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CNN Live At Daybreak
U.S. Military Planning to Put Forward Base Inside Afghanistan; People Living in Northern Alliance-Controlled Village Hit by Errant U.S. Bomb
Aired October 29, 2001 - 05:15 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: Now, let's get a quick check on the latest developments in America's war against terrorism. A New Jersey postal worker is confirmed to have inhalation anthrax, but state officials, state health officials, that is, say that the hospitalized worker's condition is improving.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: People in Washington who need preventive treatment against anthrax will now be getting the antibiotic doxycycline rather than Cipro. The CDC now says that other antibiotics can be just as effective against anthrax.
HARRIS: And Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge is going to have a new duty. The Bush administration plans to make Ridge the point person for the White House on anthrax cases. President Bush is going to chair the first meeting of the Homeland Security Council this afternoon.
Let's check in now at the Pentagon and see how things are going there.
Our Jeff Levine checks in with the very latest -- good morning, Jeff.
JEFF LEVINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Leon.
Well, we understand that the U.S. military is planning to put a forward base inside of Afghanistan very soon. The idea is that it would support about 200 to 300 commando troops. According to "USA Today," that base would have about 600 soldiers overall. Now, they would be helping the Northern Alliance in its efforts to take the town of Mazir-i-Sharif. That's a strategic town and the Alliance has wanted to take that for some time. It hasn't happened.
The Pentagon had hoped actually that the Northern Alliance would take that town before it had to intervene in this fashion. And, in fact, some, now that the war has gone on for about four weeks, some are beginning to ask if the U.S. has gotten bogged down in a quagmire.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: This is going roughly the way we have said publicly that it would go. We've said it would be long. We said it would be difficult. We said it would be different and, indeed, it is.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVINE: Now, the Taliban has put up some very stiff resistance on the ground, but the U.S. has been able to bomb at will. Some civilians have been hit inadvertently in that process with fatalities.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUMSFELD: The fact is that you're not on the ground there to report and I'm not on the ground there to report, therefore what can I do? If I cannot have the photographs that proves that they're lying, and there's no question but that they are using mosques for command and control, for ammunition storage and they're not taking journalists in to show that. What they do is when there's a bomb that goes down, they grab some children and some women and pretend that the bomb hit the women and the children. And it seems to me that it's up to all of us to try to tell the truth.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVINE: Meanwhile, the city of Kabul sustained some of its heaviest damage of the war over the weekend. About 35 bombs fell in an 11 hour period. The Taliban say that 13 died in the raids, but that report cannot be independently verified.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUMSFELD: We clearly are being sensitive about collateral damage and recognizing that it can cause a problem with the feeling about what's taking place. We have to be more careful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVINE: Now, Rumsfeld says that American bombs are about 90 percent accurate. That suggests that more civilian casualties are inevitable. The question is who will be held responsible for that, the U.S. military or the Taliban -- Leon.
HARRIS: Good questions there.
Jeff Levine at the Pentagon, thank you very much. We'll talk to you later on -- Daryn, over to you.
KAGAN: Let's get a perspective from inside of Afghanistan.
And checking with our Kamal Hyder, who is joining us with the latest via video phone -- Kamal, hello.
KAMAL HYDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello. It's good afternoon here because it's very quiet.
But this, earlier today Mufti Mohammed Mashum Afghani (ph), the head of the Taliban or the Ulimar Council of Afghanistan, said that an infidel country had attacked a Muslim country of Afghanistan and that it was therefore a request from the people of Afghanistan and the Ulimar for the Muslims of the world to come to the assistance of their Afghan brethren.
Of course, it must be remembered also that because people say that because of the Northern Alliance's push towards Kabul, the Pashtun population's feelings have been inflamed and the effect this has on the future course of the battle remains to be seen.
But Taliban fighters on the other side remain defiant. They say that their morale is good. They say that they haven't suffered the casualties that Americans would have expected to inflict on these people.
Meanwhile, the attacks on Afghanistan, especially the Kandahar stronghold of the Taliban, continue. This morning we had several bombs being dropped on Kandahar as they shook the walls and basically rattled the windows.
KAGAN: Kamal, can you explain to us how it's playing in Afghanistan especially around where you are in Kandahar, the civilian deaths and the casualties?
