Iran accused of supporting Afghan insurgents

By Abdulhadi Hairan in Kabul
For Al-Shorfa.com
2010-06-08



				[STR/AFP/Getty Images] Afghan forces have in the past confiscated Iranian-made weapons that indicate Iranian support for terrorists.

[STR/AFP/Getty Images] Afghan forces have in the past confiscated Iranian-made weapons that indicate Iranian support for terrorists.

In public, Afghan officials say Iran is helping to rebuild their war-ravaged country, but privately many Afghan officials accuse Iran of aiding the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Insurgents are receiving training in Iran before it sends them to Afghanistan to stage attacks, an official of the Afghan National Army (ANA) in western Afghanistan told Central Asia Online. Forces have seized evidence, including major caches of Iranian weapons, during operations against the militants, he said.

A lack of resources and personnel is one reason the Afghan government cannot block Iranian infiltration, said the ANA officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Another reason, he explained, is Iran's cultural and economic sway in much of Afghanistan, particularly in Herat, Farah, Nimroz and Badghis provinces.

However, Iran has been supplying the Taliban in other provinces too, he said. He and other officials cited Kabul and Ghazni in the central zone, Kunduz and Balkh in the north, and Helmand and Kandahar in the south as other destinations for Iranian weapons.

This accusation also surfaced at the recent National Consultative Peace Jirga held in Kabul June 2nd-June 4th. About 1,600 delegates, including lawmakers, members of the cabinet, local officials, and representatives of civil society and women's rights organisations, attended.

Nearly all of the speakers – including Sebghatullah Mujaddedi, a former Afghan president and currently chairman of the Senate – blamed Iran for providing weapons and training to the Taliban and other insurgents. They criticised Pakistan for the same reasons.

Achieving peace and stability in Afghanistan will always be a fantasy if Pakistan and Iran don't stop providing weapons, training and safe havens to the terrorists, Gul Badshah Majedi, chairman of one of the jirga's 28 committees, told the delegates.

"Effectively countering the insurgency in a country is always a problem if an immediate neighbour of that country provides safe havens to the insurgents", said Esmat Qani, a political analyst in Kabul. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees have been living in Iran and Pakistan for the past two decades and, because of Iran's cultural and economic influence on them, are vulnerable to exploitation, he told Central Asia Online.

The Revolutionary Guards of Iran has direct ties with many insurgent groups, an Afghan official who once belonged to the Taliban and now serves in the Hamid Karzai-led administration, told Central Asia Online.

The Taliban ruled Kabul from 1996-to 2001. At that time, Iran was an archenemy of the Taliban, mainly because the Taliban and their supporters – al-Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – were Sunni Muslims, while Iran supported the Hazaras, Afghanistan's Shia minority. Another reason was purely political: the Taliban had ambitions beyond Afghanistan, which Iran wanted to contain.

Iran has many reasons to back the militants, said Ahmad Shah Pasoon, head of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting in Helmand, the southern Afghan province where officials blame both Pakistan and Iran for supporting the Taliban.

"First of all, Iran, like Pakistan, has strategic interests in Afghanistan. The Iranians want to have influence over the population while seeking a strategic presence here. That is a long-term quest", he said. "In the short term, Iran wants to bleed the (coalition) forces in Afghanistan to weaken their presence".

The difference between how Pakistan and Iran treat the Taliban is that Iran keeps the Taliban in control, Pasoon said.

"The Taliban supported by Iran will never be able to capture even one province in Afghanistan. Their major activities are attacking international interests and government infrastructure here, killing officials who oppose Iran's interests and kidnapping for ransom," he added.

A former Taliban member who underwent training in Iran but surrendered to the Afghan government in 2009 confirmed this allegation to Central Asia Online. He was living as a refugee in Iran when strangers offered him a handsome salary for joining the Taliban, he said on condition of anonymity.

"I don't know who they were. They were not Iranians but got support from someone within the Iranian government because they had a lot of money and weapons and moved freely", he said. "They brought me to Herat and trained me for about six months", he said. "The trainers were Iranians and Pakistanis. Some spoke Arabic too. After the training, we were supplied weapons and were told to carry out attacks on Afghan officials and infrastructure like dams, roads, bridges, etc."

