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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

The War Room: Is Afghanistan More Dangerous Now than a Week Ago?

Aired November 30, 2001 - 19:00   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.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight on WOLF BLITZER REPORTS, THE WAR ROOM: The Bush administration insists the time is not right for a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: First of all, you have to have peace before you can keep it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is Afghanistan more dangerous now than it was just a week or two ago? What should the U.S. do with any captured Taliban or al Qaeda leaders? We'll go live to the Pentagon and to Afghanistan.

And I'll speak live with former Pentagon official, Frank Gaffney; Richard Murphy, former ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia; and Mansoor Ijaz, a south Asia expert who's been a private intermediary in other hot spots as we go into THE WAR ROOM.

Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer reporting tonight from Washington.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld today cautioned everyone to step back and take a quick breath. The war in Afghanistan, he says, is far from over. He also says expect more U.S. military casualties.

For a look at why the risks in Afghanistan may be growing, let's go live to CNN national correspondent Bob Franken. He's over at the Pentagon -- Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, at the briefing, it was a message that Rumsfeld has consistently delivered that this is going to be a situation that the further you go, no matter of how well you're doing, it's going to get tougher and tougher.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(voice-over): The defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, described an Afghanistan that seems to grow more chaotic with each military success on the U.S. side. And, as Taliban and al Qaeda forces are backed into a smaller and smaller corner, more dangerous. RUMSFELD: We may have troops captured or killed, but it will not deter us for a day or for a moment from our objectives. We are going after the al Qaeda and the Taliban that support them.

FRANKEN: Rumsfeld said the United States had not taken custody of al Qaeda and Taliban leaders, such as Ahmed Abdel Rahman, who is being held by the Northern Alliance. He is the son of the blind Muslim cleric, Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in 1995 for masterminding attacks on New York City landmarks. A big problem is knowing where many of the other leaders are.

RUMSFELD: They are people who, for the most part, don't walk up and volunteer their names and identification numbers with a sample of DNA. What they do is they blend into the other prisoners.

FRANKEN: That is just one of the post-combat issues complicating the situation on the ground, even before the combat is finished. The introduction of foreign peacekeeping troops is another.

To make it safe for the large scale humanitarian relief to get underway, it would be preferable, highly preferable to defense officials, that the outside peacekeepers were not needed.

GENERAL PETER PACE, JOINT CHIEFS VICE CHAIRMAN: Ideally in Afghanistan, as in any country, you would wish to have the host country's forces able to provide security for their own people.

FRANKEN: If for no other reason then the fact that peacekeepers have often become casualties of war, targets for people who don't want them in their country.

RUMSFELD: Yet you must have security because you've got to be able to get food in there or people are going to be starving. So it is a complicated, three-dimensional problem. And it's not checkers, it's chess. And it's hard.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FRANKEN (on camera): And the clear message from U.S. officials is that the hard job in Afghanistan is going to get harder and more dangerous, not just the war, but the effort to restore the peace -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Bob, are you hearing anything over there at the Pentagon about the possibility of a deal being struck with Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, for Kandahar?

FRANKEN: Well, there have been reports about that, that he has been involved with some delicate negotiations. Rumsfeld addressed that today saying that he personally -- and of course this speaks for the government in this case -- would vigorously oppose any such deal.

BLITZER: Bob Franken at the Pentagon, thank you very much.

And over in Afghanistan, the threat of a ground war is looming over Kandahar, prompting a new flood of refugees. CNN's Christiane Amanpour is on the scene in Afghanistan. She joins us live from Kabul -- Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, indeed, as you know and you've been reporting, there are more and more Marines, U.S. Marines, landing around that Kandahar air strip there. But so far, we are told that there has been no engagement and no attempt to engage the Taliban forces there. That apparently is being left to the anti- Taliban tribal factions and leaders down there. And what we are hearing here from Kabul is that there are several different tribes of the Pashtun ethnic majority down there who are moving in and around the Kandahar area from various different sides of that city.

