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The Islamic Republic appears to have backed off from its threatsto "punish" Afghanistan for the capture and possible murder of tendiplomats and a journalist during the Taleban's successful thrustinto Mazar-e Sharif last month, but Iran's buildup along the Afghanborder in the province of Khorassan continues. In addition to the70,000 IRGC and Basij troops, Iran deployed 25 fighter jets, 80 T-72tanks, 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 ofmoving them out. Instead, sources inside Iran told The Iran Brief,IRGC troops appear to have replaced some units of the regular armygarrisoned in Khorassan province. Officers of the 77th "Pirouzi"regularly army division have reportedly been shifted from Khorassanto the West, along the borders with Azerbaijan and Iraq.
On Aug. 28, Iran's newly-installed Deputy Foreign Minister forAfghan Affairs, Mohsen Aminzadeh, delivered a sharp warning toPakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of "a crisis in relationsbetween Iran and Pakistan" if the Iranian hostages held by Talebanwere not released, Tehran radio reported. The U.S. considered thethreat of an Iranian attack so high that it issued its own warning onSept. 5 to the Iranian government not to attack.
However, interviews with Iranian, Pakistanis, and Arab sourcessuggest a complex series of motives on Iran's side in the currentcrisis, only some of which are related to the incidents in Mazar-eSharif. Confusion and disagreement over how Iran should respondappear to have gripped Tehran, as witnessed by the abrupt firing inlate August of the Foreign Ministry's previous point man forAfghanistan, Ala'eddin Borujerdi, and numerous attacks on Borujerdiin the Iranian press for having made a mess of the Afghanportfolio.
Massive aide: The public incidents leading to the currentcrisis have been widely reported. But in addition to the 10 Iraniandiplomats and the IRNA correspondent seized (and probably killed) byTaleb militiamen when they stormed the Iranian consulate in Mazar-eSharif on August 8 are scores of Iranian "truck drivers" and otherscaptured by Taleban in recent months, as well as during the currentround of fighting.
As we reported earlier this year after discussions withtop-ranking Pakistani officials in Islamabad, in February the Talebanreleased 112 Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers it had capturedduring clashes with the opposition Northern Alliance. [Cf."The Great Game in Afghanistan," TIB 4/4/98]. Prior to thecurrent round of fighting, the Pakistanis estimated that Iranmaintained some 1500 IRGC troops inside Afghanistan proper, and sinceMay 1997 had trained some 6,000 anti-Taleban Afghan refugees at aseries of 10-15 camps operated by the IRGC along Iran's easternborder with Afghanistan. And Iran's arms shipments to theanti-Taleban Northern Alliance had reached monumental proportions bythe time of the rout at Mazar-e Sharif. Senior Pakistani officialssaid their intelligence services had counted 28 shipments by air intoMazar-e Sharif in a single week this past March.
This policy of massive aide and direct military involvementalongside the Northern Alliance was orchestrated by Borujerdi, who isviewed in Tehran as the hand-picked emissary of Supreme LeaderAyatollah Khamene'i. His abrupt firing late last month shows that ifnothing else the Iranian government has decided to pin the blame forwhat has become a public relations disaster inside Iran on him.
One Iranian opposition source, with close ties to the Iranianarmed forces, said the Ashura-3 exercises were "merely a show." Farfrom laying the ground work for an invasion of Afghanistan, or evenair strikes on Herat (as the U.S. has suggested the Iranians intend),this source claimed the exercises were intended "to mask a historicwithdrawal of strategic assets from Afghanistan," in order todisguise what amounts to "a military rout."
The Ministry of Intelligence and Information (MOIS) has alsoapprehended a number of Taleban spies operating inside Iran in recentweeks, this source claimed, some of them operating as far away asEast Azerbaijan province bordering Azerbaijan. Taleban usedDari-speakers from the Herat area, whose command of Farsi made iteasier for them to operate inside Iran, the source added.
MEK camps: Another factor complicating the picture is thegrowing presence of fighters from the Iranian opposition Mujahedin-eKhalq in Afghanistan, following a warning to Iran by Taleban rulerMullah Omar that he would arm the Iranian opposition if Irancontinued to back his own opponents in the Northern Alliance.
Arab sources with ties to anti-Tehran Balouchi movements inSistan-va-Balouchestan province said recently that up to 300 membersof the Mujahedin-e Khalq had been seen recently moving throughPakistani Balouchestan into bases inside Afghanistan, in part to helpIran's Balouchi opposition.
MEK fighters are said to have set up a military base at ShukorKhan, to the east of Kandahar in Helmand province, and to maintainrecruiting and liaison offices in Herat, Kabul, and Kandahar itself,where Taleban leaders reside. The sources said that MEK members areallowed to move freely from Kandahar to the border areas with Iran.
Help for Hazaras: Public pressure in Iran to intervene inAfghanistan intensified due to the alleged Taleban massacres ofAfghani Shiites, known as Hazaras. When Taleban took Mazar-e Shariffor the first time last year, eyewitnesses interviewed in Pakistansaid they systematically massacred prominent Hazara leaders andfamilies who remained behind, before they were evicted in acounter-attack by the Northern Alliance last September.
Last week, Amnesty International in London released a report thatTaleban had gone on the rampage again. "Taleban guards deliberatelyand systematically killed thousands of ethnic Hazara civilians duringthe first three days following their military takeover of Mazar-eSharif on 8 Aug. 1998," the group said, quoting "testimonies fromeyewitnesses and surviving members of the victims' families."
Inside Iran, the Afghani Hazaras are seen as ethnic Persians, andanti-Taleban invective has been running high in the Tehran press. Onecommentary, carried in Kayhan International on Aug. 26, accused theTaleban of "ethnic cleansing of non-Pashtou areas," and accusedPakistan of "direct involvement in the capture of Mazar-e Sharif andother towns by their own Pashtou-speaking army brigades.... With itsdiplomats being held hostage, Iran may not be able tolerate thesituation for long." The editorial went on to warn Pakistan that itwas "playing with fire," and suggested that Iran might help Sikhs andPunjabis in Pakistan who "think that it is not a bad idea to havecountries of their own."
Clearly, this level of jingoism is having an impact on Tehran'sleaders, who will be hard-pressed not to present some form of victoryto the Iranian public.