Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Ali Ahmad Jalali
Aired October 13, 2001 - 09:35 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.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: For more on the ground forces now in this war, both on the Taliban and on the side of the Northern Alliance, we turn to Ali Ahmad Jalali. He is a former colonel in the Afghan army and a military historian.
Good morning to you, sir. Thank you for being with us.
ALI AHMAD JALALI, FORMER AFGHAN MILITARY COMMANDER: Nice to be here.
SAVIDGE: Obviously with your experience in the Afghan army and your work against trying to get the Russians successfully you did out of Afghanistan, give us a sense of what are the forces like now for the Taliban, how strong they are, and how well trained.
JALALI: The -- in numerical terms, the Taliban on the ground has many units that controls territories in the southern Afghanistan particularly, and also provinces in the north. However, they are losing this superiority because their heavy weapons equipments, air fields, and air force has been targeted by the United States and British aircraft.
Therefore, the disadvantage is the numerical correlation of forces and means that the Northern Alliance has is going to change the qualitative, the correlation, changes the correlation of forces and means, can lead to Northern Alliance advances to key cities and strategic locations.
However, this -- the political impact of it is probably be not advantageous to them, because the moment the Northern Alliance try to become an alternative to the Taliban, it probably will make the Pashtuns in the south to think that the same situation which actually was there in Afghanistan before the Taliban is returning back to the country.
SAVIDGE: Let's try to get with the specific numbers. What do you know -- we've heard many numbers thrown out there by the Taliban -- what do you think the numbers really are as far as troops in the field they have?
JALALI: In fact, the Talibans are composed of key elements. The first element is led by hard-line leaders of the Taliban who are the veterans of the Afghan jihad or war with the Soviet Union. And also their military cohorts, who are mostly young graduates of religious school, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) in Pakistan and refugee camps and inside Afghanistan. They probably will number around thousands, 10,000 probably.
And then you have the foreign fighters rallying in a cluster around the al Qaeda of Osama bin Laden, and they include Arabs and other nationalities, which will include -- which includes the 55th Brigade, about several hundred people, and also other fighters in the training camps and other support organizations, probably up to 3,000.
And the rest, the majority of the contingents and units that support the Taliban, come from local warlords, tribal leaders, who actually sided with Taliban during the '90s when they struck to power in 1996.
SAVIDGE: There has been talk of defections amongst Taliban soldiers maybe going over to the Northern Alliance. One, do you believe that? Is it likely to continue or increase?
JALALI: Well, the switching sides in the Afghan conflict is very common. The reason is that the -- there is a leak of a conceptual framework at the national level in political divisions to create a national government. This comes from the time that Afghans were fighting the Soviet Union.
The resistance to Soviet Union or Soviet forces was mostly based on local commanders and who were loosely affiliated with political parties in exile. These commanders retained their militias when the Soviet withdrew from Afghanistan. The factions who came to power in Kabul to represent a national government would try to create a representative government. They use these local warlords to side with them, and then use them against the rival factions.
So therefore, they became the key players in Afghan politics. However, they were subject to defections when their interests changed. So the switching side is mostly motivated by ethnic, by regional interests, and also opportunism.
A warlord will probably easily defect when his side is losing, or when there's a better future for the warlords in the next government.
SAVIDGE: Since you were a part of that campaign that successfully threw out the Soviets, what advice would you give to the U.S. military?
JALALI: Well, this is an unconventional warfare, and I think that unconventional warfare, the methods applied is usually advised by military principles to be unconventional.
At the same time, the situation in Afghanistan is very complex. The end of war does not mean the beginning of peace. I think the most important thing here is the political environment, what kind of political conditions one can create in Afghanistan that cannot -- that can lead to peace and stability in the country?
So therefore, now the military action is aimed at weakening the Taliban forces in order to prepare the situation or conditions for the political process that could lead to a broad-based legitimate government Afghanistan. If that is the aim, then the political issues are to be actually paid attention to political issues.
There are talks about a process, but little is known about the road made to achieve the aim of that process.
And then it comes these to a question of reconstruction, so three elements are important, military actions to prepare the situation for political process, a political process that should lead to -- or would lead to the establishment of a broad-based legitimate government Afghanistan that people can support, and then reconstruction of a country. One has to build a country so that that country does not become a breeding ground for extremism and terrorism in the future.
SAVIDGE: That is a big job ahead. Thank you, that is Ali Ahmad Jalali. He's a former Afghanistan military leader. Thank you for joining us, your insights this morning.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