The Iranian government always has rejected these accusations as "baseless propaganda by the western media and Afghan officials".

However, an Iranian researcher who works in Tehran, told Central Asia Online that Iran may have been supporting the insurgency in Afghanistan just to block western advances toward the Iranian-Afghan border.

"We don't want Taliban in Afghanistan, but we also don't like the idea of seeing international forces building military bases and conducting military operations in our neighbourhood", he said on condition of anonymity.

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Reader Comments

رضا سليمان2012-01-20 11:48:20

They are fighting over positions and money. Iran has become a feudal state.... They consider themselves as the upper class of the nobles, who are better than the ordinary people, who have to pay a fifth of their money to them. In addition, if one of these feudalists dies, his sons will inherit his money and his cattle. In fact, the number of the black turbaned clerics has reached five thousand, and they are fighting over wealth and influence. They will murder each other after murdering the people.

مجهول الهوية2010-07-18 11:03:00

These are mere lies, and the evidence is that there were serious disagreements between the Taliban and Iran even before the NATO invasion. Iran also was the first country to offer support to the Western forces during the invasion of Afghanistan, because NATO was ignorant about the nature of Afghanistan. So, how can you claim that the Taliban cooperates with Iran? This is Western propaganda to defame the Taliban after its victory. The Taliban has been experienced in wars since the Russian invasion, and they do not need any party to train them; quite the contrary, the Taliban trains the Mujahidin in Chechnya and other occupied countries. You should stop believing everything they say to you! If they said tomorrow that there is no relationship between the Taliban and Iran, you would praise the Taliban! Have you not asked yourselves why the USA does not attack Iran, which provides Hezbollah, the Houthi rebels and the Sadri Movement with weapons? Why doesn’t the USA attack Iran and cut off the head of the snake, which nourishes, arms and supports terrorism? This proves that this is a game and an alliance between the West and Iran. If Iran had trained members of Taliban, the NATO troops would have not killed tens of thousands of the Taliban after entering Afghanistan. The Iranian prisons are full of the Mujahidin who fought in Afghanistan, so why does Iran arrest the supporters of the Taliban, as long as they are allies? This is nonsense.

مصرى2010-07-15 05:01:00

Speaking about Iranian support for the Taliban is ridiculous, because the two parties are radically different in terms of the influence and the school of thought. The Taliban are Sunni Salafi Wahhabis, while Iran follows the sect of the Twelvers, or Imami Shias, and it is common knowledge that the two schools are very hostile to each other. Each sect considers the followers of the other to be infidels and feels that it is lawful to kill them. They were even about to enter into a war when the Taliban was in power. Moreover, senior Iranian leaders have announced that the USA and its allies would never have been able to invade Iraq and Afghanistan without the help of Iran. The Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard also asserted that the USA has done them the greatest favor by deposing the two regimes of the Taliban and Saddam. I support the opinion that dismisses any relationship between the Taliban and Iran, as proved by the increasing Iranian influence in parallel to the strength of the USA’s power and influence in the region. Hence, the victory of the Taliban is not in favor of Iran, because the increasing influence of the Taliban will be at the expense of the growing Iranian influence.

توفيق2010-07-11 15:05:00

Yes, I absolutely believe this, because it is proved by the current cooperation between Iran and all the terrorist organizations and rebels, not only in Afghanistan, but also all over the world. However, Iran focuses on Afghanistan and it provides massive support to the insurgents and terrorist organizations there, enabling them to fight the Americans. The Iranian support comes against the backdrop of the disagreement between Iran and the international community, under the leadership of the USA, over the Iranian nuclear weapons and the US efforts to clear the region of these weapons. Consequently, Iran provides these movements with all possible forms of support, including money and advanced weapons. It also trains the terrorists and insurgents on the Iranian soil, and then sends them back to Afghanistan to carry out attacks against the US forces. These terrorist movements become strong and manage to have control over many areas in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, this support is not for the benefit of Iran, as it has a serious problem with the international community, which imposed heavy sanctions on it. In that respect, if Iran persists with this wrong policy, it may face a military strike to depose its dictatorial and insane regime and its mad acts that challenge the whole world and the international community.

