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American Morning

America Strikes Back: A Look at Geography of Afghanistan

Aired October 18, 2001 - 11:53   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: To learn about how to find Osama bin Laden, we are spending a little bit of time learning a little bit about the geography of this region. So I guess, if you can imagine for just a moment, that Professor Jack Shroder of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and I are in the space shuttle, and we are flying over the general region.

And, Jack, this is an interesting bit of geography here, and when you look at it in this form, you really get a sense of how this is a crossroads, Afghanistan that is, with the Himalayas coming in here and planes here meeting. It has really been a crossroads of conflict, hasn't it?

JACK SCHRODER, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA IN OMAHA: Exactly. Alexander the Great came across Iran, Persia and went off to conquer India. Ghengis Khan came down from Mongolia, came through Afghanistan. The English came up from the British Rhys (ph) three times to conquer Afghanistan. The Russians, the Soviet Union, came into Afghanistan. It has been a long history of war, thousands of years of war, and the Afghans are real used to it.

O'BRIEN: They are used to it, they are also very effective in their own way as warriors, are they not? They are not exactly the best equipped of armies in the war.

SCHRODER: They are very poorly equipped, but they always open their border and say come on in. Getting out is harder to do.

O'BRIEN: Particularly here in this area, where the Khyber Pass and Kabul would be, that is -- there have been historically a number of routes there that have occurred at the hands of the Afghans.

SCHRODER: Right, the Khyber Pass is right here, and that's the famous pass. That's got a paved highway through it. The other major pass -- and I will try to get around here so I can look at it as we normally look at it. The other major area is here, and then border here, down through Pashtun tribal territory is a completely porous border. There are passes all the way through it. It's easy to get in and out across that border, because it's usually undefended.

O'BRIEN: Let's look at this graphic that you brought for us. This is a map -- you spent many years in the late '70s in this region and probably know the terrain as well as anyone in the West right now. As you look at these passes, which aren't as obvious on every map, you get a sense of this migration. A lot of the Pashtuns, which is the ethnic majority in Afghanistan, are nomadic people, they go back and forth, they cross the border all the time.

SCHRODER: Exactly. Yes, you can see on the present graphic the white road. That's through the Torkham (ph) junction into Afghanistan, the famous Khyber Pass. Yes, there it is coming up on yellow now. All of the little yellow circles and the arrows back and forth, those are only a few of the many tens of passes along that border can you walk back and forth, or in some cases drive a four- wheel drive vehicle across.

O'BRIEN: As we come back to the floor map, we are here now in front of a larger scale version of Afghanistan. I don't think we paid an awful lot of attention, probably should pay a little more attention to the ethnic makeup of this country. It's not monoethnic, put it that way. The Pashtuns, but they're also Tajiks, Uzbeks, that make up a part of this country, and that plays in to a lot of the dynamics here, doesn't it?

SCHRODER: Exactly. The central part of the country is the Hazara (ph) Shiites. They are descended from ethnically Asian variety people. The Pashtun tribal homeland is in this area right here, and goes over into Pakistan. Up in the north, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, the Kirgas (ph), off in Wasan (ph). corridor which is that thumb that projects off.

O'BRIEN: Many, many different ethnic groups. They don't all get along, do they?

SCHRODER: They definitely do not get along. When I used to go into the villages, I always sent my translator in first, and he would then ask in several languages, "What language to you speak?" so we would speak the right language, so we didn't have trouble with the people.

O'BRIEN: How does that factor into the strategy when you look at any sort of military action, when you consider what's going on, on the ground there, and rivalry which exists already?

SCHRODER: Well, one of the things that the British always did quite effectively was they had people who spoke the language allot, and they had those people, the political officers, with the military, to keep the military going in the right way ethnically. Because if you do it wrong, you can get into all kinds of trouble.

O'BRIEN: All right, and bottom line here when we say needle in a haystack in the search for Osama bin Laden, is that an understatement?

SCHRODER: That is an understatement. The needle in the haystack, we think, is going to be in this area here, in the Pashtun tribal territory, but it's hard to do, and there are tens of hundreds of caves anyway, maybe thousands, so it's going to be very hard.

O'BRIEN: All right, professor Jack Shroder, University of Nebraska, Omaha, thank you for this guided tour of the region. We appreciate it. You know it as well as anyone on the ground. We appreciate you doing on the floor here.

SCHRODER: Thank you. Very good geography here.

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