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U.S. Troops Might Deploy to Georgia; U.S. Suspects Swiss Hitler Admirer Is Part of al Qaeda; Peacekeepers Begin Training New Afghan Army
Aired February 27, 2002 - 20:00 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.
NIC ROBERTSON, HOST: I'm Nic Robertson in Herat. Tonight, we'll have the latest on the possibility of the deployment of U.S. troops to Georgia and a report from Switzerland on a man who admires Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler, who the United States suspects of being a terrorist. All that and LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN.
ANNOUNCER: Washington sends help to a former Soviet republic, opening a new front in the war against terrorism.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: And we've made it very clear that either you're with us or you're against us.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: He's an admirer of Hitler and a long-time convert to Islam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AHMED HUBER, SUSPECTED TERRORIST: Hitler has always said that, the only religion I respect is Islam. And I tell this to young Muslims or to young so-called neo-Nazis and they get up from their chairs.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: But the U.S. says this 75-year-old Swiss man is more, much more.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): The United States has listed you, basically, as a terrorist.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Is this man bringing neo-Nazis and Islamic extremists into an anti-American coalition?
Looking toward the future in Kabul -- peacekeepers begin training the first recruits of an Afghan national army.
LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN, Nic Robertson.
ROBERTSON: Tonight, LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN comes from Herat, the most westerly of all Afghanistan cities, the city whose turbulent past may help it cope with the changes in the future. More on that later.
Now, a report from Moscow, from CNN's Jill Dougherty, on the possibility of the opening of a new front in the U.S. war on terrorism. If called upon, the possible deployment of U.S. troops to the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The remote Pankisi Gorge in northeast Georgia is a lawless place, out of control of the central government. Fighters from Chechnya, drug and arms traffickers, and, since the war in Afghanistan, al Qaeda fighters, have turned it into a hotbed of instability.
Now, the U.S. is ready to help the Georgian military clean it up, opening a new front in the war on terrorism.
BUSH: Mainly equipment and technical advice. Obviously, in order for us to work closely with governments that have been invaded by al Qaeda cells, they're going to have to request help. And we've made it very clear that either you're with us or you're against us. And we made it very clear that we hope that nations step up and do their jobs.
DOUGHERTY: Just as it did in the Philippines, the U.S. is poised to send up to 200 troops who will train the Georgian military. Ten combat helicopters already are being provided, and one military trainer, along with six contractors, has been on the ground since last November.
The Pentagon says the U.S. troops will not take part in combat exercises, and a spokesman for Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze says no joint operations are planned at this point.
KAKHA IMNADZE, SPOKESMAN, GEORGIAN PRESIDENT: And there are always a number of U.S. experts in Georgia, but this does not mean that we are planning a joint military offensive operation in the Pankisi Gorge.
Firstly, there is no need for that. Secondly, a Georgian minister of interior is conducting, currently, an operation in the gorge to restore law and order.
DOUGHERTY: Mr. Shevardnadze has been under pressure from neighboring Russia and the United States to bring order to the Pankisi Gorge, but he's had his hands full for years with instability in other regions of Georgia.
The situation is highly sensitive. Russia and the United States may be allies in the war against terrorism, but Russia opposes any U.S. military action in this former Soviet republic.
IGOR IVANOV, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER (through translator): From our point of view, that can even further aggravate the complicated situation in the region.
DOUGHERTY (on camera): But Russia, also, is taking an "I told you so" attitude. The Pankisi Gorge, a top Russian general says, has turned into a center for international terrorism, and the United States now is now taking it seriously.
Jill Dougherty, CNN, Moscow.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON: On the key issue of international peacekeepers here, Turkey has yet to say if it's ready to take over the leadership role. Turkey's prime minister has says said if they are to fill that position, they need several questions answered, whether or not the peacekeeping force is about to expand and how much the costs are likely to be.
