Afghanistan

  However, for all their economic interests, China is concerned about terrorism and the rise of Islamic-based threats. Since the 1990s, non-Han ethnic groups including Uighurs, Kirghiz, and others farther to the east in China’s Xinjiang province have been unsettled by radical Islamic influences emanating from Pakistan and Afghanistan.456 Uighurs have been a presence in Pakistani terror training camps since the 1990s and fought alongside the Afghan Taliban in 2001, although they were far outnumbered by other foreign groups such as the Uzbeks and Chechens.457 China has relied on Pakistan as a bulwark against these threats, although this has been strained by the growing radicalization and internal instability there.458

  China’s relations with Afghanistan have so far been reflected primarily by their investment, including the three billion dollars associated with their development of the Ainaq copper deposits.459 Prior to this, China had been largely disengaged from the security situation in Afghanistan, though it has benefited from the coalition efforts.460 Increased Chinese involvement has the potential to benefit Afghanistan.

  Saudi Arabia is, along with the US and China, one of the long-standing pillars of foreign support for the government of Pakistan. Saudi Arabia conversely has long aimed to increase its influence in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, with donations, often by non-state actors or through NGOs, being the preferred means. Saudi funding of Wahabi education and activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan flourished during the 1980s. Saudi Arabia was also an initial enabler of the Taliban culture, helping fund the madrassas of the FATA and the “rupee mullahs” and Islamic NGOs operating in the refugee camps. Saudi Arabia was one of the three governments (along with Pakistan and the UAE) to recognize the Taliban regime of 1996–2001 and was a strong ally of Mullah Omar until the Taliban’s links with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden soured the relationship even before the 9/11 attacks. The Saudi government tolerated the US-led coalition intervention in Afghanistan in 2001.

  Saudi Arabia’s Afghanistan policies reflect its own security concerns. It sees Iranian influence in Afghanistan as hostile, intended to gain an advantage against them and their friends in Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Persian-speakers as basically suspect as a potential Iranian fifth column. The Saudis viewed the power of the Northern Alliance in the initial post-Taliban Afghan government with concern. This put their views in alignment with those of Pakistan. After the fall of the Taliban, Kabul viewed Saudi aid and investment as suspect, due to its previous support of Mullah Omar. Dr. Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, the only Pushtun leader of the “Peshawar Seven” parties to be part of the Northern Alliance and hence in a good position in Kabul following the US intervention, used his connections to bring in this “tainted” Saudi money that he used to develop real estate and, less successfully, secure his political position.

  The post-2001 tensions between the Saudis and Kabul has extended to the institution of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). There are few Muslims, including those from Turkey and Egypt included, and still fewer Arabs, including those from the UAE, among the countries contributing to the coalition in Afghanistan. Despite the obvious utility of an increased Muslim coalition presence in Afghanistan, with the ability to counter the hostile propaganda of an infidel invasion and help with areas where non-Muslims lack credibility, such as in the training of ulema, they have largely declined to increase their commitments to Afghanistan, despite the urgings of both the Bush and Obama administrations. This is often seen in Kabul as reflecting Saudi suspicion toward the US-led coalition and sympathy to Pakistan’s desire to exert influence in Afghanistan. These Saudi attitudes have affected the policies of other Arab states toward Afghanistan. In 2008–10, it was widely perceived in Kabul that Saudi aid was going to rebuild, if not the Afghan Taliban, then the “Taliban culture” it had previously encouraged, especially by funding fundamentalist religious figures and activities, who, on the whole, have not been supportive of new social and economic development in the region and have been hostile toward the non-Islamic foreign presence.

  To further this breach, the Saudis also have strong ties with the ISI, dating back to their aid for the Afghan resistance fighting the Soviets in the 1980s and their shared suspicion of transnational Islamic movements that they themselves do not control, such as Al Qaeda. Prince Turki, the head of the Saudi Central Intelligence Department, built personal relations with successive ISI directors. The ISI also introduced the Saudis to the Taliban in the 1990s and helped ensure that the Saudis became, along with Pakistan and the UAE, the only foreign governments to actually recognize them as the legitimate government in Afghanistan. The Saudis provided aid to the Taliban while they were in power and helped train their religious police, who became the most hated instrument of repression in Kabul. It is no wonder, then, that many Afghans are suspicious; yet without Saudi support, Afghanistan will have limited access to outside support from the Arab world.

  Saudi Arabia has also been a long-standing participant in Pakistan’s internal politics, providing funding for religious parties and the madrassa system as well as many mosques, an even deeper level of involvement than what they displayed in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. The Sharif family and religious parties have links with Saudi Arabia dating back to the 1980s and have used this to access funding. The Saudi distrust of the PPP, the political rivals of these Pakistani political friends, was reflected in their refusal of Zardari’s request to defer oil payments in the wake of the financial crisis in November 2008.

