AC360 special: Inside the
Battle Zone
Friday, September 11, 2009
Length: 3:36
LARGE (41.6 MB)
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SMALL (4.4 MB)
The AC360 special "Inside the Battle
Zone" was mostly the reports shown during the week,
but there was some new material, including this
conversation amongst Anderson Cooper, Peter Bergen,
and Michael.
ANDERSON
COOPER: Two journalists who know this area, this
story better than most are National Security analyst
Peter Bergen and Michael Ware. They were covering
Afghanistan long before U.S. troops arrived.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
Michael, just watching the danger from IEDs. You
never used to really see IEDs, you never used to see
suicide attacks here in Afghanistan. The war is
evolving.
From your take, from your travels, what's the status
of the war? How is it going?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well,
it's obviously in a perilous state. The war simply is
not going well. And no one here at ISAF headquarters
in Kabul would disagree with that. The Taliban is as
strong as ever. And their war machine shows no signs
of abating.
There is not enough coalition troops here now nor
Afghan troops to partner them. And even if President
Obama does send reinforcements, there still won't be
enough. The most that anyone can hope to achieve is
to put enough pressure militarily on the Taliban to
pay dividends elsewhere such as at the negotiating
table.
And that's one of the reasons why the Afghan
government and the U.S. military are now looking to
draw on their lessons from Iraq and turn to
U.S.-backed militias to start fighting where the
Americans cannot -- Anderson.
COOPER: Peter, what's your assessment? Do you agree
with Michael?
PETER BERGEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well,
the Taliban certainly aren't losing, which in an
insurgency means that you're winning. I mean, the
Taliban strategy is to wait out the international
forces. They know there is a political timeline in
the United States, so maybe a year or so. If they can
wait the United States out, they've won.
So that -- I mean -- and according to a map that CNN
obtained of Taliban presence in the country in the
spring, 40 percent of the country was either
controlled by the Taliban or at high risk for Taliban
attacks.
COOPER: 40 percent?
BERGEN: 40 percent.
COOPER: Michael, one encouraging thing is a lot of
the Marines here have had experience in Iraq, in the
Anbar awakening. So they're trying to bring some of
the lessons from that over here as you mentioned.
How likely is it that you can negotiate or co-opt or
pay off segments of the Taliban?
WARE: Well, that's not such a far stretch at all,
Anderson, and indeed, you don't even start with the
Taliban. You have entire tribes who are sitting there
around where you are in Helmand, in southern --
across southern Afghanistan who by and large have
been ignored and neglected by the U.S. mission.
You also have the veterans of the Soviet war. Many of
whom are now joining the Taliban. But their heart is
not in that fight. So we're seeing a pilot program
already beginning where they are drawing militia
members from the local tribes in Kandahar and
starting to bring back some of the Soviet veterans.
The Afghan government has told us exclusively that
this program has begun.
COOPER: It seems, Peter, that there's no doubt that
the U.S. is going to ask for -- or the military
leaders in the U.S. are going to ask for more troops.
It's a political decision on whether or not they
actually get it.
But there's no way U.S. forces can be -- or even NATO
forces can be in all the areas where the Taliban is
operating. I mean you could -- you know, you can
build a road and you can set up checkpoints. But they
just move somewhere else.
BERGEN: Yes, so it's a matter of triage -- only 12
percent of this country is -- could sustain a
population where you've got the water and the
agriculture. So we're sitting here in the middle of
the desert. You don't have to secure this enormous
desert. It's a matter of choosing your targets,
protecting the population centers where people really
live.
In Helmand, for instance, they're on the Helmand
River, that's where everybody lives. The rest of the
province is empty. There's no need to secure that. So
you don't need to secure everything.
COOPER: Michael Ware in Kabul. Peter Bergen here
thanks.