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CNN Live At Daybreak

Northern Alliance May Be Headed for Kabul

Aired November 12, 2001 - 06:01   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: Speaking of deployments, meanwhile overseas in Afghanistan the Northern Alliance may be making some deployments ahead -- of their own rather ahead of a push into Kabul. Let's check in now with our Matthew Chance. He's in northern Afghanistan. Matthew, hello.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right Leon, confirmation now appearing from the defense ministry that there is indeed, if we needed that kind of confirmation -- some kind of battle underway over the Shamali Planes north of the Afghan capital.

The latest information we have from defense officials is that 31 Taliban troops have been captured in the offensive and that some territory has been gained. They say three checkpoints have been taken over -- Taliban checkpoints taken over by Northern Alliance forces around the Bagram Airbase just over there to the south of where I'm standing over the Shamali Planes. The mountain, though, that stands between Northern Alliance forces and the Afghan capital itself is still very much, according to officials in Taliban controlled-hands.

So no direct confirmation that this is an advance on the Afghan capital itself. What we can confirm from our vantage point here is that all day we've been seeing quite a ferocious barrage of artillery and rocket shelling from these Northern Alliance positions here across the Shamali Planes towards the Taliban frontlines.

Northern Alliance troops have been preparing for some time now for what they say would be an offensive against the Afghan capital. Morale has been running pretty high, really since the fall of the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif a couple of days ago. Since then, the military instinct among these Northern Alliance fighters has been to keep the pressure up, to open up this second front on the Taliban.

There have been concerns, though, expressed by the United States. President Bush urging the Northern Alliance fight to certainly to push south out of these defensive positions, but not to actually enter the Afghan capital, Kabul itself. And the Northern Alliance says that it will not do that. It will stand at the gates of Kabul, it says, before -- while rather any political agreement to bring in all the different ethnic minorities is agreed upon for the future of an Afghan government.

So we're watching the situation very closely here. Leon. HARRIS: Matthew, if all is to be believed, as the Northern Alliance is painting the picture here, pretty much every supply line the Taliban have been relying upon to get into -- coming into Kabul have pretty much all been severed. Do we know that to be the case?

I'm sorry, we must be having a problem with Matthew's earpiece there. Matthew Chance reporting live for us this more from northern Afghanistan.

Thanks very much. Kyra, over to you.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well we'll catch up with Brian Nelson at the Pentagon then and find out what's happening with U.S. position on this possible Northern Alliance advance on Kabul. Good morning Brian.

BRIAN NELSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Kyra, I just checked with the central command -- the U.S. central command a few minutes ago to ask them about these plans by the Northern Alliance to move on Kabul and they could tell us nothing.

Same thing goes for the Pentagon media operations. In a way this is not surprising because information about U.S. military operations are generally not given out the news media beforehand and maybe under the current circumstances the Northern Alliance plans fall into the same category.

Still U.S. officials have been anticipating a move on Kabul anyway. B-52s bombed Taliban positions just north of Kabul overnight and into this morning to soften them up for the Northern Alliance. And the administration from President Bush to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld have issued stern warnings over the weekend to the Northern Alliance. The warnings -- make sure you stop at the city's outskirts and do not go in.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: All people can do is express their best hopes that there will not be carnage when it's occupied as has happened before, that there will be food for those people because we have to care for their terribly difficult circumstance, and that when it -- that it'll happen sooner rather than later.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

NELSON: At stake here are delicate diplomatic operations to try to create a broad based government in Afghanistan. An ethnic blood bath like one that happened in 1990 would disrupt those severely. It'd also do long-term damage to the peace prospects in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, the carrier group, the USS John C. Stennis is preparing to deploy from San Diego today and this will happen six weeks ahead of schedule. The group will join Operation Enduring Freedom with 10 ships and submarines, 80 tactical aircraft and about 8500 sailors and marines. And CNN will be covering that deployment later in the morning.

Now let's go back to Atlanta. Once again, here's Kyra.

PHILLIPS: OK Brian Nelson, live from the Pentagon. Thank you so much and we will -- Anna Cuevas as Brian was saying, will be reporting live from the send-off there in San Diego, California as the USS Stennis gets ready to take off and head to the Arabian Sea. More than 8,000 sailors are aboard that carrier, getting ready to deploy and we once again will bring that to you live.

Leon.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PHILLIPS: Taliban forces in Afghanistan ambushed a convoy killing three journalists. It happened last night near the Afghan border with Tajikistan.

HARRIS: Let's get the latest on that right now. Ben Wedeman is checking in. He's in Dashtiqala, Afghanistan. He's got the latest news on this word of the Northern Alliance capturing cities and those three journalists who were killed. Hello Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN,CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello Leon. Yes, certainly it does seem that the Northern Alliance is really moving ahead quite rapidly. They are claiming that they have taken the western Afghan City of Herat. That's near the Iranian border, a very ancient city traditionally oriented toward Iran. Also they are focusing their efforts at the moment on the central Afghan city, or rather town of Konduz where there's a fairly large Taliban arsal that -- arsenal -- that really represents the last large major population center in northern Afghanistan still under the control of the Taliban.

Within the last three days it's worth noting that the Northern Alliance has managed to expand its control of the country from 10 percent to a stunning 40 percent. Despite this there are pockets of resistance and near one of those pockets last night three journalists, two French and one German were killed when the military convoy they were with was ambushed by Taliban forces.

We spoke to Atikala (ph) Bary Alai, who is the deputy defense minister of the Northern Alliance and this is his version of events.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They were surrounded by the Taliban. Our army tried to break through and rescue them, but they couldn't. Eyewitnesses say two of them were captured after being injured and taken to a trench where they were killed.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

WEDEMAN: Also nearby here, we're just getting reports that another pocket of resistance of the Taliban has just been wiped out. Apparently the Northern Alliance had surrounded 70 Taliban soldiers. They told them to surrender. The Taliban, who consists in this area of Arabs, Chechens, Pakistanis, and Chinese fighters, they refused to surrender. The Northern Alliance said they killed almost all of them -- more than 70 and only captured seven of them alive.

Leon.

HARRIS: Ben, let me ask you if you've heard any of the stories that we've been hearing in bits and pieces here about people in these newly -- I shouldn't say liberated, but these towns that have been taken over by the Northern Alliance, how life is beginning to return to normal with them. Have you seen or heard any evidence of that?

WEDEMAN: Yes -- we have not seen any evidence of that simply because we're not really -- it's not safe to go into those areas at the moment and certainly that fact was underscored by the death of our three journalistic colleagues last night.

What we're hearing, for instance, from Mazar-e-Sharif, which is traditionally a fairly well educated town, a prosperous town, is that once the Taliban left, many of the women threw out their burkas and put on more traditional clothing -- the clothing that they're accustomed to. There are reports of lines of men outside barber shops to cut off the beards that under the Taliban regime became mandatory.

So certainly in this part of the country where the Taliban who are mostly from the Pashtun majority that inhabits the south, once their control was loosened, many of the older traditions of the indigenous ethnic groups, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, and the Hazaris came out again.

So the reports we are hearing is that there's a great big sigh of relief in those areas now that the Taliban are gone, but certainly we hope to bring you more directly those reports. We certainly are trying to push inside areas that have been freed from Taliban control, but at the moment I regret we only have second-hand reports of that.

Leon.

HARRIS: Well that's exactly what I was asking. Thanks Ben. That's fascinating. If you do get in, you're going to be seeing a heck of a transformation and we'll be glad to hear your report. Ben Wedeman, reporting live for us this morning.

Kyra.

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