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CNN Saturday Morning News
U.S. Marine Activities in Afghanistan
Aired December 08, 2001 - 11:09 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: Marines in Kandahar, the hunt for Mullah Mohammed Omar, the hunt for Osama bin Laden, all subject matters we'd like to get into with our military analyst, retired Major General Don Shepperd, joining us from Washington.
General Shepperd, good to have you with us again.
MAJ. GEN. DON SHEPPERD (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk a little bit about that Marine mission in Kandahar. They're out there, sort of in the middle of the desert, and their mission is changing as we speak.
As it stands right now, they're going after the hardcore al Qaeda, but I guess as part of that, they're also in essence hunting for Mullah Omar as well.
SHEPPERD: You can bet they're doing both, Miles. Basically, in that area, they've been in their blocking roads, acting as an interdiction force, looking for the al Qaeda that are fleeing the city.
But as chaos takes place in that city, as we've just heard described by Nic Robertson, they may be called upon to do some things in the city themselves. You can bet that if the big prize comes, Mullah Omar, or of course bin Laden, that they will be called to act there. But a great number of their forces are tied up protecting their own base there. So there's not a lot of Marines down in that part of Afghanistan. They're doing a lot; but they're limited in what they can do, and looking for al Qaeda right now seems to be their most important mission.
O'BRIEN: So it is an expeditionary unit, but it is limited, as you say, in the sense that they have to protect themselves. Give us a sense of the kinds of missions they are using and doing, and the kinds of equipment they might be using as they engage in this activity.
SHEPPERD: OK, first of all, the Marine MEU, Marine Expeditionary Unit, has about 2,200 people, about 1,000, 1,100 of them of which are a reinforced battalion. The battalion has the vehicles that we've seen, the helicopters, air support, if you will, even tanks. They got machine guns, grenade launchers, personal weapons. Now, when you bring that into a theater, into a forward-operating base, that base has to be protected and secured. You have to refuel all of those vehicles. So you have to protect the gasoline and spare parts that goes into the vehicles -- both the vehicles and the aircraft.
Out from this base then, will got the hunter-killer teams that have been described. Small teams equipped with vehicles that are looking for specific objectives, and also looking for anyone that's coming from the base. So you have an expanding perimeter of people protecting your base and then looking further and further out, a lot of it in cooperation with airplanes. So it's an expanding base with a fairly small number of people, reportedly about 1,200.
O'BRIEN: Is it about 50-50 defense and offense?
SHEPPERD: I'd hate to put it that way, but that's not a bad guess. I don't want to give any specific numbers out there. But again you must protect your base at all cost and then you can range out with your force as the situation allows, and the situation, as we're seeing, is changing.
O'BRIEN: All right, let's move north and to the east to Tora Bora, and the efforts there to try to find Osama bin Laden and the chief lieutenants of al Qaeda.
The bombing continues, but we've talked at length with you, General, about how extensive this cave network is. To some extent, there may not be enough bombs on the planet in order to accomplish this particular mission.
I'm curious -- if there are intelligence reports of tall people riding horses, called the Sheik, which would lead one to believe that might possibly be Osama bin Laden. How quickly, how nimbly can our U.S. forces respond to that?
SHEPPERD: Well, that's the stuff made of legends. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it's the kind of legends that come out of warfare, the Lone Ranger riding in the east, if you will.
Now we've got a totally different situation in the east. We've been focusing on the Northern Alliance, which is an established fighting force, and now we're talking about the Eastern Alliance.
We are establishing liaison with Special Forces with them. There are no Marines or other forces in the way of major U.S. forces assisting those people. They are going into a very difficult area, a most mountainous regime. Tanks -- you can bring tanks up on the lowland, but taking them up into craggy mountainous country is very difficult.
So this gets to be the hand-to-hand set piece battle that we've been talking about, with infantry forces moving forward. And it's a very different kind, a more difficult warfare than taking cities in the flatland that are being turned over by defecting forces. This is going to be difficult, take some time, and we're focusing our intelligence on which cave is bin Laden and the al Qaeda most likely in. We'll get more and more information. But in the end, you're going to bomb them, and you're going to send people in from the ground. And it's going to be tough, and it probably is going to take a long time, Miles.
O'BRIEN: Nothing harder than the end game, all right. General Don Shepperd, retired U.S. Air Force, as always thanks for your insights.
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