  Iran provided limited support to the anti-Soviet Afghan resistance in 1978–92, and their attempts to gain control of Afghanistan’s Shias during that time contributed to a civil war in the Hazara Jat, where they supported revolutionaries who drove out or killed most of the pre-war Hazara elites.461 Since then, Iranian political interference remains resented among the Hazaras, despite extensive post-1992 Iranian aid efforts such as expanding Bamiyan airport and a shared respect for Shia religious authorities. Nor has Iran been able to make strong political inroads among Sunni Dari-speakers in Afghanistan despite their cultural links to Iran due to their shared Persian language, culture, and gratitude for Iranian support against the Taliban prior to 2001.

  Since 1992, Iran has opposed Pakistan’s desire for control over Kabul and access through Afghanistan to central Asia to provide links to the sea competitive with those offered by Iran. Iran is worried about Sunni extremism in Afghanistan and central Asia and its hostility to Shias. Iran was an opponent of the rise of the Taliban pre-2001 and blamed Pakistan for sponsorship of the Taliban and Islamabad’s inability or unwillingness to curb Taliban excesses. This led Iran to provide limited financial and humanitarian aid, as well as military supplies, to the 1992–96 ISA regime in Kabul, and they continued this during their continued resistance to the Taliban in 1996–2001. Iran developed good relations with Ismail Khan, the leading Sunni resistance commander in Herat, during the anti-Soviet war. Iran saw him as a balance to the Panjsheri leadership of the Northern Alliance’s military forces, and paid to get him out of a Taliban prison after he was captured in 1996. Relations between Iran and Pakistan declined precipitously over Afghanistan. In 1998, Iran sent 200,000 troops to their border with Afghanistan after the murder of Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e-Sharif by Pakistani extremists fighting with the Taliban, leading to a further deterioration of relations.

  Accompanied by US and coalition special operations and intelligence advisors, the Northern Alliance forces that entered Kabul in 2001 did so while riding Iranian-supplied armored vehicles and wearing Iranian-supplied uniforms. Iran was the largest single pre-2001 aid donor to the Northern Alliance, giving it increased leverage at the Bonn conference later that year. US Ambassador James Dobbins described the Iranian role at Bonn as “quite constructive.”462 At Bonn, the Iranians pushed for mention of democracy and commitment to counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism as Afghan goals in the final document. Iran helped prevent the political leaders of the Northern Alliance’s constituent parties from functioning as spoilers and has remained a
supporter of the Kabul government.

  Afghanistan was seen by Iran as the most significant issue where they could potentially work with the US. This made Afghanistan part of the conservative-vs.-reform struggle that has dominated Iranian politics in recent years. When it became apparent that the US was not interested in working with Iran in Afghanistan, reflecting concerns over Iran’s commitment to developing nuclear weapons, Iranian policy shifted drastically, causing them to reach out to their 1990s enemies, the Taliban, despite their many differences and continued hostility. Iran has provided the Afghan Taliban with some high-value weapons, such as explosively formed warheads for use in IEDs and Chinese-made HN-5 man-portable SAMs, suggesting more would follow in the event of US or Israeli military action against Iran, and the Taliban has already made limited use of these weapons in Afghanistan. Iran is now hedging its bets, providing support to insurgent groups and sending a signal to Washington not to escalate its pressure over the nuclear issue or face increased aid to insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq and creating “dual-track under-the-table support for Taliban,” in the words of COL McNiece.463 But the level of assistance the insurgents receive from Iran still pales next to that they receive through Pakistan. However, it is far from negligible. Iranians cooperate with Al Qaeda, allowing them transit without stamping passports to avoid alerting Western security services if they later try to enter their countries.464 The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and its Al-Quds (Jerusalem) political warfare force (or its predecessors) have been involved in Afghanistan since the 1980s, either at the direction of the central government in Tehran or as an example of an independent policy initiated and implemented by the IRGC. The Al-Quds force is still reportedly training Afghan insurgents.465 Despite their willingness to aid the insurgents and seeing Kabul as a US puppet, Iran still sees it as a preferable option to a new Pakistan-backed regime based on Sunni insurgents.

  Aid has allowed Iran to entrench its influence in Afghanistan with both the Karzai government and officials and grassroots Afghans alike in western Afghanistan, which remains economically dependent on Iran.466 The most significant program is a railroad that will link Herat to Iran’s national rail system. During the 2008 energy and food shortages, Iran offered to supply Afghanistan with 100 MW of power a day over transmission lines plus food aid. Iran serves as a source of jobs for Afghan expatriate workers. In 2008, in the words of COL McNiece, “Iran is the second biggest investor in Afghanistan behind the US and has good political influence.”467 Despite US hostility toward Iran, the Karzai government has a public policy of maintaining good relations.

