The Iran Brief®

---

Issue Number 45, dated 4/6/98

---

The Great Game in Afghanistan (Serial 4501)

Iran, Russia, Pakistan and the United States are locked in a high-stakes struggle over natural gas export routes, that will determine the energy future of hundreds of millions of people in South Asia. As in the 1980s, the policy game will be fought on the battlefields of Afghanistan, once this winter's snows have melted and the Iranian and Russian-backed Northern alliance launches their long-expected offensive from their stronghold in Mazar-e Sharif against the Taleban, and perhaps later, Kabul.

Senior government officials in Pakistan detailed the extraordinary and little-known Iranian involvement during recent interviews with Iran Brief publisher Kenneth R. Timmerman in Islamabad. "Put simply," said one top Pakistani official, "Iran wants to block companies from building natural gas pipelines across Afghanistan, in the hope those pipelines will be built across Iran. A secondary goal of the Iranians is to keep the United States out of the region. So instability in Afghanistan serves their strategic purpose."

I. The UNOCAL project: On the economic front lines is Texas oil company, UNOCAL, which is heading a consortium of six international companies and the government of Turkmenistan in a project to build a 1,271 kilometer pipeline from the vast Dauletabad natural gas field in Turkmenistan to Multan, Pakistan. Last year, the consortium announced it hoped to begin construction on the $1.9 billion project by the end of 1998, and said they were in negotiations with India and Pakistan to extend the pipeline an additional 587 kilometers to serve the New Delhi area.

That announcement caused a furor in Tehran, which has been trying - so far, in vain - to convince oil majors to build Central Asian oil and gas export routes across Iran. Tehran was heartened by the Clinton administration's approval late last year of a rival project featuring Royal Dutch Shell to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Turkey, crossing Iran. While Iran would not have benefited from the energy resources of that pipeline, it would have reaped substantial transit fees. But more importantly, Washington's acquiescence was viewed in Tehran as a significant enticement to other oil majors, and prompted NIOC to announce it would soon offer new oil and gas field development projects to international bidding on buy-back schemes. At an oil conference in Tehran on March 16, NIOC exploration chief, Mahmoud Mohaddes, spoke of more than 100 different projects across Iran that were "wide open" to foreign development. "We invite all foreign companies and contractors to join us to develop and explore for our oil and gas," he told participants.

Further complicating the picture, Iran is trying to get Pakistan to accept a competing natural gas supply project being championed by Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd. of Australia (BHP), that would bring Iranian natural gas from South Pars to Pakistan through a direct pipeline. Iranian officials met with BHP's new high-powered lobbyist - former British foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind - in Tehran on March 2, and spoke in mid-March of a "revived partnership" with BHP. The Australian company came close to signing a pipeline deal in February 1996, but backed off at the threat of U.S. sanctions because the company's extensive U.S. holdings would have been hurt. (See "Australia's BHP cool to pipeline deal," TIB 2/5/96 for a list of BHP's U.S. assets).

UNOCAL partners: UNOCAL's biggest partner is Delta Gas Pipeline Company (Central Asia) Limited, a private Saudi company that has taken a 15 percent stake in the project. Iran has viewed Delta's participation with distrust, especially given the Saudi involvement in backing the Taleban in Afghanistan. Pro-Taleban comments attributed to a UNOCAL representative in Pakistan late last year prompted harsh reactions from rival Afghan factions, and led the company to brief other rebel leaders on the benefits the pipeline would bring a unified Afghan government. "We are not choosing sides or getting involved in their internal politics," a company spokesman, Terry Covington, told The Iran Brief recently. "We have briefed Ahmed Shah Masood, and we have briefed the different partners in the northern alliance, but we are not going to cut a deal with a particular faction. This pipeline, if it is built, will be for Afghanistan, not for any particular faction."

To promote their cause, UNOCAL has gotten involved on the ground. Last October, they started financing educational programs in pipeline-laying and maintenance skills for young Afghans in areas under Taleban control. "The U.S. government has been supportive of this project from a strategic point of view, but we are in this because of the economics," Covington said.

UNOCAL's plan calls for the pipeline to follow the Herat-to-Kandahar Road through Afghanistan, crossing the border into Pakistan near Quetta and heading north to Multan. Most of the Afghan route is currently controlled by Taleban, except for areas surrounding Herat.

Other consortium members are Indonesia Petroleum, Ltd., and CIECO TransAsia Gas Ltd., Japanese-controlled firms which each have a share of 7.22%; Hyundai Engineering, which has 5.56%, and Crescent Steel and Allied Products, Ltd., of Pakistan, which has a 3.89% stake. The government of Turkmenistan has a 7% share.

II. Covert action inside Pakistan: Pakistani officials and foreign diplomats in Islamabad believe Iran has launched an extensive program of covert action inside Pakistan, coupled with massive arms deliveries to the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, aimed at sabotaging the UNOCAL pipeline.

The Pakistani government has accused Iran of stirring up sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Pakistan, as part of this larger strategy to destabilize Pakistan and put pressure on its government. Pakistani officials say they have "concrete evidence" that diplomats posted to Iranian Cultural Centers in Multan, Mandar, Karachi, and Lahore have funneled cash to Shiite extremists for terrorist attacks. "They are priming Shia violence and trying to destroy our country," one senior official said.

