Former Commanders Turn against ISIS; CDC Says Zika is Scarier than First Thought
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN HOST (voice-over): Ahead at the INTERNATIONAL DESK, ISIS in Afghanistan. Why former Taliban fighters turned against the group. North Korea could be close to testing a new long-range missile. And we'll talk to the former Mexican president, who is in a war of words with Donald Trump.</s>CURNOW: Hi, everyone, welcome, I'm Robyn Curnow. We begin in Afghanistan, where just hours ago the Taliban began their spring offensive. It's an annual wave of attacks but it's just one factor of life there. The country has been at war for over a decade. And just last year ISIS took root. Their tactics are terrifying even to some of their own. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh talked to two former ISIS commanders, who chose to defect. He joins us now from Kabul. Hi, there, Nick. What did they say to you?</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: Robyn, remarkable to see how hard a fighter who spent years with the Taliban could so quickly be repulsed by the savagery of ISIS. But it is one particular bright spot here in Afghanistan in the east, where ISIS has tried to take root. They are finding many Afghans, despite being immersed in decades of war, sickened by their ideology and tactics.</s>WALSH (voice-over): Looking for ISIS, in Afghanistan's east, ISIS' radio broadcast of hate was bombed off air recently by the U.S. But here it's been coming back in the past week. "It was there three days ago and it's gone again," says one man. "They were talking nonsense," says another. "They were asking people to pledge allegiance and march on Kabul," he adds. This is one broadcast they recorded earlier. ISIS is trying to put down roots here. But every day more Afghans want to tear them up. And that starts here with Arabistan and Zaitoun. Two months ago, they were</s>ISIS. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): They just like beheadings. Think they are good to do.</s>WALSH (voice-over): ISIS, they say, came from Pakistan, not Iraq, and promised guns and money to their struggling group of Taliban. Their agenda: black flags, killing and looting, which they did go along with at first.</s>WALSH (voice-over): It went south fast. And they both remember the moment when.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I remember when they beheaded seven people in the bazaar, including government workers and Pakistani Taliban. I saw the long strip of wood they did it on, covered in blood. They just threw the bodies away and buried. It was very un-Islamic.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The worst memory was if you were killed fighting for them, they wouldn't hand your wife and children to your predators but put them in a camp.</s>WALSH (voice-over): ISIS recruit children here, their own videos show another reason the two men work with Afghan intelligence and set up our interview to get other locals to join an uprising program against ISIS. But they say they have lacked government protection and money and that's put potential defectors off. The fight is now just left to American drones, they say.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Drones are doing a good job killing ISIS. They target them as soon as they leave their houses.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The government hasn't made any progress in those areas. It's only the bombing that's effective.</s>WALSH: You were in the Taliban. Then you were in ISIS and now American drones are bombing your own village. But you're pleased about it because they are killing ISIS. Is that not a strange feeling for you?</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): It makes us happy. We want them wiped out.</s>WALSH (voice-over): They're killers themselves who know what they are talking about. Arabistan holds up his cloak. Holes from an American helicopter attack not long ago when he was Taliban. ISIS has shattered ordinary lives, too. Across town in a luxury village built for rich people who never came are hundreds of families who fled ISIS. Afghanistan, like many nations afflicted by ISIS basically have to battle an idea, a kind of virus that appeals to minds warped after decades of war. Those in the Taliban, as radical enough an idea, that no matter how hard you battle or bomb it, it's very difficult to completely extinguish.</s>WALSH (voice-over): Many of their homes are still occupied and much damage is irreversible. They killed this man's brother and then shot him in the waist as he helped his family escape. He's left unable to provide for them and ISIS still live in their home.</s>WALSH (voice-over): ISIS' savagery was first glimpsed in Afghanistan in this video, when they lined up opponents and then detonated a bomb below them. The man who speaks is survived by his nephew, Rustam (ph).</s>RUSTAM, ISIS VICTIM'S NEPHEW (through translator): My brother called our father to tell him the death was on Facebook. We couldn't bury him as we didn't have a body. Its pieces are probably still lying where he was blown up.</s>WALSH (voice-over): Decades of trauma here, yet somehow it gets worse.</s>WALSH: Now</s>CURNOW: OK. They have a few problems there with Nick's comments; of course he's coming from Kabul, but great reporting there. Thanks to Nick Paton Walsh. We're moving on to Brussels now, where police picked up three more people in connection with the Paris terror attacks. They have until Wednesday to decide whether to keep them in custody. Meantime, two more people have been charged in connection with last month's bombings at the Brussels airport and a metro station. The prosecutor says the two are linked to an address that was raided over the weekend, which may have been a safe house for some of the bombers. And North Korea may be preparing the launch of a mobile long-range ballistic missile. That's according to U.S. officials, who tell CNN it could be a type of missile that's able to reach parts of Alaska. Our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr, joins us now live. Hi, there, Barbara. So what are U.S. intelligence satellites spotting here?