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Afghanistan: The International Prize
Afghanistan, historians seem to unanimously agree, was seen as a key state in the “Great Game” the British Indian Empire and Imperial Russia played during 19th century. Neither the British nor the Russians in this period wanted to lose Afghanistan to its rival power.
The British saw Afghanistan as the gateway to India, by then the crown jewel of the British Empire. The Russians saw Afghanistan as the Central Asian state that would open up not just India, but Iran as well.
The legacy of this Great Game, a game that ended after World War One, was the contentious Durand Line. This was the border Sir Mortimer Durand, the British foreign secretary drew up in 1893 and forced the Afghan leader at the time to agree to under duress. The Durand Line cut through the heart of Pashtunistan, the traditional lands of the fiercely independent tribal Pashtun people. To date, the Pashtuns have yet to accept this arbitrary boundary imposed on them by the British.
In the 1980s, Afghanistan once again became a highly sought after international prize. This time the contest was between the world’s superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, that fought its rival power through Afghan and Arab proxies it funded and trained in Pakistan.
The United States would win this contest. Its only rival would collapse not long after, having expended too many resources and too much goodwill, getting defeated in Afghanistan.
American triumphalism would only last a decade or so. It would end when the mujahideen, the holy warriors the Americans had helped make believe were the force that destroyed their rival superpower, turned their sights on their former benefactors.
This Muslim army metamorphosed into what became known as Al Qaeda. After they carried out the first major attack on the continental United States in history, Afghanistan once again became intensely interesting to the world’s powers. Soon it became the first front in America’s War on Terror.
Afghanistan: Seat of the Region’s Political Shifts
Regional players, Iran and Pakistan in particular, have also coveted Afghanistan. Both countries can be said to have a certain irredentist interest in Afghan affairs.
Given that one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, Dari, is a variant of Farsi, the official language of Iran, it is not surprising to learn that Afghanistan and Iran were once both part of what historians now call Greater Khorasan. This was an area of the Ancient Persian Empire – as opposed to the Iranian province Khorasan – that spanned the area encompassing what is today Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The country we call Afghanistan began to emerge as a distinct entity only in the early 1700s, when in 1709, a Pashtun, Mir Wais Hotak, overthrew the Persian ruler in Kandahar. This would also be the beginning of Pashtun ascendance in Afghanistan, a period that continues up to the present.
Afghan tradition says the modern nation of Afghanistan was born in 1749, when another Pashtun, Ahmad Shah Abdali declared himself king of Afghanistan.
That Afghanistan had a Pashtun king meant that Afghanistan’s interests became aligned with its Pashto‐ speaking population, the tribal people that traditionally inhabited the border region spanning eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
Ahmad Shah Durrani, as the new Afghan king called himself, led Afghanistan to glory as he captured territory all the way from Delhi in India to what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran.
Afghanistan would soon lose territory again, however – in the wars it waged against the British, the Anglo‐ Afghan wars of the 19th century. The two nations would not forge a lasting peace until 1919, in the aftermath of World War One, when a new Afghan king acceded to the throne, Amanullah Khan, and declared Afghanistan’s independence.
Iran welcomed the new regime and by 1921, both countries had diplomatic presences in each other’s capitals.
Iran would also rush to declare its support for the new regime in Afghanistan in 1973, when Mohammad Daud overthrew his brother‐in‐law, the long‐reigning king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. This new leader,as political fashion then dictated, however, declared himself Afghanistan’s first president – the royal era was now officially over.
Afghanistan’s deep linguistic, religious, and cultural links to Iran were such that Afghans, especially the closely‐ related Dari‐speaking population of Afghanistan, were nevertheless able to retain their religious and cultural ties to Iran. These ties endured evenwhen officially the two countries were hostile to each other, such as during the aftermath of the communist coup in Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The two peoples maintained good relations even though their governments opposed each other.
The 1980s Afghan jihad against the Soviets, did however manage to frazzle the Dari‐speaking population of Afghanistan when Iran failed to deliver the level of support they had expected it would.
