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Russian Convoy Headed to Ukraine; Military Strategy in Iraq; Imagine a World

Aired August 15, 2014 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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HALA GORANI, CNN HOST (voice-over): Good evening everyone, and welcome to a special weekend edition of the program. I'm Hala Gorani, in

for Christiane.

What is in these trucks? That was the question being asked around the world this week as a massive convoy of Russian vehicles set out for the

Ukrainian border. Russia said it was humanitarian aid for the people of Eastern Ukraine, battered by months of war.

But the United States warned that any move by the convoy to enter Ukraine without permission from Kiev would be considered an invasion. Kiev

was as skeptical as you might expect, calling the convoy a provocation at best and a Trojan horse at worst. A military invasion -- literally --

disguised as a gesture of goodwill.

What is certain is that the people of Eastern Ukraine are in desperate need. Any semblance of normal life has disappeared. There are shortages

of water, food, electricity, also heavy fighting from both pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military.

Eastern Ukraine is looking more and more like a war zone.

On Wednesday I had a unique opportunity to debate the issue live with foreign ministry officials of both Russia and Ukraine when we spoke. The

convoy was still rumbling toward the Ukrainian border.

My guests were Konstantin Dolgov from Moscow and Oleksandr Scherba from Kiev.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: Thanks to both of you for being with us here at the same time on CNN.

But in Kiev, Mr. Scherba, let me ask you this.

How concerned are you that this convoy coming from Russia is, in fact, an invasion disguised?

OLEKSANDR SCHERBA, AMBASSADOR-AT-LARGE, MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, UKRAINE: It is indeed a very strange kind of situation when the very

country that started and fomented this war from the very beginning financed and inspired it, now is trying to send a humanitarian convoy to Ukraine.

That's on the one hand. And we are -- of course, we are very distrustful of Russia's intentions because from the very beginning, Russia

didn't show any goodwill whatsoever.

But on the other hand, as you said and as you pointed out, the humanitarian situation on the ground is very desperate, very difficult. We

are not in any kind of situation to be very adamant about, you know, sending back anything that we receive, even from the nation that is

behaving really in a hostile manner.

GORANI: All right. So I believe we can go back to Moscow, Konstantin Dolgov. I just want to make sure I can hear you this time.

What is this convoy about?

Why not coordinate with the Red Cross?

They're saying Russia is using Red Cross flags without authorization. And even independent analysts are saying these are clearly, in some cases,

military vehicles painted white.

Why not coordinate this better?

KONSTANTIN DOLGOV, HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER, RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: Well, I'm really amazed to hear that it hasn't been coordinated.

From what has been said many times, not just by Russian officials, all the details, all the parameters of this humanitarian convoy have been

meticulously discussed and agreed upon between Russia, Ukraine, International Committee for the Red Cross and OSCE.

We also discussed with the U.N. representatives all the details have been struck, have been discussed, have been agreed upon.

This is about humanitarian aid. This is about food. This is about medicines. This is about fresh water.

It's about supplying the most important things to people in Lugansk, in the Eastern Ukraine, who have been suffering for months now, who have

become victims of the punitive iteration (ph) by the Ukrainian authorities, which is continuing as we speak, which have been caught in probably the

most dramatic internal military conflict in Europe since the war in former Yugoslavia.

So --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: Mr. Dolgov, if I could get -- if I could get Oleksandr Scherba to respond to this, because Mr. Dolgov is saying in Moscow that --

DOLGOV: Why should I want to respond to him if you allow me?

OK, but then I want to give each one of you equal time. So if you -- so go ahead. Go ahead and then I'll go back to Kiev, because I want to

make sure that this is an equal conversation.

DOLGOV: I know. I will be -- I will be very brief in commenting on what -- on what the gentleman has just said.

As far as I understand, he works in the Ukrainian foreign ministry. And the Ukrainian foreign ministry has officially by sending reply notes to

us, to the Russian foreign ministry, has confirmed that all the details of that humanitarian convoy have been agreed upon and that the green light was

on in Kiev.

I understand that this is a very precise, official reaction. And we hope that all the Ukrainian officials will stick, will adhere to that

particular understanding, which is not just in an oral form which has been put in writing.

GORANI: Mr. Dolgov, I need to get Mr. Scherba in Kiev to respond to this.

Konstantin Dolgov in Moscow is saying this was coordinated with the Ukrainian foreign ministry, yes or no?

SCHERBA: Well, this is not the first time when Ukraine has faced with a weird kind of situation Moscow is involved. This isn't the first -- not

the first time when Moscow -- I caught the gentleman from Moscow meticulously discusses issues with someone and nobody except for Moscow

knows about that meticulous discussion.