And what we are being told is that there is some fighting there. We are told that there that been capture of about five Taliban tanks, some vehicles, some weapons as well. And, of course, refugees are beginning to move out of that area and into the Pakistan border area.

We are told that there have been and there are some negotiations underway between Taliban -- rather -- anti-Taliban tribal leaders there who are pressing the military situation around the Taliban leadership. But we don't know whether that will amount to anything because over the last few days, Mullah Omar has been calling on his forces to stand and fight. And we don't know whether that will amount to anything either because it has not transpired that way in previous battles in Afghanistan.

Meantime, there are also more U.S. troops arriving at the Bagram airfield near Kabul. There are several dozen U.S. infantry troops from the 10th Mountain Division and they've been here for a few days now. They are not talking to reporters, but they have been seen on television lenses that have been trying to get pictures and trying to find out what they're doing.

We understand that they've come as part of other U.S. ground forces to help secure these air bases and to perhaps help them be used for humanitarian bases or indeed, if necessary, military bases. Of course, there have been many U.S. people on the ground, special forces, intelligence officials, but these are the first elements of the 10th Mountain Division around Kabul.

In terms of what is going in Bonn at the peace table, it appears there is some kind of deadlock at this time because one of the leaders of the Northern Alliance is A: cross about the lack of representation, he calls, about the Pashtun ethnic majority. And then the former president of Afghanistan, Rabbani, who is also the leader of the Northern Alliance, is holding up a list of names and that would make an interim government. So we are going to hope to find out some more details when we interview a senior Northern Alliance leader a little later on about those talks in Bonn -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Is there a sense, Christiane, that the situation in and around Kabul is the going to become more stable or, perhaps, even more chaotic in the short term?

AMANPOUR: Well, the situation in Kabul is fairly controlled. What is a little bit difficult, and certainly journalists have that found that to extreme peril, is the instability on certain roads and in certain parts of the country where there are either bandits who have been holding people up, including aide convoys -- they've robbed many drivers, but they haven't touched the aide -- or Taliban and their mercenaries who have been falling back and who are still holding certain positions on certain roads. There is a certain amount of insecurity on the roads, but as far as we can gather, the towns that we are in and other journalists are in are fairly under control.

BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour in Kabul, thank you very much.

And Christiane will have more at the top of the hour in her special report, LIVE FROM AFGHANISTAN.

How chaotic could the situation in Afghanistan get? What's wrong with putting peacekeepers on the ground right now? And if the United States gets its hands on the Taliban leadership and al Qaeda leaders, what should it do with them?

Joining me now here in the CNN WAR ROOM: Frank Gaffney, a former assistant secretary of defense, now the president of the Center for Security Policy; Mansoor Ijaz, a businessman who's been a go-between in other crisis situations; and Richard Murphy, former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and to Syria. By the way, you can send us your WAR ROOM questions. Just go to my Web site: cnn.com/wolf. That's also where you can read, by the way, my daily online column.

Let me begin with you, Frank Gaffney. Is the situation likely to become more chaotic in the short term?

FRANK GAFFNEY, FORMER ASSISTANT DEFENSE SECRETARY: If we are lucky, it's only in the short term, Wolf. I think there's no question that you're going to see the vacuum of power that currently exists translating into, certainly as Christiane was just saying, outside of the main cities a certain amount of lawlessness. And that's without respect to the perhaps continuing organized effort of the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's forces to take advantage of that vacuum of power. It's going to be chaotic.

BLITZER: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recalled today an incident you well remember, Ambassador Murphy: the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 U.S. Marines who had supposedly come into a peaceful environment.

RICHARD MURPHY, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Yes, who were definitely there to help the situation in Lebanon and they were considered an enemy.

BLITZER: And so, clearly, what U.S. officials, Pentagon officials don't want to do now is see a similar kind of situation arise. But there is a lot of potential adversaries out there.

MURPHY: Well, there are. And it's best that we not be in the role of the peacekeepers once that situation is straightened out and you get some foreigners in there. BLITZER: Let's look at the situation on the ground. I want to put up a map and show -- Mansoor, I want to have you pick it up. Take a look at what's going on. The Northern Alliance together with the U.S. and the coalition partners, they are basically in control of all of these areas up here in the northern part of the country, everything north around here.

