or 1979, they were getting reasonably well. But -- and we hope that's going to happen again.
O'BRIEN: All right. Something that could be exploited, then, by special forces...
SCHROEDER: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: ... on the ground.
SCHROEDER: Exactly.
O'BRIEN: Uzbeks, who are allied with the Tajiks and the so- called Northern Alliance, which is opposed to the Taliban, primarily Pashtun. Uzbeks, are they a group that could be used in one form or another?
SCHROEDER: Yes, they are only about six percent of the population in spite of the large amount of yellow that you see up there, but that is Uzbek country dominantly and, of course, there's a large amount of Uzbeks to the northwest there in Uzbekistan.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's bring up the next group on the list here. Now, this is an interesting group -- the Hazara which is in the central portion of Afghanistan, which -- correct me if I'm wrong -- that's the most isolated portion of Afghanistan.
SCHROEDER: Yes, it is. The Hazaras are originally probably a Mongolian. They say they are descended from Chinggis Khan's groups. They are traditionally the abused minority of Afghanistan. They have been abused by everybody around them, they say, and it's mostly true.
O'BRIEN: All right. And then, the final group is just sort of the rest of the story, if you will, the others, who populate, as we come back to this kind of closer-up version of Afghanistan. How does that map we just saw, how does that factor into the strategy and the thinking in the Pentagon right now?
SCHROEDER: Well, I'm not a Pentagon analyst, of course, but we've heard that, of course, that there are -- our troops on the ground somewhere down in the south. This is flatter and lower altitude down here, and probably going to move in this direction, because the Pashtun stronghold, where we think Osama bin Laden is, is in this area here.
And so, the exploiting by our side of the different ethnic rivalries can be used to great advantage with the traditional way that Afghans behave when assaulted.
O'BRIEN: All right. But you have to know the score, and you have to know a lot of languages, don't you?
SCHROEDER: Yes, you have to know a lot of languages.
O'BRIEN: All right, Professor Jack Schroeder, University of Nebraska Omaha, geology is your specialty, but you have shown you know a lot of other things as well about Afghanistan, a person who spent many years there in the '70s knows this as well as any Westerner -- we appreciate your insights in all of this.
SCHROEDER: Thank you very much.
O'BRIEN: If you'd like to find out more about Afghanistan and the situation in general, we invite you to check out, first of all, Jack Schroeder's Web site at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where they have just posted a fascinating atlas. That's what he was working on in the late '70s, an atlas of Afghanistan. Much of the fruits of his labor are posted there at that location. It is at unomaha.edu, and there are links from that location. We invite you to check that out.
And also, at CNN.com, we have a lot of maps too. This one, in particular, tells you a little bit about Afghanistan's civil war, which raged after the Soviets left at the -- in 1989 -- really to date, that civil war continues as the Northern Alliance vs. the Taliban. Of course, now, that whole picture changing in a very dynamic way as this war on terrorism continues.
So we invite you to check that out at CNN.com -- send it back to Paula in New York.
ZAHN: Miles, that is so helpful. I mean, particularly when we hear so much about these ethnic rivalries. But until you see it color-coded like that, it's really hard to fully appreciate. I see what you were talking about with the Pashtuns being the dominant ethnic group there. It's fascinating.
O'BRIEN: There's nothing like a good map to help you understand something.
ZAHN: Hey, I've got a question for you.
O'BRIEN: Yes.
ZAHN: Do you have your soft-soled shoes on?
O'BRIEN: I do not have the...
ZAHN: I'm so worried about you scratching that map.
O'BRIEN: You know, there's a lot of sensitivity to that issue right here. Just suffice to say we're walking softly and carrying a big stick, if you know what I mean.
ZAHN: Oh, we just took a tight close-up of your shoes, and you polished them this morning.
O'BRIEN: I've got to polish them.
ZAHN: No, no, they actually look pretty shiny.
O'BRIEN: OK, good. ZAHN: I'm impressed, Miles -- thanks so much.
O'BRIEN: All right.
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