Iran’s failure to deliver at the time was, however, probably not intentional. Unfortunately for Afghanistan’s Dari‐speakers, shortly after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Iran became bogged down in its own jihad, the jihad initiated in 1980 by the new Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. This Iran‐Iraq jihad would last eight years, almost the entire duration of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. Iran mostly likely did not have the energy to help on another front, as its war with Iraq would cost Iran hundreds of thousands of lives and at least that many wounded. Needless to say, the Iran‐Iraq war seriously hampered Iran’s ability to come to the aid of its coreligionists and fellow Farsi/Dari speakers in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, whatever energy and resources the Islamic Republic could spare at the time, likely went to its other besieged coreligionists in Lebanon, who begain fighting Israel there after 1982.
Iran probably would have played a larger role in repelling the Soviet invaders then, had it not been fighting wars on two fronts itself. It is unlikely, however, that Iran would have ever been able to eclipse Pakistan as the dominant outside overt player in the Afghan anti‐ Soviet jihad, even were these other battles not raging.
This was because soon after the Islamic revolution happened in Iran in 1979, the new regime very quickly alienated the two most important, though covert players in this anti‐Soviet jihad – the United States and Saudi Arabia. Tehran quickly convinced both that a new and hostile power was now in charge in Tehran.
The new regime lost any hope of American support after it refused to intercede after a group of Iranian revolutionaries took Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Riyadh got the message the Islamic regime had the Saudi kingdom on its enemies list when Tehran started sending radio broadcasts across the border urging Saudis to revolt against what Tehran was saying were their apostate rulers. The Sunni regime also blamed Tehran for when radicals seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca during Hajj that same year. Thus, though the United States and Saudi Arabia needed a localally though which they could wage their proxy war against the Soviets, as neither could afford to confront this nuclear power directly, Iran now under the control of the Ayatollah, could not conceivably be given any serious consideration.
And so Pakistan became the state through which the two nations prosecuted their proxy war against the communist empire.
Now, Iran was not willing to be left entirely out of this valiant religious struggle happening next door in Afghanistan and so it did provide some help. Though this help had to be scaled back to what the Islamic Republic could realistically deliver at the time. And so Iran, no doubt, decided that its limited support would be most appreciated by the Afghan population to which it had always been ‐ the Dari speakers and Afghanistan’s Shia population.
Iran, not so surprising, was not about to admit that this is how things had to be because this was the best it could do under the circumstances. So instead of owning up to its reality, it cast its inability to fund all the jihadi groups in Afghanistan, as a policy of choice. Tehran, the Islamic regime insinuated, would fund the jihad in Afghanistan, but only the deserving jihad groups. Iran was not beyond insinuating either, that these were the groups that had not been infiltrated by agents of the Great Satan ‐ for example Iran, it is said, disparaged Jamieat Islami, with these sorts of insinuations.
The Shia parties of Afghanistan Iran did end up funding also helped in the myth making. For their part they were happy to justify their good fortune at the expense of the other groups, even Shia groups, who went unfunded. They no doubt helped spread rumors about the other groups. One rumor at the time had it that the reason the Shia Mehdi Hashemi got no money from Iran was that the group did not believe in Tehran’s basic organizing principle ‐ the notion of the Velayat‐e‐ Faqih or rule of the Islamic jurisprudent. And so such insinuations helped rationalize Iran’s policies.
In the end, Iran’s financing of one Shia group and not another did lead to a great deal of bitter infighting among Afghanistan’s already beleaguered Shia and relations eventually deteriorated to the point where the community fought its own civil war.
And so the Shia and Dari‐speaking people of Afghanistan were further weakened during the Soviet jihad.And during the same period, Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, ethnically linked as they were to Pakistan, and religiously linked to the Saudis, further consolidated their power in Afghanistan.
Iranian Afghan Policy in the 1990s
In the early 1990s, the Soviets now gone, Iran’s war with Iraq over, and stasis in Lebanon, Iran now had some time and energy to begin to repair relations with its neighbor. A rapprochement began in 1990 when then Afghan president Dr. Najibullah visited the provincial governor of Khorasan, and again acknowledged the historical legacy the two nations shared, both having once been part of the ancient Greater Khorasan.