At the moment, Turkey only has 260 troops in Afghanistan. If it is to take over that leadership position, it will need to bring in another 800. From Kabul, CNN's Brian Palmer reports on that international peacekeeping force known here as the Security and Assistance Force.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN PALMER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As politicians debate the future role and size of ISAF, the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, soldiers from the 17 nation force are working to improve security in the city and the nation. At the top of the list, training the first recruits of a new Afghan national Army. On their first day, receiving their weapons -- and learning the rudiments of military drills.
ISAF had hoped to have 600 recruits in its first training session. Instead, there were roughly 300. Not a problem say the ISAF officers, just a delay.
British and German military police, Italians carboneri (ph) and others attached to ISAF, conducted a demonstration of crime scene techniques for Kabul's police commanders. ISAF played the investigators and the investigated.
MAJ. BRYN PARRY-JONES, BRITISH NATIONAL ARMY: There is another way in which they could deal with things like check points. We have a graduated response and really violence is the last solution, really, to these kind of scenarios.
PALMER: Some of the rank and file Afghan police who observed were not impressed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): We can do a better investigation than they did. PALMER: When a load of unexploded ordnance was discovered at the edge of the Kabul airport at a dried up pond, ISAF called in the British Royal Air Forces' 5131 Bomb Disposal Squadron to clean it all up.
CHIEF TECH. DEAN FOWLER, BRITISH ROYAL AIR FORCE: The explosive quantities of -- there are just a phenomenal amount. We're in excess of items demolished in -- just in the confines of this area. We're at 1,300 items in this -- just in this area, ranging from small items to obviously larger items.
UNIDENTIFIED SOLDIER: Careful with this one. It's breaking up.
PALMER: The range where they explode the ordnance doubles as farmland for local Afghans. So, the soldiers move their operation to a safer location.
(on-camera): The members of the REF Bomb Disposal Squadron have taken out the fuse from the nose of this 100-kilogram blast fragmentation bomb. Instead, they've put in about 32 ounces of plastic explosives. They're going to attach a safety fuse, string it out and in about four minutes and 12 seconds later, they're going to blow it up.
(voice-over): Squadron 5131 will continue clearing away flares, bombs and rockets and blowing them up, until the area around the airport is clear. Then, like the rest of ISAF, they'll move on to their next assignment, once the politicians decide what the priorities are.
Brian Palmer, CNN, Kabul.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON: The United States is asking Osama bin Laden's relatives to provide DNA samples to help forensic experts find out if the al Qaeda leader was killed in a CIA attack. Earlier this month, in eastern Afghanistan, a tall man being treated differentially by those around him was killed by an anti-tank missile fired by a pilotless aircraft. So far, bin Laden's relatives have not responded.
The United States believes a man in Switzerland has helped fund and move moneys -- has helped move moneys for al Qaeda's extensive network. CNN's international correspondent Mike Boettcher caught up with a man who admires Osama bin Laden and Adolph Hitler and who aspires to a new method called the Third Position.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BOETTCHER (voice-over): In a typical Swiss house, complete with garden gnomes, on a quiet street, not far from the former residence of the U.S. ambassador lives a 75-year-old Swiss man, who the U.S. government says is a terrorist. The company he helped erect was even targeted publicly by President Bush.
BUSH: Al Taqwa is in our association of offshore banks and financial management firms that have helped al Qaeda shift money around the world.
BOETTCHER (on-camera): The United States has listed you, basically, as a terrorist. Were you surprised to see your name on that list?
HUBER: No, I was just laughing because it's 00 first, it's absolutely stupid. It's not even a lie. It's stupid.
BOETTCHER (voice-over): Ahmed Huber may have laughed, but the U.S. government is dead serious. It has frozen Huber's assets and is pressuring the Swiss government to arrest him for being part of the al Qaeda money network, alleging that al Taqwa management, later called NADA management, funneled money to Islamic terrorist groups through a complex scheme of offshore banking.
Huber was on the company's board of directors.
HUBER: I have never seen anything what was lousy or not correct or suspicious because I-- you see, I would -I could not have afforded to be part of something doubtful.
BOETTCHER: That is because, according to critics, Huber has a very doubtful past.
HUBER: You see here is a room where I read.
