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American Morning

Target: Terrorism: A Look Inside Uzbekistan

Aired October 05, 2001 - 09:39   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: The U.S. Army has dispatched 1,000 infantry soldiers to Uzbekistan to help secure an airbase before the arrival of more U.S. troops and aircraft.

And CNN's Donna Kelley is standing by in Atlanta with an in-depth look at the former Soviet state on the edge of Afghanistan.

Hi, Donna, how are you this morning?

DONNA KELLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Paula. Good.

Hope you're the same. Thanks. And good morning to you as well.

And of course on that news of the airbase for humanitarian food drops and the thousand troops, the former Soviet republic likely will be the base for special operations forces and other U.S. troops, which do what is called "rapid extraction" missions in Afghanistan. They'll also provide security for U.S. Air Force fighters. Even after any conflict with Afghanistan would end, a senior administration official told CNN that the Uzbek government would like U.S. forces to stay, to set up bases to protect against terrorist.

Both Uzbekistan and Russia are concerned about terrorists in their country, and whether U.S. Strikes could send refugees flooding into the region.

You might remember, back In February of 1999, the capital of Tashkent was rocked by a series of explosions, and that was followed by arrests and executions. Now Russia has initially said that it would support the coalition against terrorism, provide airspace for humanitarian operations and weapons to the Afghan opposition.

We want to look at where the country sits. Let's take a peek here. It's north of Afghanistan. It's slightly larger than California. There are six army bases, with 130,000 troops, seven artillery and armor brigades, and 10 infantry brigades.

Uzbekistan also has a sizable air force, and certainly that could play a key role for the United States. The air force has 11 bases, and they have 5,000 forces, with transport, attack and fighter jets. Security forces with internal and border troops, and the national guard.

And there's no navy. You might find this interesting. It's doubly landlocked, which means that there are at least two nations between the country and a coastline, and there's only two countries in the world that are doubly landlocked: Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein. The country is mainly flat to rolling desert, has the mountains of Kyrgzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and as we say, it's landlocked, so there's no coastline.

But the Aral Sea is in country. The Aral Sea is drying up, though. It's contaminated badly with pesticides and industry waste that blows in and natural salt that blows in. We have some pictures that we found for you, to show you how it's changed from 1973 to 1987 to 2000. So you can see how it' shrinking their from the pollution and the waste and the salt that blows in. Very dry and warm in the summertime. Winter is quite cold, but usually it's short and sunny, we're told. There are large reserves of oil, and natural gas is one of the biggest exports for them.

The Uzbek government, in fact, would like to get international investment to develop pipelines for both.

Large producer of gold and what's called white gold -- that's cotton -- and they are now the world's third largest cotton exporter. The Taliban has warned Uzbekistan not to cooperate with the United States in any attacks, so the president of Uzbekistan has asked for security guarantees from the United States and the United Nations.

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