Until Dr. Najibullah fell from power, Iran tried to revive its ties in Afghanistan and not just with Afghanistan’s Shia population either but Afghanistan’s many communities – the Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkamans. Iran tried to get close again to all the people Tehran described as Afghanistan’s “deprived nationalities” – notably all communities but the Pashtun. Iran even enlisted the Naishaboor Foundation and mobilized Iranian important Shia thinkers ‐ Dr. Pahlawan and Dr. Junaidi, for example – to try and reingratiate itself with these “deprived” communities. The Tajik‐dominated Jamieat Islami and the Hizb‐e Wahdat parties, along with Afghanistan’s Ismaili Shiite leaders, Sayeed Mansoor Naderi and General Dustam, were also objects of Iran’s new focus.
But then the Najibullah regime fell, and Tehran’s Afghan policy once again floundered. Tehran seemed unsure as to how to deal with the mujahedeen commandos now controlling Kabul.
Iran tilted toward the Rabbani‐led government, placing itself in opposition to Rabani’s chief rival, Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. But then when Afghanistan’s Shia population, the Hazara, then dominated by the Hizb‐e Wahdat, revolted against the Rabbani government, Tehran, suddenly found itself on the opposite side of its coreligionists an so Tehran shifted its support to Rabbani’s opposition, namely Hekmatyar.
Iranian‐Afghan relations took a turn for the worse in 1996 after the Taliban, a group of Sunni religious students seized control of Kabul. Iran‐Afghan relations reached their nadir in August 1998, after the Taliban killed seven Iranian diplomats stationed in Marzar‐i‐ Sharif. Taliban officials had been accusing Tehran of waging a disinformation campaign against them and this apparently was the way the Taliban indicated they had had enough of this Iranian game. When Tehran responded by sending some 200,000 troops to the Afghan border, the two nations teetered towards the edge of all‐out war.
But then a funny thing happened. Tehran, instead of launching missiles into Afghanistan, reopened a long‐ closed border post on a key trade route between the two countries. This move effectively ended Pakistan’s domination of Afghanistan’s trade markets and now instead of exchanging fire, the two countries were once again happily trading.
Pakistan, not surprisingly, was stunned by Iran’s reaction. While Islamabad tried to caution Afghanistan to beware of Iranian motives, Taliban officials were for the most part entirely uninterested in hearing Pakistan’s claims regarding this alleged ”Iranian threat.”
In a last ditch effort, Pakistan then went so far as to forge that suggested that Tehran was involved in an earlier assassination assassination attempt on Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, by then known as Amir of the Faithful.
In spite of Pakistan’s best efforts, however relations between the two countries only improved. The Taliban was apparently not willing to sacrifice its trading routes even in spite of the fact Iran was still supporting its main opposition, the Northern Alliance, and also still meddling in the affairs of Afghanistan’s persecuted minorities – the Afghan Tajiks and Hazara.
Iran and the New Afghanistan
Since 2001, Iranian‐Afghan relations have improved to a large extent though there remain sources of tension between the two countries.
Tehran supported the US military action against the Taliban and played a productive role during the Bonn Accords. At the Tokyo conference in 2002, Iran even pledged $560 million towards Afghanistan’s reconstruction, making it one of Afghanistan’s largest donors. Today, Iran’s official policy is one of support of the post‐Taliban democratic government of Afghanistan. The reasons why Iran was willing to be helpful during this nation‐ building process seem to be fairly obvious at least in hindsight.
By helping Afghanistan secure its Western border, Iran was able to put an end to Afghanistan being used as a base of operations for groups opposed to the Iranian regime, notably the Mujahideen Khalk (MKK).
And for a moment at least, Iran was able to restore its standing with Western powers, as for the first time in decades, Iran and the Western nations were finally working together on something productive.
