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Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Behman and Afzali: Iran wants US stuck in Afghanistan

Behman and Afzali: Iran wants U.S. stuck in Afghanistan

07:43 AM EDT on Friday, August 3, 2007

SADEQ BEHMAN and SUDABAH AFZALI

HERAT, Afghanistan -- THE YOUNG MAN was quite open about his mission.

“Our purpose is jihad against foreigners and the government of Afghanistan,” he said, asking that he name not be used.

And, he claimed, he was hardly alone in his cause.

“There are a lot of Iranians in our group,” he said. “They say they have come to do jihad against America.”

The comments by this resident of Farah Province, which borders Iran, are just the latest indication that Iran is playing a growing role in the insurgency in Afghanistan. The young insurgent identified himself as a member of Soldiers of Mohammad the Prophet, a jihadi organization that, he said, is supported by Iran.

“Many Muslims from other countries have come here for this,” he said.

For weeks now, both American and Afghan officials have been claiming that Tehran is working to destabilize the Afghan government.

U.S. Ambassador William Wood recently asserted that an increasing number of Iranian weapons were turning up inside Afghanistan. Like U.S. officials reacting to charges of Iranian meddling in Iraq, the envoy stopped just short of implicating the Iranian government of openly arming the insurgency.

“There are clearly some munitions coming out of Iran going into the hands of the Taliban,” he said. “We believe that the quantity and quality of those munitions are such that the Iranian government must know about it.”

Lt. Col. Rahmatullah Safai, regional police commander for western Afghanistan, confirmed that weapons clearly marked as having been made in Iran had been found in Herat Province.

“Recently, we found three anti-vehicle mines that were marked ‘SPI’ (an acronym for the Revolutionary Guard in Iran) that were found by our police in the Tirkash area of Herat Province, which is located less than two miles from the Iranian border,” he said.

Col. Shah Jehan Noori, the police chief of Ghor Province, also said that the authorities had found a weapons depot that included 40 anti-vehicle and anti-personnel mines made in Iran and Russia.

Iran has adamantly denied meddling in Afghan affairs and said such accusations were part of an international smear campaign against the Tehran government.

“The West has been waging a psychological war against Iran since the victory of the Islamic revolution,” said Mohammad Ali Najafi Manesh, a diplomatic official for Iran in Herat Province.

“They have been accusing Iran of interference in the Middle East, of violating human rights, but now that America is losing in Afghanistan, it tries to cover this up by launching a propaganda war,” he said.

So far, Afghan President Hamed Karzai has consistently rebuffed attempts to link Iranians to the insurgency. He recently reiterated that Iran and Afghanistan were good friends and partners.

Members of his own government, however, contradict Karzai, pointing to mounting evidence of cooperation between Iranians and the insurgency — although it remains unclear whether such cooperation has the official backing of the government in Tehran.

A source inside the Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that there was Iranian influence in anti-government efforts in western Afghanistan.

“We have information that Balochis [a sect in Iran] are active from Farah and Herat provinces,” he said.

Harder to prove, however, is direct involvement by the Iranian government. Even the young Afghan claiming to be a member of the Soldiers of the Prophet Mohammad said that his colleagues were acting independently.

“The Balochi people of Iran and other Iranians say that they have come to do jihad against America voluntarily. They were not sent by the government of Iran,” he said.

In fact the Balochis have had their own problems with the Iranian government over the years, And unlike the vast majority of Iranians, who are Shias, Balochis, like most Afghans and the Taliban, are Sunni Muslims.

Col. Sayed Aqa Saqeb, the police chief of Farah province, confirmed that authorities had seen armed Balochi groups from Iran operating in border areas but could not determine if their actions were sanctioned by the Iranian government.

“We are still investigating,” he said.

Mohammad Rafiq Shahir, a political analyst in Herat, thinks that Iran may be trying to have it both ways by, at the very least, turning a blind eye to its citizens’ involvement in Afghanistan.

On the one hand, Shahir said, Iran wants to cooperate and influence the current Afghan government. “The present government of Afghanistan is more beneficial to Iran than the radical Sunni regime of the Taliban,” he said.

On the other hand, Iran is anxious to make life as difficult as possible for the United States in Afghanistan.

“The United States is a strategic enemy of Iran, and Iran is trying to challenge the foreign forces, particularly the American and the British, by giving the opposition weapons and other facilities,” Shahir said.

“Iran is hoping that the war in Afghanistan lasts many years, so that the United States gets bogged down there,” he said. “Iran sees the possibility of an attack from the United States, and is hoping to keep the war on Afghan soil. It would be much less expensive for them than a war inside Iran.”

Sadeq Behman and Sudabah Afzali are journalists in Afghanistan who write for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, a London-based nonprofit organization.

http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CW_afghan3_08-03-07_316GFD2.19d3165.html

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