And it is not the first time that Moscow refers to some very precise documents that no one from Moscow has heard of. But going back to what I

said in the beginning, we are not -- we are very much aware about the gravity of the humanitarian crisis caused by Moscow in the east of my

country.

And we are not in a position to send back any humanitarian convoys, even from a country that has been so hostile and so betrayal (sic) to

Ukraine as Russia.

GORANI: So, Konstantin Dolgov, you heard it there from Oleksandr Scherba, saying essentially this discussion you had with the Ukrainian

foreign ministry seems to be known only to Moscow.

How do you respond?

DOLGOV: Well, leaving aside rhetoric and I would say quite confrontational rhetoric, which I don't want to get engaged in, but I think

that the gentleman has just confirmed more or less that the Ukrainian side is not planning to turn -- to turn around any humanitarian aid.

Well, indeed, people are waiting and hundreds of thousands of -- I would stress -- Ukrainian citizens waiting for this aid.

And obviously I -- we hope that these aids, roughly two tons of humanitarian aid will play a role in alleviating the -- that dramatic

burden which is -- which has been inflicted upon the civilian population by the military campaign, which is being waged instead of political dialogue.

And --

GORANI: But Konstantin Dolgov, I just want to jump in, because I have one question before I go back to Kiev.

Why not just coordinate with the Red Cross?

Why not, in this atmosphere, such lack of trust, I can see it with both of you, why not offload this humanitarian aid?

You say that's all it is.

What's the problem with doing it transparently at the border and then allow the Red Cross to drive it to those people who need it so much?

Why is that a problem?

DOLGOV: Well, it has been agreed. It has been -- well, it has been agreed with the Red Cross and the statement from the headquarters of the

Red Cross was, as far as I know, quite clear, that first of all the -- all the items which are contained in the convoy have been communicated to the

ICRC.

And secondly, that ICRC remains in touch with the Russian authorities, with the Ukrainian authorities, which is positive. We are definitely open

to any discussions, additional discussions which might be necessary. But once again, the main focus is on the humanitarian crisis.

GORANI: We're going to have to leave it there. Konstantin Dolgov from Moscow and from Kiev, Oleksandr Scherba, thanks, gentlemen, to you

both this evening for coming on CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: And after a break, military action of a more overt kind, the battle against ISIS in Iraq. We get the views of a man who knows the

country well, Col. Tim Collins, serving there in 2003. He warned troops in his command to treat lightly on the site of the Garden of Eden, the Great

Flood and the birthplace of Abraham. What future for the cradle of civilization -- next.

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GORANI: Welcome back to the program. I'm Hala Gorani. Christiane is off.

The U.S. said this week that it was scaling back its aid efforts in Northern Iraq after declaring its airstrikes on Islamic militants there a

success. Thousands of Yazidi refugees have been trapped in the north of Iraq by the militants. American and British special forces went to the

region to plan a high-risk operation to airlift the Yazidis out. But they found many refugees had been able to escape.

The danger, however, of course, is far from over. The United Nations has declared the humanitarian crisis triggered by this fighting its highest

level of emergency. And ISIS appears to be on the move, gaining ground near the northern city of Kirkuk.

Highly respected former British Army commander Col. Tim Collins had just returned from Northern Iraq when we spoke to him on Thursday.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: Thanks for being with us.

COL. TIM COLLINS, BRITISH ARMY (RET.): My pleasure.

GORANI: What do you mean, a responsibility?

Many people in the West are saying Iraq again? We spent 10 years there.

Why again?

COLLINS: Well, Britain helped -- well, Britain created Iraq in 1920 that did so between three groups, the vilayets of the Ottoman Empire: the

vilayet of Mosul, which is Kurdish, the vilayet of Baghdad, which is Sunni and the vilayet of the Basra, which was Shia.

The vilayetian loya (ph) after our intervention jointly with other forces, including the United States, has come unstuck. And it's hard to

say at this moment is there such a nation as Iraq because the Iraqi prime minister's writ really runs from Baghdad south on the Shia areas. He --

there is no Iraqi military anywhere near the fighting.

The closest is in the green zone. And there's a caliphate (ph). They have to -- the Islamic State have declared a caliphate (ph) which actually

spans -- its most easterly city is Mosul; its most westerly city is the outskirts of Aleppo. Its -- south there's Deir ez-Zor and its capital is

Raqqa in Syria. And then of course you have the Kurdish regional government.

They're moving increasingly towards independence. They're going to have a plebiscite. It could become an independent --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: But what do you mean by responsibility?

And what kind of intervention do you think would be effective?

Because that's really the important question here, airstrikes, boots on the ground, humanitarian drops, airlifts to evacuate refugees.