The Islamic Republic also must have approved of the new Afghan constitution, which for the first time, gave the Shia Jafari School of jurisprudence official recognition. For the first time, Iran’s coreligionists in Afghanistan, the Afghan Shia, were allowed to participate as equals in the Afghan political system.
Iran was also able to expand its outreach into Afghanistan, with the teaching and study programs in the Persian language. Free to help raise cultural awareness now of the shared linguistic traditions of the two peoples, Iran could hope to prevent the rise of an ideological or nationalist regime in Afghanistan that might become opposed to the Shia regime next door.
The fact that Shia and Persian‐speaking communities in Afghanistan could no longer be subject to legal persecution and discrimination meant that Iran could also begin repatriating the over two million Afghan refugees it had been burdened with harboring over the past few decades.
The improving situation next door also promised that Afghanistan would only grow as an important export partner for Iran. Iranian exports to Afghanistan are estimated at $500 million per year and will likely grow as the economic situation in Afghanistan improves.
Finally, with a friendly regime now in charge, Iran could at least entertain hope that it might at last be able to address the root cause of one of Iran’s most troubling situations. Iran has the world’s highest per capita consumption of opiates in the world – a problem no doubt literally rooted in the opium fields of its next door neighbor.
All this duly noted, Iran is not entirely happy with the current situation in Afghanistan. The presence of foreign troops, largely hostile to the Islamic Republic, is of constant concern for Tehran. Consistent with its insecurity about these occupying forces, Iran seems to be determined to weaken the hostile foreign presence.
While Iran does seem to have largely limited itself to “soft” power techniques to influence events in Afghanistan, there have been allegations that Tehran is also using “hard” power tactics ‐ namely the rumors that Tehran is supplying the Afghan insurgency with weapons and training.
Pentagon officials repeatedly claim that US forces are intercepting Iranian‐made weapons and explosives in western Afghanistan. Afghan officials, for their part, have also identified Iranian ties to insurgents in the south and west. In March 2006, the Bakhtar, the Afghan news agency, reported that Iran was engaging in covert operations such as deploying its military officers inside Afghanistan. Bakhtar quoted a high‐ranking Afghan border police official in Herat Province, General Mohammad Ayub Safi, as saying that “in only the first quarter of this year [2006], more than 10 Iranian officials have been arrested in Herat who were allegedly involved in illegal activities.”
Afghan Iran experts, however, dispute these allegations, and contend that to date, Iran has only used “soft” tactics ‐ for example, the anti‐US broadcasts that can be heard in Afghanistan over Radio Dari, a station in Mashhad, Iran.
That Iran is trying to stir up anti‐American sentiment in Iran, is obviously, alarming to Americans. Not to mention the perpetual Western anxiety about Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Arab leaders are also watching Iran closely and with some alarm, fearing that Iran is behind what might be an emerging “Shia Crescent” in their countries, evidenced by a palpable agitation surfacing among their own Shia populations. Some Arabs even go so far as to suggest that Iran’s motives may be nationalist, and that the Islamic Republic is trying to reestablish the dominance of the Persian Empire.
Even in Afghanistan, one can find those who fret that the new government has strengthened Afghanistan’s Persian‐speakers and Shia communities at the expense of others.
And adding to this anxiety is a fundamentalist Shia organization that has emerged in Afghanistan – the Osulgarayan, a close relation of the Sepahe Pasdaran – which has been calling Tehran to start using some harsher methods to influence its neighbor.
Indeed, there do seem to be some signs that Tehran is in fact adjusting its policies in a harsher direction. Iran’s recent expulsion of one hundred Afghan refugees, for example, signaled this to some observers. Iran’s move did seem to increase the perception that Kabul was unable to control the situation and this did cause some further instability in the west. Not surprisingly, a new wariness seems to have crept into relations between the two neighbors.
To date, however, there might be some comfort to be taken in the fact that Tehran has not yet ever been willing to takes it ambitions to the point where they would seriously destabilize Afghanistan.