</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good day, Robyn. Well, this is all very interesting. What they are seeing is evidence that North Korea may be preparing for the launch of a mobile ballistic missile. This would be a missile of a longer range than has been seen in the past. Previously they have just launched some short-range missiles. They have three versions of a mobile missile that has never been flight-tested before. These various versions could hit as far, if they work, as far as Guam, Alaska and the United States' Pacific Northwest. So that's an obvious concern. Now what they don't know if North Korea will proceed with the launch and which missile it might be. North Korea could still decide not to conduct the launch. They've never done this before. So if it happens, it really resets the table on what their military capability might be. That is why there is so much concern about this. Also to point out the U.S. isn't clear if those missiles really have the accuracy and the range as advertised. So if this happens in the coming days and weeks, they will be watching very carefully, trying to assess, how far, how complex, how sophisticated North Korea may be in this missile program. But the fact they are seeing the signs that it could be happening is a matter of great concern, obviously -- Robyn.</s>CURNOW: Indeed, and, Barbara, the fact that it's mobile is what is of concern here because North Korea has successfully twice launched a three- stage ballistic missile but satellites were able to watch all the preparations for that --</s>STARR: Right.</s>CURNOW: They weren't mobile; the fact that they were mobile is key.</s>STARR: Absolutely right. This is the key issue for the -- for the U.S. military and the allies in the region. If you have that three-stage missile on a launch pad and it's stationary and fixed, you can keep an eye on it. You know when it's about ready to launch. With mobile missiles these are on these large essentially trucks that you see at these military parades. They move around; in the event of a conflict, North Korea could shoot at the missile, move the truck, shoot again, keep moving around, it makes it very difficult for spy satellites to chase them down in conflict. And makes it very difficult right now to know if and when they are going to launch. U.S. officials say they may not know until the last minute and it could all happen with very little warning -- Robyn.</s>CURNOW: OK. From the Pentagon, thanks so much, Barbara Starr there. Well, now to new fears about the Zika virus in the U.S. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the mosquito that spreads Zika is more widespread than they thought. It's in 30 U.S. states instead of 12.</s>DR. ANNE SCHUCHAT, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CDC: Everything we look at with this virus seems to be a bit scarier than we initially thought. And so while we absolutely hope we don't see widespread local transmission in the continental U.S., we need the states to be ready for that.</s>CURNOW: The CDC also warns Zika has been linked to more birth defects for a longer period during pregnancy. The main fear has been the defect --</s>CURNOW: -- called microcephaly, which affects the size of a baby's brain. And officials say in Puerto Rico, there may be hundreds of thousands of Zika cases affecting hundreds of babies. We're joined now by CNN senior medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen, who's just back from Puerto Rico. I want to talk about your trip in just a moment. But first, really ominous warnings there from the CDC, saying it's scarier. Why?</s>ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SR. MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Zika is a relatively new virus, Robyn. It hasn't really been with us for long. So as it spreads, we're learning more and more about it. So it may have always been this scary. We just didn't know it. You mentioned microcephaly, which is babies with these markedly smaller heads. And that was the concern. Months ago, that's really all anybody talked about when it came to babies. But now they are seeing babies born also with vision problems. They are also seeing stillbirths, babies who aren't even alive when they are born. They are also seeing other neurological problems, not just small heads but when they look at the anatomy afterwards, they see, oh, my goodness, there's problems even within this head which is too small. So these are all things that -- it's not just microcephaly anymore. There are many other concerns for babies.</s>CURNOW: And also just briefly, it's not just concerns about in the first trimester, either, which is very key for pregnant women traveling to these areas and potentially in the</s>U.S. COHEN: That's right. I think that it's -- again, this is so new that no one knew for sure. But when I was talking to experts two months ago, they would say, well, Elizabeth, we think that this is an issue if you get infected in the first trimester. But now there are concerns maybe if a mosquito bites you and infects you even in the second or the third trimester, it could be a problem. And the issue is even if you are bit in the first trimester, often the problems won't show up until mid-way through pregnancy. So deciding whether or not to terminate a pregnancy when you're halfway through it is a horrific decision.</s>CURNOW: Horrible, horrible choice. With that in mind, tell us about your trip and some of the women that you met who were pregnant over there.</s>COHEN: Right. I was with a woman named Zolmira Smolina (ph), and she was getting an ultrasound. This was March 31st. She was 22 weeks pregnant. And so you can see that she went to the hospital; she got an ultrasound, 22 weeks pregnant, so just past the midway mark. Her ultrasounds at 18 weeks looked fine. The ultrasounds before that had looked fine. But when they looked at this ultrasound, they found that the baby's head, the growth was lagging, as her doctor put it. It might be a fluke. The next ultrasound, which is tomorrow, might be completely fine. But it was not good that it was in a certain percentile in 18 weeks and was in a much lower percentile at 22 weeks. And so she's going to keep this baby. She says no matter what they find, she's keeping this baby. Other women have made different decisions. In Slovenia, here in the United States, women have made decisions to terminate.</s>CURNOW: But still, the fact that you're having to make that decision and so many hundreds perhaps are having to make that decision so late in pregnancy is a real concern. Thanks so much, Elizabeth, appreciate it. Coming up, yet another Donald Trump feud. The former president of Mexico has been blasting Trump for weeks now. We'll talk to him live at the INTERNATIONAL DESK. And Brazil's president is closer to being ousted from power just months before the Olympics. We'll go live to Rio for the latest on the proceedings she calls a coup. Stay with us.