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American Morning
Interview of Thomas Price, Former Diplomat
Aired November 16, 2001 - 08:19 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.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: We have a guest this morning. When all of this happened, the events of September 11, President Bush suggested immediately thereafter that the people who did this were cowards. Well, the Taliban, at least, is beginning to prove to the rest of the world that the president might have had something.
Suddenly, this week, in the wake of ground advances by the Northern Alliance and American airstrikes, they have cut and run from any sort of hostility without so much as a whimper. The Taliban supreme leader suggests that it's not just a massive retreat, because they don't have the stomach to fight it out. They do have reputations as being pretty good warriors, but rather, it's part of a grand plan designed to destroy America.
Former U.S. diplomat, Thomas Price, knows the region well in Afghanistan. He met the Taliban when he was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan between 1996 and 1998, and he joins us this morning from Tucson, Arizona -- Mr. Price, nice to have you with us.
THOMAS PRICE, FORMER U.S. DIPLOMAT: Thank you. Good morning.
CAFFERTY: Grand plan to destroy America. How seriously do you take that kind of rhetoric?
PRICE: I think it's purely rhetoric, and I would take a slight issue with something you suggested, which is clearly the Taliban were not responsible for September 11. They would no more be capable of planning and executing those tragic events than we would be of walking to the moon. And in the days immediately following September 11, the administration was very clear about how was responsible, and who was the enemy, and the enemy was not the Taliban.
CAFFERTY: That's true. Well, except that the president went out of his way to say that the terrorists were no different than the governments that gave them sanction, chose to support them, funded them, gave them housing, food, et cetera, all of which the Taliban, at least if I read the papers correctly, has done.
PRICE: Right. The Taliban are definitely guilty of harboring terrorists. Whether it was within their capabilities to deport bin Laden and turn him over to us is an open question. But we are definitely sending a powerful message to other government in the region, which might consider harboring terrorists, by what we've done to the Taliban. CAFFERTY: You met Mullah Omar, who is the leader of the Taliban. What kind of a guy is he?
PRICE: He was actually in a meeting in which I participated, almost on an anonymous basis. Our main interlocutor was Mullah Mohammed, who was then acting as the sort of foreign minister in what was sort of a government. Mullah Mohammed, Mullah Omar, rather, remained absolutely silent. All of these leaders, though, seemed to me, at the time, to a very limited exposure to foreign officials, to be very devout -- they kept interrupting the meeting to go off and pray -- and to be sort of other worldly, not terribly practical.
CAFFERTY: Is the administration, in your opinion, making a mistake by not drawing a more -- a greater distinction between al Qaeda and the Taliban?
PRICE: It may well be that our actions, since the beginning of October, have pushed the Taliban and al Qaeda closer together. And certainly, we've transformed the Taliban into an enemy. I do think that it's right to go after them and show that we will punish governments which harbor terrorists.
I think it would be important to work with other governments who, either consciously or unconsciously, enthusiastically or unenthusiastically, give safe haven to terrorists.
CAFFERTY: Based on your knowledge and experience in that part of the world, what do you make of the developments this week, this rapid apparently collapse of the Taliban control of the country.
PRICE: The Taliban were never very popular, and they might have fallen of their own weight. They were terribly bad at governing. They were good at fighting. But when fighting against the overwhelming forces of a coalition, led by the most powerful nation on Earth, they didn't stand much of a chance over the long term. And they may be trying to cut their losses. They may also want to come back and fight another day, although the leadership structure seems to be collapsing.
I think we may also find that the Northern Alliance, so-called alliance, collapses fairly quickly, because at best, that's a marriage of convenience, and probably a short term marriage of convenience, and not at all an alliance in the sense that we understand the word.
CAFFERTY: Mr. Price, I appreciate your perspective very much on the story. I thank you for joining us this morning.
PRICE: My pleasure.
CAFFERTY: Thomas Price, former U.S. diplomat, joining us from Tucson, Arizona.
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