Source:Iran
Afghanistan: The International Prize
Afghanistan, historians seem to unanimously agree, was seen as a key state in the “Great Game” the British Indian Empire and Imperial Russia played during 19th century. Neither the British nor the Russians in this period wanted to lose Afghanistan to its rival power.
The British saw Afghanistan as the gateway to India, by then the crown jewel of the British Empire. The Russians saw Afghanistan as the Central Asian state that would open up not just India, but Iran as well.
The legacy of this Great Game, a game that ended after World War One, was the contentious Durand Line. This was the border Sir Mortimer Durand, the British foreign secretary drew up in 1893 and forced the Afghan leader at the time to agree to under duress. The Durand Line cut through the heart of Pashtunistan, the traditional lands of the fiercely independent tribal Pashtun people. To date, the Pashtuns have yet to accept this arbitrary boundary imposed on them by the British.
In the 1980s, Afghanistan once again became a highly sought after international prize. This time the contest was between the world’s superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, that fought its rival power through Afghan and Arab proxies it funded and trained in Pakistan.
The United States would win this contest. Its only rival would collapse not long after, having expended too many resources and too much goodwill, getting defeated in Afghanistan.
American triumphalism would only last a decade or so. It would end when the mujahideen, the holy warriors the Americans had helped make believe were the force that destroyed their rival superpower, turned their sights on their former benefactors.
This Muslim army metamorphosed into what became known as Al Qaeda. After they carried out the first major attack on the continental United States in history, Afghanistan once again became intensely interesting to the world’s powers. Soon it became the first front in America’s War on Terror.
Afghanistan: Seat of the Region’s Political Shifts
Regional players, Iran and Pakistan in particular, have also coveted Afghanistan. Both countries can be said to have a certain irredentist interest in Afghan affairs.
Given that one of the two official languages of Afghanistan, Dari, is a variant of Farsi, the official language of Iran, it is not surprising to learn that Afghanistan and Iran were once both part of what historians now call Greater Khorasan. This was an area of the Ancient Persian Empire – as opposed to the Iranian province Khorasan – that spanned the area encompassing what is today Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
The country we call Afghanistan began to emerge as a distinct entity only in the early 1700s, when in 1709, a Pashtun, Mir Wais Hotak, overthrew the Persian ruler in Kandahar. This would also be the beginning of Pashtun ascendance in Afghanistan, a period that continues up to the present.
Afghan tradition says the modern nation of Afghanistan was born in 1749, when another Pashtun, Ahmad Shah Abdali declared himself king of Afghanistan.
That Afghanistan had a Pashtun king meant that Afghanistan’s interests became aligned with its Pashto‐ speaking population, the tribal people that traditionally inhabited the border region spanning eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
Ahmad Shah Durrani, as the new Afghan king called himself, led Afghanistan to glory as he captured territory all the way from Delhi in India to what is today Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran.
Afghanistan would soon lose territory again, however – in the wars it waged against the British, the Anglo‐ Afghan wars of the 19th century. The two nations would not forge a lasting peace until 1919, in the aftermath of World War One, when a new Afghan king acceded to the throne, Amanullah Khan, and declared Afghanistan’s independence.
Iran welcomed the new regime and by 1921, both countries had diplomatic presences in each other’s capitals.
Iran would also rush to declare its support for the new regime in Afghanistan in 1973, when Mohammad Daud overthrew his brother‐in‐law, the long‐reigning king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. This new leader,as political fashion then dictated, however, declared himself Afghanistan’s first president – the royal era was now officially over.
Afghanistan’s deep linguistic, religious, and cultural links to Iran were such that Afghans, especially the closely‐ related Dari‐speaking population of Afghanistan, were nevertheless able to retain their religious and cultural ties to Iran. These ties endured evenwhen officially the two countries were hostile to each other, such as during the aftermath of the communist coup in Afghanistan and the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. The two peoples maintained good relations even though their governments opposed each other.
The 1980s Afghan jihad against the Soviets, did however manage to frazzle the Dari‐speaking population of Afghanistan when Iran failed to deliver the level of support they had expected it would.