But down here, in Kandahar, there are still some serious pockets of strong Taliban strength over there. What is the likely scenario over the next few weeks?

MANSOOR IJAZ, SOUTH ASIA ANALYST: I think the problem we are dealing with, Wolf, is we've now got Russia in Kabul. They are our new ally, but it's a very sort of new relationship.

BLITZER: But they're only there in a very, very modest humanitarian purpose. They're not there in a military role?

IJAZ: But I think that's coming. The point I'm trying to make to you is that that's what the next thing.

BLITZER: You think the Russians are going to play a military role in Afghanistan?

IJAZ: Absolutely. In a peacekeeping format, I think they're going to be a part of that.

BLITZER: I would be very surprised. But let me ask Frank Gaffney. Do you think the Bush administration would go for that?

GAFFNEY: I don't think the Bush administration has been consulted about it, and that's one of the thing that's troubling is that they have inserted them in I think with a view to creating as much influence on the ground whether as they can...

(CROSSTALK)

GAFFNEY: ... whether it's military, whether it's humanitarian is unclear. The problem is, it's not coordinated and it has the potential of really undermining the effort to build a new relationship and trust between us.

IJAZ: The issue here is that these alliances with the Afghans shift so quickly, you just can't keep track of it from day to day. And that is why the United States has to use its technology and not its human resources and allow other people's human resources, or other countries human resources at the moment, because I think we are walking into a trap if we do it any other way. That's the problem.

BLITZER: What do you think about that?

MURPHY: Well, the chaos which we all remember from the early '90s, when the Northern Alliance was really just a bunch of warlords at each other's throats could be back. The only difference between then and today is that there apparently is going to be a very large sum of money to dole out for development and to buy up at least the fleeting loyalties of the various commanders.

GAFFNEY: Rent, rent is the verb, I think.

MURPHY: Rent. rent.

BLITZER: And as we know, those loyalties could be very fleeting.

The Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld gave our own Bob Novak and Al Hunt an interview that will be on "NOVAK, HUNT & SHIELDS" on Saturday. I want you to listen to this excerpt, because it does underscore what Rumsfeld sees as some of the problems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUMSFELD: There are pockets of resistance up north and in the west, a good many of these people who surrendered and turned in their arms and then left, and a number of other of the Taliban ended up just fading into the villages and mountains, and they're still there and they're still armed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So how much control does the U.S. have over the situation?

IJAZ: I mean, it's a very -- the ground situation is very complex and difficult to deal with because of the topography, because of the kinds of people that we're dealing with. We don't which one is exactly a Taliban, which one is exactly Northern Alliance, they are prepared to play each other's roles.

In the very early stages when we went in, the Northern Alliance was selling arms to the Taliban, arming them against us. I mean, this is a place that doesn't really lend itself to making sense. The thing that we have to concentrate on is finding bin Laden and getting out of there once we are done. And then let our political pressure essentially galvanize a political future for Afghanistan that ensures the longevity of the solution this time.

BLITZER: Is that enough this time?

GAFFNEY: Well, I think it's the most we can hope for. Control is completely the wrong concept here, Wolf. We hope to have influence, and the influence currently arises from the combination of our air power, to some extent our physical presence on the ground and clearly the ability to exercise some control over who gets money, who gets humanitarian assistance, who gets political legitimacy.

BLITZER: Ambassador Murphy, we have a question from one of our viewers, Connie of Denver, Colorado. She e-mails us with this: "What happens if Osama makes it to Pakistan? Will we go after him there, or will the Pakistanis do it for us?"

MURPHY: I think we would rely on --safely rely on the Pakistanis to do it for us.

BLITZER: You have confidence that they would?

MURPHY: Oh, yes.

BLITZER: You have confidence in the Pakistanis, obviously that they would do it as well.

IJAZ: I think prior to October 7 when the ISI was under different direction...

BLITZER: The Pakistani intelligence service.

