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The Islamic Republic appears to have backed off from its threats to "punish" Afghanistan for the capture and possible murder of ten diplomats and a journalist during the Taleban's successful thrust into Mazar-e Sharif last month, but Iran's buildup along the Afghan border in the province of Khorassan continues. In addition to the 70,000 IRGC and Basij troops, Iran deployed 25 fighter jets, 80 T-72 tanks, two SA-6 mobile air defense batteries, 60 armored vehicles, and 90 heavy artillery pieces to the border zone for the 15-day long "Ashura-3" exercises that began on Sept. 2 , and has shown no sign of moving them out. Instead, sources inside Iran told The Iran Brief, IRGC troops appear to have replaced some units of the regular army garrisoned in Khorassan province. Officers of the 77th "Pirouzi" regularly army division have reportedly been shifted from Khorassan to the West, along the borders with Azerbaijan and Iraq.
On Aug. 28, Iran's newly-installed Deputy Foreign Minister for Afghan Affairs, Mohsen Aminzadeh, delivered a sharp warning to Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of "a crisis in relations between Iran and Pakistan" if the Iranian hostages held by Taleban were not released, Tehran radio reported. The U.S. considered the threat of an Iranian attack so high that it issued its own warning on Sept. 5 to the Iranian government not to attack.
However, interviews with Iranian, Pakistanis, and Arab sources suggest a complex series of motives on Iran's side in the current crisis, only some of which are related to the incidents in Mazar-e Sharif. Confusion and disagreement over how Iran should respond appear to have gripped Tehran, as witnessed by the abrupt firing in late August of the Foreign Ministry's previous point man for Afghanistan, Ala'eddin Borujerdi, and numerous attacks on Borujerdi in the Iranian press for having made a mess of the Afghan portfolio.
Massive aide: The public incidents leading to the current crisis have been widely reported. But in addition to the 10 Iranian diplomats and the IRNA correspondent seized (and probably killed) by Taleb militiamen when they stormed the Iranian consulate in Mazar-e Sharif on August 8 are scores of Iranian "truck drivers" and others captured by Taleban in recent months, as well as during the current round of fighting.
As we reported earlier this year after discussions with top-ranking Pakistani officials in Islamabad, in February the Taleban released 112 Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers it had captured during clashes with the opposition Northern Alliance. [Cf. "The Great Game in Afghanistan," TIB 4/4/98]. Prior to the current round of fighting, the Pakistanis estimated that Iran maintained some 1500 IRGC troops inside Afghanistan proper, and since May 1997 had trained some 6,000 anti-Taleban Afghan refugees at a series of 10-15 camps operated by the IRGC along Iran's eastern border with Afghanistan. And Iran's arms shipments to the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance had reached monumental proportions by the time of the rout at Mazar-e Sharif. Senior Pakistani officials said their intelligence services had counted 28 shipments by air into Mazar-e Sharif in a single week this past March.
This policy of massive aide and direct military involvement alongside the Northern Alliance was orchestrated by Borujerdi, who is viewed in Tehran as the hand-picked emissary of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamene'i. His abrupt firing late last month shows that if nothing else the Iranian government has decided to pin the blame for what has become a public relations disaster inside Iran on him.
One Iranian opposition source, with close ties to the Iranian armed forces, said the Ashura-3 exercises were "merely a show." Far from laying the ground work for an invasion of Afghanistan, or even air strikes on Herat (as the U.S. has suggested the Iranians intend), this source claimed the exercises were intended "to mask a historic withdrawal of strategic assets from Afghanistan," in order to disguise what amounts to "a military rout."
The Ministry of Intelligence and Information (MOIS) has also apprehended a number of Taleban spies operating inside Iran in recent weeks, this source claimed, some of them operating as far away as East Azerbaijan province bordering Azerbaijan. Taleban used Dari-speakers from the Herat area, whose command of Farsi made it easier for them to operate inside Iran, the source added.
MEK camps: Another factor complicating the picture is the growing presence of fighters from the Iranian opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq in Afghanistan, following a warning to Iran by Taleban ruler Mullah Omar that he would arm the Iranian opposition if Iran continued to back his own opponents in the Northern Alliance.
Arab sources with ties to anti-Tehran Balouchi movements in Sistan-va-Balouchestan province said recently that up to 300 members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq had been seen recently moving through Pakistani Balouchestan into bases inside Afghanistan, in part to help Iran's Balouchi opposition.
MEK fighters are said to have set up a military base at Shukor Khan, to the east of Kandahar in Helmand province, and to maintain recruiting and liaison offices in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar itself, where Taleban leaders reside. The sources said that MEK members are allowed to move freely from Kandahar to the border areas with Iran.
Help for Hazaras: Public pressure in Iran to intervene in Afghanistan intensified due to the alleged Taleban massacres of Afghani Shiites, known as Hazaras. When Taleban took Mazar-e Sharif for the first time last year, eyewitnesses interviewed in Pakistan said they systematically massacred prominent Hazara leaders and families who remained behind, before they were evicted in a counter-attack by the Northern Alliance last September.
Last week, Amnesty International in London released a report that Taleban had gone on the rampage again. "Taleban guards deliberately and systematically killed thousands of ethnic Hazara civilians during the first three days following their military takeover of Mazar-e Sharif on 8 Aug. 1998," the group said, quoting "testimonies from eyewitnesses and surviving members of the victims' families."
Inside Iran, the Afghani Hazaras are seen as ethnic Persians, and anti-Taleban invective has been running high in the Tehran press. One commentary, carried in Kayhan International on Aug. 26, accused the Taleban of "ethnic cleansing of non-Pashtou areas," and accused Pakistan of "direct involvement in the capture of Mazar-e Sharif and other towns by their own Pashtou-speaking army brigades.... With its diplomats being held hostage, Iran may not be able tolerate the situation for long." The editorial went on to warn Pakistan that it was "playing with fire," and suggested that Iran might help Sikhs and Punjabis in Pakistan who "think that it is not a bad idea to have countries of their own."
Clearly, this level of jingoism is having an impact on Tehran's leaders, who will be hard-pressed not to present some form of victory to the Iranian public.