سلطان2010-07-08 15:01:00

When we deal with Iran, anything is possible. That government is ready to make a pact with the devil to fulfill its evil goals. Given the increasing hostility between Iran and the USA in recent years, Iran supported the Afghani insurgents from the Taliban and Al-Qaeda by providing them with huge logistic and military support. Iran trained the insurgents, financed them and provided them with weapons and explosives so that the Afghani insurgents would target the American forces stationed in Afghanistan, which freed Afghanistan from the rule of the terrorist Taliban movement. The Afghani people had long suffered from the Taliban terrorist movement. Iran aims to make the USA preoccupied with that front or the one in Iraq. Iran incites terrorists stationed in Iraq to attack the American forces. Therefore, the USA will be preoccupied with fighting on these fronts and give the floor to Iran to develop weapons of mass destruction to threaten the regional and the international security. Despite the differences between the Iranian approach, given it is a Shiite country, and the Wahhabi and fundamentalist approach in Afghanistan, particularly Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, which hate Iran, they share the same interests. In fact, Iran supported and trained those groups to reach its goals through those insurgents. Thus, Iran will not be suspected of anything. However, those plans have become old and have been exposed. We must put an end to the negative Iranian role, and it must stop supporting terrorist movements to fulfill its interests to the detriment of people’s security around the world.

باهر باهر2010-06-23 16:00:00

The reality of the relations between Iran and the Taliban has been unveiled many times. In fact, this terrorist organization has been supplied with recently-made Iranian weapons. They freely move into Iran. The Afghani forces and the friendly allied forces deployed in Afghanistan have arrested many terrorist members who confessed that they had been trained on Iranian soil. This definitely proves the close relationships between Iran and the Taliban, in spite of the Iranian , which tries to convince the world that Iran disagrees with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. They try to confuse people and hide the truth. However, it is all in vain. Everyone has perceived the close relationship between Iran and the Taliban and its objectives.

ايهم2010-06-23 16:00:00

The common goals and interests between Iran and the Taliban have made them follow the same path and use a common approach. This is in spite of differences and conflicts between the Wahhabi Taliban, who consider the Shiites in Iran “Takfiri,” and Iran, which considers the Wahhabi movement “Takfiri” and deserving of death. However, Iran, as is well known, has the ability to have a pact with the devil, to fulfill its objectives and expansionist goals in the region. The Taliban has collaborated with Iran and has become its puppet, carrying out Iranian orders, including attacking the allied forces in Afghanistan, destroying its infrastructure, killing innocent people in order to spread fear and destruction, to satisfy the desires of Iran. Iran thinks that these are accomplishments. Iran wants the world to be occupied with Afghanistan, so that it can continue with the establishment of its nuclear arsenal, to threaten international security and peace. On the other hand, Iran supplies the Taliban with enough financial, military and logistic support to ensure the terrorists’ existence.

اسماعيل2010-06-23 15:01:00

There is a strong relationship between the Taliban and the corrupt Iranian regime for some mutual reasons. Iran today wants to upset the United States and cause losses to its army in any way possible. That is why it has joined hands with the Taliban. It should be noted that Iran is a Shiite country, as they claim. They consider themselves an Islamic country and claim other fake attributes. However, they join hands with the Taliban, which is a movement led by the Wahhabi ideology that despises the Shiia, and they cannot really cooperate. Iran is ready to make a pact with the devil to serve its interests, and this is what it has already carried out. Iran has cooperated with the Taliban, and today it is providing them with arms, money, and everything that the leaders of the Taliban in Afghanistan who endorse Wahhabism need. Whenever they ask for something, Iran carries it out on the spot, because Iran does not want the United States to settle in Afghanistan. If the situation becomes stable in Afghanistan, Iran knows that the US will turn to Iran to put an end to the Iranian nuclear issue, which is causing so much trouble to the USA, the superpower. Thus, the USA wants to eradicate it; however, its troops are busy in Afghanistan. Thus, Iran is reassured that the U.S. forces will not attack them now or in the near future. Thus, it tries, with the support of the Taliban, to keep the situation unstable in Afghanistan and cause losses to U.S. forces and other international forces, so that they will not consider invading Iran.

ملك2010-06-20 15:05:00

Is it not strange to have Ben Laden’s family in Iran!!! Is that because Osama’s mother is a Shiite?

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