On the scene with Nic Robertson in Islamabad, Pakistan

Nic Robertson

CNN's Nic Robertson is in Islamabad, Pakistan, after returning from Afghanistan where he has been reporting on the latest developments regarding terrorist Osama bin Laden and a devastating drought in the country.

Q: What are Afghans saying about the possible links to Osama bin Laden regarding the USS Cole attack and the most recent threats being reported by the U.S. government?

ROBERTSON: The Taliban maintains what they have been saying all along. That they have isolated Osama bin Laden, that he has no communications equipment and, therefore, they say he could not have been involved in the USS Cole attack. That has been their position on bin Laden for some time now. The Taliban says they put him in this type of isolation because of requests from the United States. They have so far refused to hand him over to stand trial, and the Taliban has had limited sanctions against them put in place by the United Nations for almost a year now.

However, there is difficulty in assessing how much control the Taliban has over bin Laden's movements. ... What limitations there may be on bin Laden's ability to move around and associate with other people who have communications equipment is very, very difficult to assess. Certainly, there are people who say bin Laden is able to move, that he moves at night.

Q: Meanwhile, Afghanistan is going through a devastating drought. What are ordinary citizens' greatest concerns? Are they worried that some of the food aid and other goods, some of which is supplied by the United States, could get cut off due to bin Laden?

ROBERTSON: There are several parts in answering that question. One is that the United Nations and the World Food Program who organize the food for Afghanistan will run out of supplies by February. They say that would be absolutely catastrophic. They need to be able to go and keep food supplies until at least June of next year, when there is a possibility further crops could come into place.

The situation right now is that crops and harvest across the country have absolutely been devastated. The livestock are dying off. The priorities for the international aid organizations are to try and provide enough drinking water in the places where people live. They want to try and avoid people being attracted to the main towns and cities where they will have no opportunity for employment or getting any money.

Many rural Afghans who live essentially off the land are the ones being most affected by this. Some of the hardest hit are the Kuchis, a nomadic tribe that wander the mountains and the deserts of Afghanistan. For many of the Kuchis, tens of thousands of them, their livelihoods have already been decimated. Their livelihoods are in their livestock and they've already seen their livestock killed through starvation or they've been forced to sell them off.

... Many of the nomads, being forced to give up their existence and their livestock decimated, have been moving into the cities since at least June. The problem for these people is that their livelihood is tied up with their livestock. If their livestock die, they have no livelihood. If they move to the cities, they can maybe get two or three days of work a week. But the problem is with so many nomads flooding to the cities and so much cheap labor ... the price of labor goes down and the money they get for their daily casual labor goes down. And the cost of food prices goes up, so it's a very vicious cycle.

For the people who live in an urban environment, there is a limited amount of water. The drought also means their food prices are going to go up, because there's been limited produce from the land this year. They, like the farmers in the country, are going to be increasingly dependent on United Nations' food handouts, coming from the United States and other countries.

Q: What are aid agencies most concerned about?

ROBERTSON: The United Nations is extremely concerned their food supplies are going to run out early next year. If there is no rain, then they have no idea how long the people can sustain their lives in the villages and towns. The reason for that is because the water table is receding. ... In fact, it has been impossible for some farmers to sink wells further. One farmer we talked to sank a well 73 meters and it cost him $2,000. Now, compare that to the average monthly salary of about $10. After weeks of drilling, he still had not reached water and had to give up.

Aid agencies say that if it doesn't rain, they have no idea how long the aquifers below ground will last. There's only one river in the whole of southern Afghanistan that still has water.

The drought essentially started three or four years ago. It's been that long since any real appreciable rainfall fell in Afghanistan, that's what aid agencies say. Talking to some of the older citizens around the country, they say, 'I am 70-years-old and this is the worst drought in my memory.' We talked to one man who was 80-some years old and he said he remembered when he was seven, there was a bad drought that year. That is the year that aid officials talk about how many people lived off internationally donated rice. That was obviously more than 70 years ago.

Q: With such a bad drought, does the ordinary Afghan even know about, or care about, bin Laden?

ROBERTSON: Certainly they know who he is. If you talk with the Taliban, they will say that with the amount of publicity given by the United States to Osama bin Laden by putting him high up on the scale of terrorists has made him even more popular in Afghanistan.

But in reality, most villagers and most farmers are far more concerned about their livelihood, about making their ends meet. Many of them say, "We don't even have news here. If something happens in the city, we don't hear about it until half a day or day later." So they're aware bin Laden is in the country, but not particularly interested because it doesn't affect their daily livelihood.

Q: Lastly, has bin Laden's organization been affected by the drought?

ROBERTSON: That's very difficult to judge. However, the assessment can be made in Afghanistan, like in many other countries, that if you have money, then you have access to resources, food and water. And certainly in the past, bin Laden has exhibited that he has a lot of money, that he's a multi-millionaire.

Afghanistan fearful of U.S. military strike after warship attack
October 23, 2000

Taliban Islamic Movement
Afghanistan Information Center

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