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American Morning

Pakistani Taliban Support Thins

Aired November 23, 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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: You know a week can make a big difference during a war. You know just days ago, many Pakistanis were swearing their allegiance to the Taliban. Now Pakistan has broken off diplomatic ties and anti-U.S. protests there have also decreased.

So are the Taliban losing Pakistani popular support?

CNN's Carol Lin has more on that, from Quetta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The price on Osama bin Laden's head is falling fast. His picture used to be a best seller at Jam Shade (ph) Celebrity Collector Card Stand.

I used to sell a big number, 150 a day. Now I'm selling only 30 to 40, he says.

LIN: Nearly two weeks ago, Pakistan's Jamiat Ulma-e Islamic Party, the Taliban's biggest supporters, were bragging that ordinary citizens were donating money, even food, for the Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

People told us they would give their blood and lives for the Taliban cause.

Osama bin Laden was their poster boy for the holy war against the West. Today the fund-raising tent is mysteriously gone, replaced by day laborers looking for work and a city public service announcement to conserve water during the local drought. It seems the Taliban supporters are changing their tune about Osama bin Laden.

(on camera): We received an urgent late night phone call from the JUI's general secretary, who told us he had something very important to tell us about Osama bin Laden. He told us he was afraid to meet us at our hotel because Pakistani intelligence agents might see him. So he told us to meet him secretly at his office.

(voice-over): We expected to hear something concrete about bin Laden's whereabouts. Maulana Ghafoor Haidari says his Taliban contacts insist Osama bin Laden is not in Afghanistan, but in Chechnya, and on his way to the United States.

Why would the most wanted man in the world go to America, the country that is spending billions of dollars hunting him down?

The JUI general secretary said it's up to God: If his time is finished, he will be dead.

It was clear the man now in charge of the fundamentalist movement that educated and trained the Taliban didn't seem to care what happened to the Taliban's honored guest, Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials have repeatedly said there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden has left Afghanistan. Afghans living in Quetta just seem tired of the conflict.

The Taliban are nice people, Minanas Wahid (ph) tells us. They should just go to a mosque and get out of politics.

The slogan on this postcard has Osama bin Laden saying may God free Afghanistan and Islamic countries from the infidels. Soon in Quetta, you might buy this message for half the price.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And just this afternoon, we saw even more evidence that public support here in Quetta may be waning for the Taliban cause and Osama bin Laden. There were demonstrations as usual on Friday, as the JUI Party usually calls for thousands of people across the country to march in support of Mullah Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban, and in support of the holy war against the West. Today, demonstrators in the streets of Quetta numbered only 250, and in a country that easily masses up to 10,000 people for a passionate cause, this was hardly a number that really counts in the plus column.

Leon, it is virtually the equivalent of three people with picket signs outside of the federal office building on a Saturday afternoon -- clearly there to make a statement, and that is their right, but the numbers don't seem to show the support that was once there for a passionate cause here. Normally, you'd walk down the streets and it was all talk of fight to the death, and today no one is talking about fighting at all.

HARRIS: Interesting. As we said in the top of this, what a difference a week makes.

Let me ask you about what's happening across the border, in Afghanistan and in the Kandahar region. Whatever's happening there in Pakistan with the erosion of support for bin Laden, it's more important that support erodes across the border. What are you seeing there?

LIN: Leon, to the outside observer, it sounds like a dysfunctional ballet of diplomatic efforts as well as military action by a group of Afghan Pashtun commanders. What's happening right now, as we understand it, is that different tribes are trying to figure out whether they're going to ally themselves with Pashtun leaders here in Quetta, Pakistan, who say they represent King Zahir Shah, who is up in Rome trying to help put together a coalition government.

But we also hear about Afghan tribal leaders, who may very well this weekend be voting whether to side with the Taliban.

In the meantime, we understand in the city of Kandahar, the Taliban is still in control, but the focus of negotiations inside the city really have to do with Taliban-Afghans who are under pressure by Mullah Omar and the al Qaeda network to not abandon the foreign fighters -- the Arabs, the Chechens, the Pakistanis -- who will be isolated if these Afghan fighters choose to return to their tribes, in southern Afghanistan.

And what they want to avoid is a situation that they're seeing up north in Konduz, where these Taliban fighters are now surrounded by the opposition up there, the Northern Alliance. So somewhat of a standoff and we're keeping our eye on it.

HARRIS: We'll keep our eye on you as you do so. Carol Lin, reporting live for us this morning from Quetta, Pakistan. Thanks so much, and have a happy holiday over there.

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