BOETTCHER: One only has to take a tour of his study.
HUBER: This is Osama bin Laden, who laughs.
BOETTCHER: There is a smiling Osama bin Laden, next to a stern Adolph Hitler, all situated below a photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini and oh yes, there is one other bit of memorabilia.
HUBER: This piece is a piece from the house of Hitler, on (UNINTELLIGIBLE), from the kitchen.
BOETTCHER: Huber, if you haven't guessed, is an admirer of Adolph Hitler and is a convert of Islam, has been for 40 years. However, far from a simple convert, counterterrorist experts believe that Ahmed Huber is the living, breathing embodiment of a dangerous alliance of neo-Nazi and Islamic extremists, a coalition united in its hatred of America and Jews, a coalition known as the Third Position.
Author Michael Reynolds has been tracking the Third Position and Ahmed Huber for years.
MICHAEL REYNOLDS, AUTHOR: Ahmed Huber has spent the last 12 years diligently, tirelessly, moving this coalition forward. And in that sense, of course, he's dangerous because this movement, at the end of the day, only sees violence.
BOETTCHER: Huber forged close ties to the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian revolution.
(on-camera): What did you think of Khomeni? You met him, correct?
HUBER: Yes, he was a fantastic man.
BOETTCHER (voice-over): At the same time, he worked with extreme right wing politicians like Francis Jean-Marie Lepen (ph) and Germany's neo-Nazi party, the NPD. Now, Huber is after a new generation of believers.
HUBER: Hitler said the only religion I respect is Islam and the only prophet I admire is Mohammed. This is very interesting when I tell this to young Muslims or to young so-called neo-Nazis. Then they drop from their chairs.
BOETTCHER: Huber's critics worry that growing numbers of Third Positionists could forge a new transnational terrorist threat.
REYNOLDS: Huber's connections go from Tehran to the United States to Germany.
BOETTCHER: Huber insists he is not anti-Semitic, just anti- Zionist. However, his statements suggest otherwise.
HUBER: Did we say the Jewnited States of America? We say Jew York.
BOETTCHER: Huber says admires the American people not their government and rejects terrorism. But listen to what he says about the September 11 Pentagon attack.
HUBER: If they kill a few American generals in the Pentagon, I don't feel very sorry because these guys have done a lot of trouble in the Muslim world and the third world.
BOETTCHER: And on the subject of al Qaeda.
HUBER: Al Qaeda is an honorable organization, I mean apart from some things they did.
BOETTCHER: Bin Laden and Hitler, two men Huber admires, two agendas rooted in hate and embraced as one. The Third Position, an emerging threat with dangerous potential.
Mike Boettcher, CNN, Bern, Switzerland.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANNOUNCER: Next, rising from the wreckage at the Pentagon.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LEE EVEY, PENTAGON RENOVATION MANAGER: This building is a lot about spirit and it's a lot about America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: When we come back, repairing a building and closing a national wound. But first, should the U.S. expand the war against terrorism to the former Soviet republic of Georgia? Head to CNN.com to take the quick vote. The AOL keyword is CNN. A reminder, this poll is not scientific.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTSON: The Pentagon, which is the hub of the war on terrorism, was the target for attack back on September the 11th. As CNN's Pentagon correspondent Barbara Star now reports, its repair is a source of national pride.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Five months after the horror, after the symbol of American military power became the front line, after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld assisted with the wounded, the sound of determination echoes around the Pentagon.
EVEY: This is called the Phoenix Project because we're literally rising from the ashes.
STARR: Lee Evey runs the $700 million rebuilding effort.
EVEY: This building is remarkably tough and it showed just how tough it is that day. This building stayed up and running, as I'm sure you're very well aware. The next day everybody reported for work, we were all here. We were open for business and we were doing our job.
STARR: To be on site is to relive September 11.
EVEY: You're looking, right now, directly at the route of that aircraft toward this building.
STARR: One hundred and twenty-five people inside were killed, more than 100 others were pulled from the flames. This historic building became seen as heroic. The side struck by the jetliner had recently been renovated, reinforced with steel and 2,000-pound blast resistant windows.
