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| AFGHAN BATTLES | |
 December 7, 2001  |
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After a background report, two reporters discuss the latest military action in Afghanistan, including the fall of Kandahar and the continuing search for Osama bin Laden.
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Welcome, gentlemen. Tim, starting with you, you've covered a lot of the players in this whole drama. Is it surprising to you that this surrender deal, which Hamid Karzai just yesterday the new prime minister of this new Afghan interim government was saying was in the offing, that that, A, collapsed and, B, that Omar is in hiding or somehow vanished? |
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| Treacherous terrain | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: And is the terrain... tell us about the terrain around Kandahar. Would it be fairly easy for them to slip away undetected, and where could they go to hide out? TIM WEINER: Well, looking for a fugitive in Afghanistan is like conducting a manhunt on the moon. The region around Kandahar is called the Desert of Death. It is a low, flat terrain. You can get in a pickup truck and be in the mountains in a couple of hours, and those are trackless mountains.
TIM WEINER: I was in Tora Bora two days ago at what was then the front line, about two miles from the cave network. Tora Bora itself looks like... the terrain, the topography is like a volcano that's exploded. If you think of the bowl and the crater and the slopes of a volcano, inside that crater is where the major cave systems are. The Afghan opposition forces were going up the sides, the outside of the craters slowly. MARGARET WARNER: And the al-Qaida forces then are, what, inside that crater and dug in? TIM WEINER: Yeah, and in the next valley over to the South. MARGARET WARNER: Michael Gordon, you're up in Kabul, where the Northern Alliance is. How does the, and you've talked to people up there, how does the operation look to them? What are they telling you about how it's progressing and what they think the prospects are of getting bin Laden and the al-Qaida leadership?
His concern was that bin Laden might be able to slip through some of the smugglers' trails that Tim talked about into Pakistan, and then slip into Afghanistan again. He thought that the United States and his European allies had pretty much determined what sector of Afghanistan bin Laden might be in, but he was not at all confident that the United States would succeed in capturing him. |
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| Analyzing the surrender deal | |||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Does he think that that Pakistan or some elements in Pakistan would actually help bin Laden get away?
You know, the Northern Alliance or the new government—Fahim is from the Northern Alliance—is deeply suspicious of Pakistan. So they make all sorts of allegations about that. But I think first and foremost his concern was just that bin Laden had entered an area where, not only were there many hiding places, but there were different egress routes that could lead him out of the country and then potentially back into another part of the country.
MICHAEL GORDON: His view was that basically they are in the phase of consolidating the power of the new regime, the Taliban are finished as a political force, although they may scatter to the four winds and continue as some sort of quasi-guerrilla movement. He didn't think they would even amount to that. But I have to say that Kabul is like a big island. Within the capital there is a sense that the new government has control, but I know as a reporter that you don't have to go very far before you're in no-man's land.
So there are a lot of little pockets around Afghanistan of resistance. Not all of it is Taliban. Some of it are just local warlords who have yet to cut their deal with the center of power. I do think, however, that the corner has been turned; that the Taliban are finished as a regime; that there's going to be a lot of messy cleanup to do; and that a very difficult job of trying to track down bin Laden and those Arab fighters in regions that, as Tim knows better than I, are not really under anyone's control. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you both, Michael Gordon and Tim Weiner. Thanks very much, and stay safe. |
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MARGARET
WARNER: Joining us on the phone for an update are military correspondent
Michael Gordon from Kabul, Afghanistan, and foreign correspondent Tim
Weiner, who has been reporting from eastern Afghanistan. He joins us
from Islamabad, Pakistan, right now. 
TIM
WEINER: No, it's not surprising at all. The Afghan opposition forces
around Kandahar are many. They do not agree with one another. Karzai,
by virtue of his interim, his upcoming interim status as Afghanistan's
leader, thought he could cut a deal over the phone with Omar. There
was no deal. And the Taliban have not surrendered. They have left Kandahar.
I think there will be continued fighting by Taliban forces. The city
is full of hungry people. They'll need something to eat. There's wheat
in the aid agency's warehouses. It may not be there tomorrow or the
next day. And Mullah Omar is nowhere in sight. 
MARGARET
WARNER: I understand, Tim, you also were in the part of eastern Afghanistan
near, moving northeast now from Kandahar, where the hunt is on for bin
Laden and al-Qaida up in these mountain caves near this place, Tora
Bora. Just tell us about the terrain there and what that fighting looks
like. 
MICHAEL
GORDON: Well, the new government of Afghanistan is a pastiche of different
elements. The people up in Kabul are not running the operation in the
South, that's being run by various Pashtun tribes, but they do have
a sense of what's going on. And I was talking last night to General
Fahim, who is the new defense minister of the government, and his assumption,
which he said was based on intelligence and fits entirely with what
Tim has been reporting, is that bin Laden is likely - he said "definitely"--
in the Tora Bora area along with a significant number of Arab fighters
who he thought would put up determined resistance. 
MICHAEL
GORDON: Well, first of all, his assumption is just based on topography,
geography, and an analysis of the tribal structure there, and his view
is that that border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is just a wild
frontier. It's completely uncontrolled. He said the people in this area
don't really regard themselves as being Pakistani or Afghani; they're
just people who live in that area. So it's just a genuine frontier area
that nobody controls. 
MARGARET
WARNER: And what was his view of...last night I guess this surrender
deal back in Kandahar was still being talked about or seemed to be in
the offing. What was his view of that?