Iran’s failure to deliver at the time was, however, probably not intentional. Unfortunately for Afghanistan’s Dari‐speakers, shortly after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, Iran became bogged down in its own jihad, the jihad initiated in 1980 by the new Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. This Iran‐Iraq jihad would last eight years, almost the entire duration of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. Iran mostly likely did not have the energy to help on another front, as its war with Iraq would cost Iran hundreds of thousands of lives and at least that many wounded. Needless to say, the Iran‐Iraq war seriously hampered Iran’s ability to come to the aid of its coreligionists and fellow Farsi/Dari speakers in Afghanistan.
Furthermore, whatever energy and resources the Islamic Republic could spare at the time, likely went to its other besieged coreligionists in Lebanon, who begain fighting Israel there after 1982.
Iran probably would have played a larger role in repelling the Soviet invaders then, had it not been fighting wars on two fronts itself. It is unlikely, however, that Iran would have ever been able to eclipse Pakistan as the dominant outside overt player in the Afghan anti‐ Soviet jihad, even were these other battles not raging.
This was because soon after the Islamic revolution happened in Iran in 1979, the new regime very quickly alienated the two most important, though covert players in this anti‐Soviet jihad – the United States and Saudi Arabia. Tehran quickly convinced both that a new and hostile power was now in charge in Tehran.
The new regime lost any hope of American support after it refused to intercede after a group of Iranian revolutionaries took Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Riyadh got the message the Islamic regime had the Saudi kingdom on its enemies list when Tehran started sending radio broadcasts across the border urging Saudis to revolt against what Tehran was saying were their apostate rulers. The Sunni regime also blamed Tehran for when radicals seized control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca during Hajj that same year. Thus, though the United States and Saudi Arabia needed a localally though which they could wage their proxy war against the Soviets, as neither could afford to confront this nuclear power directly, Iran now under the control of the Ayatollah, could not conceivably be given any serious consideration.
And so Pakistan became the state through which the two nations prosecuted their proxy war against the communist empire.
Now, Iran was not willing to be left entirely out of this valiant religious struggle happening next door in Afghanistan and so it did provide some help. Though this help had to be scaled back to what the Islamic Republic could realistically deliver at the time. And so Iran, no doubt, decided that its limited support would be most appreciated by the Afghan population to which it had always been ‐ the Dari speakers and Afghanistan’s Shia population.
Iran, not so surprising, was not about to admit that this is how things had to be because this was the best it could do under the circumstances. So instead of owning up to its reality, it cast its inability to fund all the jihadi groups in Afghanistan, as a policy of choice. Tehran, the Islamic regime insinuated, would fund the jihad in Afghanistan, but only the deserving jihad groups. Iran was not beyond insinuating either, that these were the groups that had not been infiltrated by agents of the Great Satan ‐ for example Iran, it is said, disparaged Jamieat Islami, with these sorts of insinuations.
The Shia parties of Afghanistan Iran did end up funding also helped in the myth making. For their part they were happy to justify their good fortune at the expense of the other groups, even Shia groups, who went unfunded. They no doubt helped spread rumors about the other groups. One rumor at the time had it that the reason the Shia Mehdi Hashemi got no money from Iran was that the group did not believe in Tehran’s basic organizing principle ‐ the notion of the Velayat‐e‐ Faqih or rule of the Islamic jurisprudent. And so such insinuations helped rationalize Iran’s policies.
In the end, Iran’s financing of one Shia group and not another did lead to a great deal of bitter infighting among Afghanistan’s already beleaguered Shia and relations eventually deteriorated to the point where the community fought its own civil war.
And so the Shia and Dari‐speaking people of Afghanistan were further weakened during the Soviet jihad.And during the same period, Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, ethnically linked as they were to Pakistan, and religiously linked to the Saudis, further consolidated their power in Afghanistan.