IJAZ: Exactly. That may not have been the case, but now I think these guys are firmly on the right side and they understand that they have to get this problem solved.

BLITZER: Because they want to be on the winning side.

IJAZ: No, it's not the winning side. It's that they've got a squeeze play going on. If you get the Northern Alliance hostile to them already, aligning itself with India on the other side, and then they -- some general in Pakistan feels a squeeze play coming on in Kashmir, there could be a very quick change of government in Pakistan as well, and that's why we have to make sure they play the game right.

BLITZER: Darryl from Richmond, Virginia wants you to answer this question, Frank Gaffney -- not necessarily, but I'm going to have you answer this question...

GAFFNEY: I was afraid this was a request.

BLITZER: "Could the Northern Alliance troops turn on the United States?"

GAFFNEY: There could be the problem that I think Secretary Rumsfeld's telegraphed in his interview to be broadcast later this week, and that is, who is the Northern Alliance? Well, if it's suddenly a group of Taliban who have somehow morphed into somebody else, they look alike, they act alike, they may be operating within the areas that we think are controlled by the Alliance, I'm not sure that it would be the Northern Alliance forces per se -- but as in Vietnam, we may not be able to tell who is really on our side.

BLITZER: Ambassador Murphy, you spent many years as the assistant secretary of state for Near East and South Asia affairs. You presumably know this region quite well, you've visited it often, but do you think that the experts in the U.S. government right now who are studying what's going upon in Afghanistan really have a handle on the ethnic divisions, the diversity, the problems in Afghanistan?

MURPHY: No. No.

BLITZER: Why?

MURPHY: Well, because we pulled our diplomats out. We closed the embassy down 15 -- more than 15 years ago. It's very hard to recruit people, to keep training them in languages and area studies if they're not -- if they don't think they're going to be able to get in and serve. There's no cadre.

IJAZ: But Wolf, if I may say, the question is whether we really need to or not. I don't think we need to.

BLITZER: You don't people need to know what's going on?

IJAZ: No, no, it's not that. It's whether they need to know everything about these ethnic rivalries, which warlord is from which tribe and how all of that works. That's not our job. Our job is to use our technological superiority, our human capabilities in terms of intelligence, and go in there and get the job done that we went to do, which is to destroy al Qaeda, finish the Taliban and get bin Laden and his cronies out of there.

GAFFNEY: I think that's right up to a point. I think you do want people to be able to make sense of the intelligence our technical means collect, and one of the places where we really are deficient is the human intelligence that can make sense of this, because it is going to influence decisions down the road.

BLITZER: Hold your thought. We're going to take a quick break. We have a lot more to go through. When we come back, the next target: The United States views both Iraq and Iran as sponsors of terrorism, but can one of them mend its ways? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back to the CNN War Room. Iraq and Iran are both officially listed by the U.S. State Department as sponsors of international terrorism. Does one have a chance at redemption before new targets are chosen in the war against terrorism? Let's go back to our panel.

Ambassador Murphy, they're both listed, Iran and Iraq, but is there a difference between the two, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested today?

MURPHY: Well, you're talking to a man who doesn't believe in the list. I think that's paralyzed our thinking over the years.

BLITZER: You used to put that list together.

MURPHY: I had no choice. It was a congressional mandate.

IJAZ: Following orders.

MURPHY: Yes. I think there are interesting possibilities, that's all I can see at the moment

BLITZER: In Iran?

MURPHY: In Iran, not in Iraq. Bush 41 labelled Saddam Hussein as Adolph Hitler. You don't negotiate with Hitler, you get rid of him, and I think the way Saddam has behaved ever since, we're still there.

BLITZER: He's not redeemable. As far as you can sense?

MURPHY: I don't think he's interested in being redeemed. He's quite happy the way things are going.

BLITZER: Some have suggested, William Safire the other day in "The New York Times" that there probably is a greater danger from Iran and its nuclear potential than from Iraq.