COLLINS: Well, I think on the one hand, there's a diplomatic effort needed within the rump (ph) of Iraq, to ask them to think about a more back

balanced country as ever they're going to come together and that may never happen.

In the north, the Kurds need three things. They need equipment; they need ammunition and they need training in order to match up to the very

well equipped Islamic State who inherited a lot of equipment, American latest equipment, from the Iraqi Army, who ran away and abandoned it,

because President Maliki or Prime Minister Maliki had purged the Iraqi Army of the American trained officers and with what officers and soldiers ran

and left the gear behind.

So the Kurds need to balance that up. And then finally somebody needs to be speaking to the Sunni tribes. The Sunni tribes have the ability to

eject Islamic State. That happened before --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: Now who's that somebody? Because we saw that in 2007 with the so-called Awakening, where you had these Iraqi Sunni tribal leaders

join with U.S. forces in rejecting the predecessor of ISIS and Al Qaeda --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: -- they did.

COLLINS: -- they probably did the majority of the fighting. But that was brokered by General John Allen, who was then the one-star deputy

expeditionary force commander. He went on to be the four-star ISAF commander. The tribes knew him. The tribes respect him. There's a

difficult message to be passed to the tribe. It's twofold.

It's, first of all, if we fight and spill our blood, will we get the same support the Kurds are getting if we fight IS?

And the second question is, what is the outcome if we defeat IS? Are we marching back into Maliki's spiral (ph) government, where we've become

second-class citizens? Are we going to better share government in Iraq?

And these are --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: But is that America's responsibility? Is that Britain's responsibility or should this be an Iraqi affair? Because in the end,

intervention creates such a domino effect, they don't have to --

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: -- anyone sees intervention per se. I think it's in terms of having a trusted international broker to talk to the tribes. But the

solution is within the area of the northeast, should we call it Iraq, because it spans into Syria. It's the caliphate state. It's the Kurdish

regional government and it's the Shia area.

They don't want to hear from the central government in Baghdad. So it needs to be something from outside who they trust. But it could be a

Turkish minister.

I don't think we -- Britain have anyone who the tribes would respect because they didn't have the same interface. I can't think of anyone else

in the United States, certainly in my service, working alongside the Marines at Anbar, which held many single like the respect John Allen is.

But I'm sure there is other generals -- John Kelly, perhaps, who was the commander of the follow-on force. But they need somebody about

stature, a John Kelly or a John Allen to talk to them, to tell them here's what's going to happen. And even if the answer is no, we're not

interested, at least they'll know where we stand.

GORANI: A mediator from the U.S. invasion force, do you think the Sunni tribal leaders are ready to listen again after having done what they

did in '07, in '08 and then having felt marginalized, excluded from power by the Maliki government?

Do you think there is that appetite?

COLLINS: Well, the alternative's to do nothing and I think that I -- what I would say is that we simply couldn't tolerate having a caliphate

because it was the Taliban state in Afghanistan, which we eventually ended up going to war with, was focused on a similar agenda, but not with outward

attack on the West. The stated aim of the caliphate is to fight us all. The war will --

(CROSSTALK)

GORANI: So you think this isn't just a Middle East issue? This isn't just a problem for Iraq and Syria? It's a problem for Western countries,

this ISIS caliphate?

COLLINS: I think that ultimately Western diplomats would like this to be limited in the area. In their mind, they like to do nothing better than

nothing. And they want to do nothing. And that's what's going to happen.

GORANI: Or they're doing close to nothing.

COLLINS: Close to nothing.

But the reality is, when we look at the end of the First World War, when these nations were created, it's something happened to the north which

was significant. And that was a small group of people called the Bolsheviks took on the Russian -- the kingdom of -- or the empire of

Russia.

At that stage, against them were the White forces and the forces of the international community. And everyone said the Reds don't have a

chance. Well, they created the Union of Socialist Republics. This could happen again.

GORANI: Now one of the things in 2003 before, when your forces, when you were commanding British forces in Iraq, is you gave this inspirational

speech that -- and there are, by the way, does it hang, did it ever hang in the Oval Office in the White House?

Because that was one of the things that was said about it, saying -- and the last line of which -- and I'm paraphrasing -- let's leave Iraq in a

better state that what we found it to be in right now.

When we -- when you look at Iraq today, do you think really was it worth it?

COLLINS: Well, currently, I think that whether we'd done that invasion or not, the state of affairs would exist anyway because of what

we've called the Arab Spring. It's the Arab revolutions. There would have been an uprising against the Ba'athist regime in the same way there was in

Syria.

So I think it would have happened anyway. And also remember, we started the -- where's the starting of history? Let's call it the crossing

the border in March of 2003.