EVEY: We believe -- we'll never be able to proof it, but we believe that the exterior of the building remained standing for about 30 or 35 minutes and provided a great opportunity for people to escape from the building before it collapsed.
STARR: Even so, 400,000 square feet had to be demolished. Rebuilding goes on, 24/7.
(on-camera): The troops in Afghanistan are sending one message to the terrorists, but this Army of construction workers is sending their own message to Osama bin Laden -- "You brought down part of the Pentagon. It's going right back up."
(voice-over): When the site shut down for two days at Christmas, the workers did not want to stop. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The job is basically the same. The feeling is what's different. We want to get this done.
STARR: Lee Evey's goal -- have all the outer offices rebuilt by this September 11, so workers can look out their windows at the planned memorial service.
EVEY: This building isn't just concrete and steel and wire, you know. This building's a lot about spirit and it's a lot about America. And it's a lot about the American military and fighting forces.
STARR: But the talk among the construction workers is that they can finish the whole job by September 11, healing a building and closing a national wound.
Barbara Starr, CNN, the Pentagon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ROBERTSON: Still to come, remnants of ancient empires hint at a turbulent past. Over 150 historical sites litter Herat's landscape.
ANNOUNCER: We'll take a tour of a centuries-old city, dealing with modern day problems. LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN is back in two minutes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROBERTSON: Up next in "LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN": How 2,500 years of history in this city may help the people here cope better with today's changes.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ANNOUNCER: Herat is the largest city in western Afghanistan. It was settled more than 2,500 years ago and has been fought over for centuries, because of its location along strategic trade routes.
ROBERTSON: Years of conquests by invading forces has made this city culturally and ethnically diverse. It has a reputation in Afghanistan for being tolerant and cosmopolitan, a reputations it may need to help it through the changes and the days ahead.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON (voice-over): Gathering up armfuls of posters of women, religious police sweep through the video and electronics market, home to Herat's young and better paid citizens. These stores, banned by the Taliban, thrive now, but the new crackdown is surprising many here, who were expecting a more liberal attitude, to pictures of women with exposed arms.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't know why they do this action here. For example, if you go to Mazar or Kabul, you can't see like this because our leader, Hamid Karzai say that you're free, you can do everything.
ROBERTSON: Most popular in these stores are the Indian and American movies.
"They buy the war movies, mostly," says this storekeeper, "and sometimes the love stories."
Faces press up against window in this electronic store, where big-screen TVs are out of the financial reach of most here, but those that can, are buying satellite receivers to tune in to see what the rest of the world is doing.
(on-camera): While many are looking beyond the city for entertainment and business opportunities, there are also many who are apparently content with traditional routines and values. This is, after all, a city whose history is routed in cultural and ethnic diversity.
(voice-over): Remnants of ancient empires hint as a turbulent past. Over 150 historical sites litter Herat's landscapes, a product of the city's position, buffering the cultures and civilizations of east and west.
Hidden away in one of the city's more beautiful landmarks, the Friday mosque, are scores of craftsmen, fighting the ravages of warfare and desert wind on their heritage. Colorful mosaics are being carefully restored, as they seek to preserve the city's rich history.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It is important to show our culture and heritage. It is necessary for every nation to show its civilization.
ROBERTSON: Outside, Hajji Nor (ph) explains it's important for him to pass his religion onto his grandson.
"As far as he is concerned," he says, "television is OK, because they teach the Koran."
Tolerance here is transient. For now, the city's ethnic groups, brought together by centuries of conquest, live in relative peace. If ethnic differences are laid aside, it is likely the issue of religious observance that will keep Afghanistan's rulers busy for some time to come. If history is any guide, the city will weather that storm better than others.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROBERTSON: At the heart of Afghanistan's problems before the last 23 years of fighting began, were the efforts by moderate leaders to liberalize the country.
Thank you for watching. I'm Nic Robertson. LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN will be back at the same time tomorrow.
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