GAFFNEY: Well, I think I disagree with Secretary Rumsfeld on only one, and that is not that there's not a difference between these two countries, it's just that the difference is in Iran we're already starting to see the unraveling of the regime's control. We are starting to see people coming into the streets by the thousands, not unlike in Afghanistan, cheering us and calling for the removal of this oppressive regime, of this theocracy and that's something we ought to exploit.

It's clear, I believe, that both Saddam Hussein and the mullahs, the so-called moderate mullahs and the immoderate mullahs are irredeemable.

BLITZER: And you include President Hatami in that?

GAFFNEY: I do include Hatami.

BLITZER: And what...

(CROSSTALK)

GAFFNEY: He doesn't run the country.

BLITZER: ... about you? You studied this area quite closely.

IJAZ: Yes, I think the real problem that we've got in Iran is that you have a regime who, even under Hatami, wants to own weapons of mass destruction. This is the principle shiite power in the region, Saudi Arabia does not have that capability, we are not going to defend Saudi Arabia against a nuclear attack, there's no time to do that. We are not going to park nuclear submarines off the Persian Gulf.

And so the problem that region faces right now is that Saudi Arabia is at great risk, as our key ally, if Iran continues to push in this drive for nuclear weapons. And I think they're going to have them within the next 12 months, and and 12 months is a very short time in a political spectrum to try and have ordinary people without guns or anything rise up in the streets.

GAFFNEY: It's not just Saudi Arabia that's going to be INTERVIEW he crosshairs of that Iranian nuclear program, it's being married with longer and longer range ballistic missiles that will give it the ability to hit Israel, Europe and in due course the United States, as well. And it's an argument, by the way, for missile defense both for our allies and --.

BLITZER: That's a subject...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: ... for another occasion.

MURPHY: Without giving Frank the rest of the program, I'd like to hear him explain what he means by exploit the difference between the popular attitude in Iran and the mullahs' attitude.

GAFFNEY: Well, I think if you've got people in Iran who want to be liberated from the mullahs, we ought'n be saying, well let's see what we can do to work some kind of new understanding with the mullahs. We ought to be helping those people get the mullahs out.

MURPHY: How?

BLITZER: What would you do?

GAFFNEY: Well, I would begin by legitimating that popular aspiration. Not re-legitimating this odious government, not trying to negotiate with them, not trying to prop them up, not trying to normalize relations with them. I think that's a terrible mistake, it puts us on the wrong side of history.

BLITZER: I want to ask you a quick question, we have an e- mailer, you've been asked this question a million times, but I get this e-mail. Walter from Dallas, Texas: "Why is it OK for Israel to have weapons of mass destruction, but no one else in the region?"

MURPHY: Well, the only person, or the only government in the region that used them is Baghdad, Saddam used them against his own people, against the Iranians. One of these days Israel is going to have to come to the table with all the others to talk about weapons of mass destruction. Peres (ph), I think, was the only one who put a date on that, which was two years after a general peace agreement in the region. So even he would acknowledged that one of these days Israel is going to have to sit down and discuss its arsenal.

BLITZER: OK. We're going...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: ... to go. Unfortunately, we are all out of time.

GAFFNEY: Oh!

BLITZER: Save that thought for another occasion. We will have you all back. Thanks Ambassador, Frank, Mansoor, thanks for joining us.

IJAZ: Good to be with you.

MURPHY: Thank you.

BLITZER: The death an elderly Connecticut widow is the most mysterious anthrax case to date. Now a new possible clue has been found in a nearby town. Details, when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Here are some of the latest developments we're following there is a possible new lead in the anthrax death of a 94- year-old Connecticut woman, a non-threatening letter sent to a nearby home has tested positive for trace amounts of anthrax, leading authorities to suspect cross-contamination in both cases in.

In just about 30 minutes crews are expected to start pump chlorine dioxide gas into the office of the Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle. It's the beginning of what will be a 24-hour process to kill any remaining anthrax from a contaminated letter opened more than six weeks ago.

That's all the time we have tonight. Please join me Sunday for "LATE EDITION": Among my special guests the secretary of state, Colin Powell -- that's Sunday at noon Eastern. Until then, thanks very much for watching. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Have a great weekend.

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