Iranian Afghan Policy in the 1990s
In the early 1990s, the Soviets now gone, Iran’s war with Iraq over, and stasis in Lebanon, Iran now had some time and energy to begin to repair relations with its neighbor. A rapprochement began in 1990 when then Afghan president Dr. Najibullah visited the provincial governor of Khorasan, and again acknowledged the historical legacy the two nations shared, both having once been part of the ancient Greater Khorasan.
Until Dr. Najibullah fell from power, Iran tried to revive its ties in Afghanistan and not just with Afghanistan’s Shia population either but Afghanistan’s many communities – the Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Turkamans. Iran tried to get close again to all the people Tehran described as Afghanistan’s “deprived nationalities” – notably all communities but the Pashtun. Iran even enlisted the Naishaboor Foundation and mobilized Iranian important Shia thinkers ‐ Dr. Pahlawan and Dr. Junaidi, for example – to try and reingratiate itself with these “deprived” communities. The Tajik‐dominated Jamieat Islami and the Hizb‐e Wahdat parties, along with Afghanistan’s Ismaili Shiite leaders, Sayeed Mansoor Naderi and General Dustam, were also objects of Iran’s new focus.
But then the Najibullah regime fell, and Tehran’s Afghan policy once again floundered. Tehran seemed unsure as to how to deal with the mujahedeen commandos now controlling Kabul.
Iran tilted toward the Rabbani‐led government, placing itself in opposition to Rabani’s chief rival, Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. But then when Afghanistan’s Shia population, the Hazara, then dominated by the Hizb‐e Wahdat, revolted against the Rabbani government, Tehran, suddenly found itself on the opposite side of its coreligionists an so Tehran shifted its support to Rabbani’s opposition, namely Hekmatyar.
Iranian‐Afghan relations took a turn for the worse in 1996 after the Taliban, a group of Sunni religious students seized control of Kabul. Iran‐Afghan relations reached their nadir in August 1998, after the Taliban killed seven Iranian diplomats stationed in Marzar‐i‐ Sharif. Taliban officials had been accusing Tehran of waging a disinformation campaign against them and this apparently was the way the Taliban indicated they had had enough of this Iranian game. When Tehran responded by sending some 200,000 troops to the Afghan border, the two nations teetered towards the edge of all‐out war.
But then a funny thing happened. Tehran, instead of launching missiles into Afghanistan, reopened a long‐ closed border post on a key trade route between the two countries. This move effectively ended Pakistan’s domination of Afghanistan’s trade markets and now instead of exchanging fire, the two countries were once again happily trading.
Pakistan, not surprisingly, was stunned by Iran’s reaction. While Islamabad tried to caution Afghanistan to beware of Iranian motives, Taliban officials were for the most part entirely uninterested in hearing Pakistan’s claims regarding this alleged ”Iranian threat.”
In a last ditch effort, Pakistan then went so far as to forge that suggested that Tehran was involved in an earlier assassination assassination attempt on Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, by then known as Amir of the Faithful.
In spite of Pakistan’s best efforts, however relations between the two countries only improved. The Taliban was apparently not willing to sacrifice its trading routes even in spite of the fact Iran was still supporting its main opposition, the Northern Alliance, and also still meddling in the affairs of Afghanistan’s persecuted minorities – the Afghan Tajiks and Hazara.
Iran and the New Afghanistan
Since 2001, Iranian‐Afghan relations have improved to a large extent though there remain sources of tension between the two countries.
Tehran supported the US military action against the Taliban and played a productive role during the Bonn Accords. At the Tokyo conference in 2002, Iran even pledged $560 million towards Afghanistan’s reconstruction, making it one of Afghanistan’s largest donors. Today, Iran’s official policy is one of support of the post‐Taliban democratic government of Afghanistan. The reasons why Iran was willing to be helpful during this nation‐ building process seem to be fairly obvious at least in hindsight.
By helping Afghanistan secure its Western border, Iran was able to put an end to Afghanistan being used as a base of operations for groups opposed to the Iranian regime, notably the Mujahideen Khalk (MKK).
And for a moment at least, Iran was able to restore its standing with Western powers, as for the first time in decades, Iran and the Western nations were finally working together on something productive.