HYDER: Could you come again? I lost you, I lost you there.
KAGAN: OK, we'll try one more time. How it's being perceived, the civilian deaths and the people, the civilians that are being hurt in the air strikes around Kandahar and around Afghanistan.
HYDER: Well, the civilian population that felt considerably secure in the earlier day of the war now feel that they're as vulnerable as military targets. Civilian casualties have been high. People say over here, the authorities say that if you compare the civilian casualties with the Taliban casualties, then you will find that the civilian casualties are far greater.
KAGAN: Kamal Hyder, reporting to us from Kandahar. Thank you, Kamal.
HARRIS: Well, as we continue to consider the casualties that are among the civilians in Afghanistan, I just want to take a moment here to put things in a bit of context here.
For all of the hardship that the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan are going through, the U.S.-led attacks come after the suicide hijackings of four U.S. jets. One crashed in Pennsylvania in a field. One slammed into the Pentagon. And, of course, you know the two passenger airliners brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Some 5,000 innocent civilians in these cases were murdered. The White House gave the Taliban more than two weeks to hand over Osama bin Laden and only after efforts at a diplomatic solution failed did the U.S. begin its bombing campaign, and then only as a direct response to the terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.
Now, people living in a Northern Alliance controlled village are trying to understand why they were the victims of an errant U.S. bomb. The village of Ghani Khail was struck by the stray bomb Saturday. At least two people were killed.
CNN's Chris Burns visited that village after the attack.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
CHRIS BURNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Marzakan (ph) and his wife Kokogol (ph) fled here from their front line village with their two children a month ago. Now, Marzakan's adopted village is burying his wife, victim of a stray bomb from U.S. air strikes. Their 4-year-old son was wounded and hospitalized.
"They won't leave me alone,'' says Marzakan, rejecting interviews with international reporters. "I'm never going to shake hands with those people,'' he added, "they killed my wife.''
More harsh words from an imam. "We are inviting the Americans,'' he says. "They are bombarding Afghanistan, but we condemn this air strike here.'' Still, he adds it's because of Osama bin Laden that our people are dying.
At the remains of the shattered mud brick home, bomb fragments litter the rubble. The clock stopped at 4:25 p.m. when the bomb struck. A neighbor says he was working on his farm when the bomb hit. "It was very heavy. It shook the ground terribly,'' says Shamistan (ph). "I couldn't see anything, there was so much smoke and dust.''
The family pictures may have survived, but little else remains unscathed here, including the image of the air strikes.
(on camera): Kokogol was sawing dresses for a wedding party when the bomb hit, the first to strike a Northern Alliance held village, testing the resolve of Alliance supporters for an extended air campaign.
(voice-over): Mixed with anger and sadness is the will to understand, at least among some villagers, the house's owner for one.
"It was a mistake,'' says Abdul Metin (ph). "They should not do this. They should know the line between enemies and friends.''
The Northern Alliance, which calls itself the United Front, sees the error as one more reason Washington should work more closely with them to target the Taliban.
ABDULLAH ABDULLAH, NORTHERN ALLIANCE MINISTER: We have to coordinate, as I mentioned the other day, that not only these type of mistakes could be prevented but also civilian casualties as a whole.
BURNS: It's not the first time war has struck this village. A Taliban shell destroyed this house. Little consolation for the victims. And as civilian casualties mount on both sides of the line for the air strikes, the international coalition will face more anger from people like Marzakan.
Chris Burns, CNN, Ghani Khail, Afghanistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KAGAN: Former Mujahedeen leader Abdul Haq was buried Sunday in an Afghan town just west of Jalalabad. The Taliban executed Haq and two others in Kabul on Friday on spying charges. A former colleague says that Haq was in Afghanistan on a covert mission to convince some Taliban leaders to defect when he was captured. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says that Haq received non-military U.S. assistance in that mission.
HARRIS: The problem was that assistance was in a plane overhead and not on the ground where Haq was.
KAGAN: And not enough.
HARRIS: Now, when our coverage of America's war on terrorism continues, we'll focus on Iran. Is that country an ally or an adversary in the U.S. fight to wipe out terrorism? We'll examine Iran's role with a reporter who's covering that country.
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