The role of the Iranian cultural centers exploded into view in February 1997, when Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) discovered specific evidence that traced the Lahore High Court bombing to the Iranian Cultural Center in Multan. "We warned the Iranians that fingers were pointing at them," officials told The Iran Brief. "We posted a warning on the building and offered police protection, but this was dismissed by the director of the Center, who said it limited his freedom of movement."

The day after the director dismissed the Pakistani police guards, an angry mob attacked the center in Multan killing eight persons, including the director, Muhammad Ali Rahimi. Since then, hundreds have died in sectarian fighting across the country. "Tracking Iranian activities here is a full-time job," one top Pakistani official said. "It has overwhelmed the ISI."

The Multan killing provoked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries and hot rhetoric on both sides. Iran accused Pakistan of financing radical Sunni Muslim extremists who have assassinated Shiite leaders in Pakistan and attacked Shiite mosques inside Iran. Last September, gunmen shot dead five Iranian air force technicians and wounded a sixth outside of Rawalpindi. The Iranians were part of a 21-man group on a training course sponsored by the Pakistani Defense Ministry and based at a military facility in Wah, about 30 km (19 miles) west of Islamabad. They had been on their way to the army's Qasim air base in the city in a passenger van when they were attacked.

More recently, two Iranian engineers were gunned down on Feb. 21 in a terrorist attack at Clifton Bridge in Karachi. Police said the killings were part of the sectarian violence.

"Iran's goal is to promote Shiism in Pakistan," .a senior government official in Islamabad said. "They have always targeted activists from the other groups, but are perfectly willing to kill 20 innocent people just to get one activist. This is where we have seen the involvement of the Iranian cultural centers."

III. Arms to Afghanistan: Over the past eighteen months, Iran has gotten heavily involved in neighboring Afghanistan, supplying weapons, training, and even troops to the Northern Alliance battling the Taleban, Pakistani government officials told The Iran Brief.

They said the Iranian government has flown more than 250 air shipments of weapons from Iran carrying ammunition, currency, supplies and personnel from Meshed to Mazar-e Sharif and Bamyan. between June 1997 and February 1998. The pace of the weapons shipments has picked up dramatically in recent weeks. "In one week recently, we counted 28 aircraft full of weapons coming into Mazar-e Sharif and Shebardan," one official said. "During the first week of March, Iran's deputy foreign minister in charge of Afghan affairs, Alaeddin Borujerdi, traveled to Mazar-e Sharif on five separate occasions," the official said. "We are expecting there will be a bloody fight this spring, once the snows have melted. The Iranians brought Gulboddin Hekmatyar back to Mazar-e Sharif from Mashad in February, and are seeking to form a grand alliance, including Massoud, who is Gulboddin's biggest enemy. They are buying Pashtoun generals in Kunduz to revolt against the Taleban, and plan to designate Gulboddin as Prime Minister to give the impression they have formed a broad-based government."

Pakistani officials provided these astonishing new details of the Iranian effort to arm the Northern Alliance:

• Anti-Taleban forces are being trained at a series of 10 to 15 camps operated by the IRGC along Iran's eastern border. Since May 1997, 6,000 trained Afghan military personnel have been dispatched from these camps to various war fronts in northern Afghanistan. Most of Iran's aid has been going to the Hezb-e Wahdat party of Abdul Karim Khalili.

• The IRGC currently has 1500 troops in northern Afghanistan. Some of them have been captured by Taleban, which announced in February that it was releasing 112 Iranian POWs captured in last year's fighting.

• Reports that Iran is preparing to provide the anti-Taleban forces with 21 of the Iraqi fighter aircraft that were flown to Iran during the Gulf war. In a separate move, Iran has also made payment to purchase two Su-22 and one Su-24 fighter-bombers for Ahmed Shah Masood, and has sent Iranian pilots to help plan air operations for the Northern Alliance against the Taleban.

• Iran has provided political refuge to nearly all the leaders of the Northern Alliance (Rabbani, Hekmatyar, General Ismail and General Malik). When these leaders are not physically in Iran, they travel their at regular intervals to seek guidance and financial support.

• Iran convened a two-day meeting on March 4-5 in Mazar-e Sharif of the leaders of all the parties of the Northern Alliance, in an effort to rebuild the coalition and reach agreement on the goal of installing a Rabbani government in northern Afghanistan.

Pakistan shared highly classified information with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright earlier this year about Iranian arms shipments to Afghanistan, officials in Islamabad said.

Iran is joined by Russian in its support for the Northern Alliance, a fact that was underscored by a joint statement issued by Foreign Ministers Kamal Kharrazi and Yevgueny Primakov following talks in Moscow on Feb. 25.

Pakistani officials said that Russian was funneling weapons to the Northern alliance by air and by road, using the Kuliab river inside Tajikistan and the road crossing over the Amr (Oxus) river. "This area is so sensitive that the Tajiks refused to allow us to land at the Kuliab airport to bring in relief supplies after the recent earthquakes," officials said.