Is this the end? This may be only the middle. It may well be that we end up with a federal Iraq of Sunnis, Kurds, Shia, with a minority

Christians and Yazidis, Jews and Mandaeans, which is a fairer, better place than it's been.

So who knows. This may be growing and this could be part of the story. It's too early to say. We're only partway through the story.

GORANI: What will it take to defeat ISIS, not just contain it, but truly defeat it as a fighting force, A?

And, B, are you surprised by how far geographically they've established themselves and don't seem to be over stretched here?

COLLINS: ISIS can only be defeated by being rejected by Sunni and Muslims in the region. But the problem is Sunni Muslims in the region feel

very oppressed.

They look at the regional countries. They're either dictators like Assad or Saddam Hussein or they look at some the royal families that live

there, live with great opulence. But they're not sharing that.

They look at countries like Egypt. They look at countries like -- these are the Sunni countries. Ninety percent of the Muslims in that

region are Sunnis. And they look at kind of like Gadhafi's regime. They look at the regime in Tunisia, in Egypt. They look at the instability in

Syria. Everything could -- countries are working hard to stay stable.

I'm sure tonight, even as we speak, the Saudis will be thinking about how this might affect them. Certainly the emirates will be a kingdom of

Jordan is under threat. The Lebanon itself was attacked, Lebanese soldiers were murdered. Not all the Sunni Muslims in the Lebanon are entirely on

the side of their army. That's the problem.

This is spreading like a cancer. It's spreading like communism.

GORANI: It's spreading like a cancer, ISIS. That's a good way to put it, because when you see how it spreads, how it attaches itself to certain

territories and how helpless those who are its victims have been --

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: But one of the things I was going to emphasize is that they are like a cancer holding on to healthy cells.

The healthy -- they're hanging on to the population. And when we look at the people who have taken over Iraq, it's really a group of three

people, three groups. There's the jihadis themselves. And the cells are split down between hardened fighters and young kids who are bloodthirsty

from the West, whose minds have been corrupted by some evil creed.

Then there's the former regime elements. These are the well-trained former Ba'athists, military and technocrats, who can show them how to use

the equipment captured off the Americans. They've been to foreign staff quarters. They've been to their own colleges. They're very effective.

And then there's the mass of the Iraqi people, who are very tribal. And they do as they're -- generally speaking, as their tribal sheikhs say.

And at the moment, there's an opportunity.

But again, we have to look back at that -- at the Taliban in Afghanistan. They looked at the tribes in Afghanistan and they carefully

dismantled what we call Pashtunwali, the 2,000-year-old tradition of the tribes in order that they could spread their creed. And they were

successful in that.

So I expect to see the Islamic State attacking tribal leaders, murdering tribal leaders. That's what they did in Anbar. That's what we

can expect to see here. That's what they're already doing in Syria. So this will be a fight against good against evil, quite simply.

GORANI: All right. Col. Tim Collins, thanks very much for coming on CNN. Appreciate your thoughts on this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GORANI: And while the U.S. and its allies decide the next step in Iraq, one of the strongest calls for action this week has come from an

unlikely source: the Vatican. The pope wrote to the U.N. secretary- general, urging the international community to take action to end the, quote, "humanitarian tragedy."

The pontiff us currently in Korea on another mission of peace. We will find out more after a break.

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GORANI: Welcome back.

It's fair to say that His Holiness the Pope got a mixed welcome on his official visit to Korea. While his reception in the south was warm and

enthusiastic, indeed there are almost 5.5 million Catholics there, Kim Jong-un was less effusive. North Korea fired two missiles off the eastern

coast as the pope's plane approached South Korean airspace.

Pope Francis delivered a message of hope on arrival, saying, quote, "Peace can be won through quiet listening and dialogue," unquote. The

North Koreans conducted another missile test that afternoon.

Despite the rockets in the air, there were some signs of detente in the region. Traditionally the pope sends a telegram to the head of every

state his plane carries over. The pontiff's plane has always had to avoid Chinese airspace before, as there are no official relations between the

Communist government and the Vatican.

But this time the plane was allowed to pass over. And Pope Francis telegraphed to the divine blessings of peace and well-being on the nation

on his way.

North Korea rejected an invitation for 10 North Korean Catholics to attend a reconciliation mass in Seoul on Monday. But perhaps something as

small as a telegram message is evidence that change is possible even in the most difficult of circumstances.

That's going to do it for our program tonight. And remember you can always contact our website, amanpour.com, and follow me on Twitter,

@HalaGorani. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember you can always contact us at our website, amanpour.com, and follow me on Facebook and

Twitter. Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.

END