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CNN Live At Daybreak
Focus Shifts to Taliban Stronghold of Kandahar
Aired November 14, 2001 - 07:25 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: Once the Taliban took flight from Kabul, the focus shifted to Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan.
Miles O'Brien now joins us from the war room on where and how the war goes from here -- good morning again, Miles.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, Paula.
I guess if you had to apply one word to what is going on right now immediately in the wake of the fall of Kabul, probably that word might be chaos. It's kind of hard to keep track of what's going on at specific locations, but we're going to do the best we can to bring you up to date this morning on what's happening as we look at the region.
To do that, we're joined by our retire Major General Don Shepperd, our military analyst, and we've got a map of Afghanistan at our feet here.
Let's just run through sort of north to south where things stand right now from Herat all the way down to Kandahar, General Shepperd.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), U.S. AIR FORCE, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, basically the first thing that happened was the fall of Mazir-i-Sharif, key areas up here. The Amori Dorie River (ph), which runs right here, now being opened to bring humanitarian supplies in from Uzbekistan and get it into the Mazir-i-Sharif area.
O'BRIEN: That was a key moment there around that land bridge.
SHEPPERD: Absolutely. You want the airport opened here, also. You've got to repair it, as you do all of these airports. You have to put engineering teams in to repair the airports, to open that up for humanitarian.
O'BRIEN: Humanitarian only, though?
SHEPPERD: Yes, humanitarian only.
O'BRIEN: OK.
SHEPPERD: Over here in Konduz, we still have fighting going on, and reportedly in this area, a lot of the fighters up here are Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens, which are much more likely not to switch sides but to fight to the death, if you will.
O'BRIEN: And allied with the Taliban but nevertheless kind of cut off when you look at the geography here.
SHEPPERD: The only place they can go is into Tajikistan, these mountainous areas.
O'BRIEN: They wouldn't necessarily find friends in Tajikistan, right?
SHEPPERD: Not necessarily, no.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's move down to Kabul and Jalalabad.
SHEPPERD: The Kabul area, of course, we know Kabul has essentially fallen without a fight. You want to repair the airport there to be able to get in humanitarian and also the United Nations is going to be coming in to do the diplomatic work.
Jalalabad over here to the east, lots going on there, in a situation that's moving back and forth. Not much fighting going on, evidently, but it may, again, be handed over to the opposition.
O'BRIEN: And that, it could be the time honored Afghan way of things shifting allegiances, people literally changing sides right in the middle of things?
SHEPPERD: Yes, defection to the winning side is a way of war in Afghanistan.
O'BRIEN: All right. Let's come down...
SHEPPERD: From Kabul toward Kandahar, you've got a lot of retreating forces, the Taliban going back toward Kandahar. And this provides a real problem from a military standpoint. You want to knock out the remaining forces, but they are mixed in with refugee columns and so you have to be very, very careful. Lots going on in the Kandahar area. We don't know, again, if there will be big fights down here, but likely fights and remaining pockets and also retreat into the hills to conduct guerrilla warfare in this hilly area down here.
O'BRIEN: And the Kandahar air field, we don't know exactly who's controlling that right at this moment.
SHEPPERD: Reports back and forth that it's fallen, it's not fallen, still sorting out in the Kandahar area.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's go back to that point you were talking about on retreat. A lot of people may be thinking back to the Gulf War would think of that air attack on retreating Iraqi troops as they came out of Kuwait. And there was some restraint used in that case. As we look at some video which was released yesterday by the Pentagon to show some of these retreating forces and, in some cases, successful strikes on them, this is a real difficult thing for a pilot to make a decision on, correct? SHEPPERD: Well, it is and it isn't. Basically what you'll be given is you'll be given an area to patrol and you will be given rules of engagement that go with that area. The rules will go something like this. You can hit tanks, you can hit armed personnel carriers. You must be secure that as those, also, you will have special forces on the ground very carefully talking to the pilots and pointing out the particular targets. You want to make sure you're not hitting refugees or friendly forces in these areas.
O'BRIEN: All right, well, that's a difficult thing to do, though, in the gray area where some of these smaller armored vehicles, for example, might very well be carrying innocents, refugees, people who just want to get out of Kabul because of what's going on. A difficult thing to ascertain.
SHEPPERD: It's a very difficult thing and again, you've got to be very, very careful that you're hitting the right thing. Also, remember, both sides here have captured Russian equipment or equipment that was given by the Russians or left over from the war with the Soviets there. So they're both using the same type of stuff. It's difficult to sort out.
O'BRIEN: So at 15,000 or 20,000 feet, a lot of things can look alike, I presume.
SHEPPERD: Indeed.
O'BRIEN: All right.
SHEPPERD: Airplanes are operating a lot lower than 15,000 or 20,000 now, but it's still difficult.
O'BRIEN: All right, General Don Shepperd, military analyst, retired of the U.S. Air Force, thanks, as always, for helping us sort out what can only be described as a chaotic situation as we see what happens after the fall of Kabul -- Paula.
ZAHN: Thanks, gentlemen.
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