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CNN Saturday Morning News
Factions Fight for Power Inside Afghanistan
Aired November 24, 2001 - 08:32 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Let's take a closer look at those factions still fighting for power inside Afghanistan. We have two reports. Our Jason Bellini will take us on a joy ride through Jalalabad with soldiers of the mujahideen.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: But first, a history lesson into the formation of the present day al Qaeda network.
CNN's Mike Boettcher shows us how Afghan Arabs played an important role.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a clarion call to Muslims around the globe, come help your Afghan brothers expel the infidel enemy.
Young men from the Muslim world, particularly from Arab countries, responded in large numbers. Their battle against the Soviets became a proving ground for those eager to participate in jihad, holy war. They learned modern techniques of warfare, were schooled in militant Islam, and grew disillusioned with the politics of their native countries.
They became known as "Afghan Arabs," and went on to use their new found experience in other conflicts, like Bosnia, Chechnya, and Kashmir. Kamal Habib was part of an already budding Islamist movement in Egypt when the Soviets entered Afghanistan. That war, he says, gave purpose to the disaffected.
KAMAL HABIB, ISLAMIC ACTIVIST: The jihad is going from concept to practice. We are taking the thought and putting it into practice on the ground.
BOETTCHER: Helping to vanquish one of the world's superpowers, the Soviet Union, was a heady first success for these Afghan Arabs. But Arab governments saw a huge problem in the making.
NABIL OSMAN, EGYPT PRESIDENTIAL SPOKESMAN: It all started after the end of the war in Afghanistan, where some people chose, first of all, to add a religious connotation to a war of liberation.
BOETTCHER (on camera): Arab governments were the first to recognize the potential threat from the Afghan Arabs. After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, governments in the region were faced with a tough question, what to do with the returning Islamic fighters.
(voice-over): Egypt prevented many of its Afghan Arab veterans from returning home, making them men with a cause, but without a country. Jordan, too, had to contend with returning militant fighters. During the 1990s, Jordan's general intelligence directorate broke up group after violent group of anti-government Islamics, who wanted to replace Jordan's Hashmite (ph) kingdom with the regime based on strict Islamic or Shariat law.
But despite arrests and prison terms, another group would always spring up with a different name, but a common thread, Afghanistan. What they were witnessing, intelligence officials say, was the birth of the global alliance called al Qaeda.
MAGNUS RANSTORP, TERRORISM EXPERT: The Arab Afghans were a fertile recruitment ground for bin Laden precisely because, firstly, he aims to destabilize and overthrow Islamic regimes beyond Afghanistan. The Saudis, the Jordanians, the Egyptians, that is the end game of bin Laden.
BOETTCHER: On the other side of the globe on September 11, the world saw how far Afghan Arabs were willing to go to achieve that end. Those who still hold out in Afghanistan were the head office of an operation that terrorism experts say no longer needs a headquarters.
RANSTORP: Following September the 11, we have a third generation. Some of those individuals who have been to Afghanistan, but certainly have set up networks within either the Arab world or in the West to conduct operations. And they then have minimal contact back to the nerve center in Afghanistan.
BOETTCHER: Though their turf in Afghanistan is shrinking, it is the very tenacity exhibited by the Afghan Arabs, now already exported to countries around the world, that has Western and Arab governments worried.
Mike Boettcher, CNN, Cairo.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Joy-riding through Jalalabad. The Mujahideen soldiers I'm with act as if they own the place, but for the moment it's not clear who's in charge here. At least four factions hope to be.
(on camera): Very nice stickers.
(voice-over): And each one of them is armed to the teeth. I went in to assess the seriousness of the situation, the danger level, as men with rocket propelled grenades and high caliber assault rifles cruise the streets, seemingly having a good time. Was this a celebration or more saber rattling? I began by inquiring about the pickup trucks they were using. Hasra Ali (ph), one of the commanders hoping to be boss here, confirmed my suspicions. "All these cars that you see here, they belong to the Taliban'' he says. The trucks were a Taliban symbol of power, used for patrols by the Ministry of Virtue and Vice. Some of these vehicles were commandeered from the NGOs the Taliban booted from the country.
I wondered who these alliance soldiers were. Where do they come from? Did they plan to occupy Jalalabad or eventually go home?
EZWAN: My name is Ezwan (ph). I am from Afghanistan. I live in Peshawar.
BELLINI: This soldier, a 20-year-old, grew up in a refugee camp in Pakistan. Now he says he plans to make Jalalabad his home.
In a country where two generations of war kept many Afghans perpetually on the move, home is where your tribe faction or ethnic group is for now. "When the Americans started bombing and the Taliban left, this was an open space we came and occupied,'' this man says, "and now we're getting set up here.'' But what could they possibly be setting up while they're so busy racing around?
(on camera): I'm doing a little road tripping with the mujahideen. They're actually helping me to hold the camera right now. I don't know where we're going, what the purpose of this trip is. I'm wondering whether they do either.
(voice-over): So I asked someone.
(on camera): What are you guys doing here?
(voice-over): "I wait for the commander to tell us what to do,'' this man tells me, "then we do accordingly.'' But most of the time these men are without orders, other than to remain loyal to their particular commander. "Right now, everything is out of order,'' this deputy commander admits. "Maybe later, when things get a little bit more organized, we'll take all the weapons and then we'll sit together and find out who is the chief.''
Without a common enemy to oppose, the commanders may have a limited time to organize and prevent a return of the factional fighting of the past. Still, Commander Hagi Zaman expresses optimism.
(on camera): So there won't be fighting between any of you?
HAGI ZAMAN, EASTERN ALLIANCE COMMANDER: No. No. No. No.
BELLINI: Because it used to be that way in the country. In the past it was like that.
ZAMAN: We don't want to do what we did in the past. We already received the dessert of the past. For this, we don't want to repeat it. BELLINI (voice-over): But it's unclear how much control the commanders themselves have. As we road along together, one of Hagi Zaman's soldiers yells out "We don't care about Hagi Zaman." I don't ask him why.
The gray area between peace and war in Jalalabad isn't something anyone here can explain. But it's clear the race against time to prevent more war will be no joy ride.
Jason Bellini, CNN, Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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