The Islamic Republic also must have approved of the new Afghan constitution, which for the first time, gave the Shia Jafari School of jurisprudence official recognition. For the first time, Iran’s coreligionists in Afghanistan, the Afghan Shia, were allowed to participate as equals in the Afghan political system.
Iran was also able to expand its outreach into Afghanistan, with the teaching and study programs in the Persian language. Free to help raise cultural awareness now of the shared linguistic traditions of the two peoples, Iran could hope to prevent the rise of an ideological or nationalist regime in Afghanistan that might become opposed to the Shia regime next door.
The fact that Shia and Persian‐speaking communities in Afghanistan could no longer be subject to legal persecution and discrimination meant that Iran could also begin repatriating the over two million Afghan refugees it had been burdened with harboring over the past few decades.
The improving situation next door also promised that Afghanistan would only grow as an important export partner for Iran. Iranian exports to Afghanistan are estimated at $500 million per year and will likely grow as the economic situation in Afghanistan improves.
Finally, with a friendly regime now in charge, Iran could at least entertain hope that it might at last be able to address the root cause of one of Iran’s most troubling situations. Iran has the world’s highest per capita consumption of opiates in the world – a problem no doubt literally rooted in the opium fields of its next door neighbor.
All this duly noted, Iran is not entirely happy with the current situation in Afghanistan. The presence of foreign troops, largely hostile to the Islamic Republic, is of constant concern for Tehran. Consistent with its insecurity about these occupying forces, Iran seems to be determined to weaken the hostile foreign presence.
While Iran does seem to have largely limited itself to “soft” power techniques to influence events in Afghanistan, there have been allegations that Tehran is also using “hard” power tactics ‐ namely the rumors that Tehran is supplying the Afghan insurgency with weapons and training.
Pentagon officials repeatedly claim that US forces are intercepting Iranian‐made weapons and explosives in western Afghanistan. Afghan officials, for their part, have also identified Iranian ties to insurgents in the south and west. In March 2006, the Bakhtar, the Afghan news agency, reported that Iran was engaging in covert operations such as deploying its military officers inside Afghanistan. Bakhtar quoted a high‐ranking Afghan border police official in Herat Province, General Mohammad Ayub Safi, as saying that “in only the first quarter of this year [2006], more than 10 Iranian officials have been arrested in Herat who were allegedly involved in illegal activities.”
Afghan Iran experts, however, dispute these allegations, and contend that to date, Iran has only used “soft” tactics ‐ for example, the anti‐US broadcasts that can be heard in Afghanistan over Radio Dari, a station in Mashhad, Iran.
That Iran is trying to stir up anti‐American sentiment in Iran, is obviously, alarming to Americans. Not to mention the perpetual Western anxiety about Iran’s nuclear intentions.
Arab leaders are also watching Iran closely and with some alarm, fearing that Iran is behind what might be an emerging “Shia Crescent” in their countries, evidenced by a palpable agitation surfacing among their own Shia populations. Some Arabs even go so far as to suggest that Iran’s motives may be nationalist, and that the Islamic Republic is trying to reestablish the dominance of the Persian Empire.
Even in Afghanistan, one can find those who fret that the new government has strengthened Afghanistan’s Persian‐speakers and Shia communities at the expense of others.
And adding to this anxiety is a fundamentalist Shia organization that has emerged in Afghanistan – the Osulgarayan, a close relation of the Sepahe Pasdaran – which has been calling Tehran to start using some harsher methods to influence its neighbor.
Indeed, there do seem to be some signs that Tehran is in fact adjusting its policies in a harsher direction. Iran’s recent expulsion of one hundred Afghan refugees, for example, signaled this to some observers. Iran’s move did seem to increase the perception that Kabul was unable to control the situation and this did cause some further instability in the west. Not surprisingly, a new wariness seems to have crept into relations between the two neighbors.
To date, however, there might be some comfort to be taken in the fact that Tehran has not yet ever been willing to takes it ambitions to the point where they would seriously destabilize Afghanistan.
Source:Iran
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