  Iran has a long-standing commitment to stemming the narcotics trade, especially that concentrated in the area of the Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan border tri-junction.468 Dating back to the 1980s, Iranian paramilitary counter-narcotics operations have led to pitched battles with well-armed traffickers. However, there have also recently been unconfirmed signs of cooperation with select Afghan narcotics traffickers, with some Iranians, possibly including the IRGC, letting them transit Iranian territory for a share of the proceeds.469 Iran’s counter-narcotics forces are reportedly suffering from increasing levels of corruption and cooperate with traffickers.470 The rectitude of Iran’s drug interdiction operation may also have been a casualty of war.

  Pakistan resents any and all Iranian involvement in Afghanistan, which Pakistan believes should be in their sphere of influence. Pakistan continues to see Afghan Persian-speakers as a natural fifth column for Iran and any non-Pushtun government in Kabul as a potential Iranian puppet. Pakistan has thus been suspicious of Iran’s energy-based dealings in the region and has blocked Iran’s ambitions for energy pipelines running to India. By 2008, Iran was concerned about the anti-Shia objectives of the insurgency in Pakistan as well as the TTP’s links to Iran’s rivals in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf. Iran feels loyalty toward Pakistan’s Shias that go back to the 1980s, including Shia Pushtun tribes such as the Touray, which have faced violence from both Pakistani religious groups and Afghan Islamists such as HiH that had strong relations with the Pakistani security services. This has been reflected in providing access to funding that was used to acquire, in the case of Shia Pushtuns, weapons for self-defense.

  For Pakistan, the conflict in Afghanistan has traditionally been viewed through two prisms: domestic as involving Pushtuns and religion; and international, first opposing the Soviet Union and then India. The Pakistani military and many elites believe that India is trying to use Pakistan’s disparate groups and weak civil society to destroy the entire country and annex its territory or, at best, reduce it to a compliant client state. The actions of the US and its coalition partners are perceived in Pakistan to weaken their influence in Afghanistan, making it less of a barrier against Indian encirclement. The US is seen as having become increasingly pro-India since the 1990s or worse, according to some Pakistanis, as part of an alliance with Israel and India to destroy or subjugate Islam.

  Indo-Pakistani tensions have been playing out in Afghanistan since 1947 when New Delhi took over the British policy of supporting King Zahir’s government in Kabul, albeit at a greatly reduced level of resources. Afghanistan voted against Pakistan’s admission to the UN over its opposition to the Durand Line as the international border. India encouraged Afghanistan to raise its territorial claims to Pakistan up to the Indus as Pushtunistan, following King Zahir’s calling a Loya Jirga in 1949 that repudiated the Durand Line, insisting it was not what Pakistan and the world community saw it as, the international border. During Afghanistan’s Golden Age, Pakistan saw Soviet and Indian support for this Afghan border policy as being much more important than the minimal amount of cross-border violence that resulted from Kabul’s Pushtunistan claims. Indian influence in Kabul encouraged Afghanistan to create and use the Pushtunistan issue as a lever to dismember Pakistan; and Pakistan, in return, became committed to excluding Indian influence from Afghanistan. But Afghanistan never took advantage of Pakistan’s conflicts with India to take action; there has never been a “stab in the back.”

  Before 1978, India maintained a significant presence in Afghanistan, keeping consulates and listening posts at Kandahar and Jalalabad, in addition to its large embassy in Kabul. These outposts provided New Delhi with the means to assist the then-thriving local Hindu and Sikh communities, which today have been reduced to a few hundred. The Indians kept contact with the Pushtunistan Movement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some of whose Pushtun leaders, including Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the “Frontier Gandhi,” had been close to Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian National Congress pre-partition.471 This contributed to the Pakistani military’s suspicion of secular Pushtun nationalists as potential secessionists.

  Improved relations between India and the Soviet Union in the 1970s increased Pakistan’s fears of encirclement. India had refused to vote in the UN to condemn the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and maintained a small military assistance mission in Kabul during the period of the Soviet occupation. With the end of the Soviet Union over a decade later, increased Indian involvement in Afghanistan reflected concern over Islamism and its potential impact on Indian Muslims as well as Pakistan’s attempts to use Afghanistan-trained guerrillas and insurgent networks in Kashmir, fueling a cross-border insurgency there starting in the late 1980s. After 1992, India developed contacts with Ahmad Shah Massoud and the other leaders of the Northern Alliance in an effort to oppose Pakistan’s proxy war in Afghanistan through HiH and the Taliban and counter militant Islam.

  Since the collapse of the Taliban in 2001, Indian diplomatic and economic involvement in Afghanistan has increased. From Kabul’s perspective, Indian involvement in Afghanistan appears benign—four consulates (the same number as Pakistan); 750 million dollars in Indian aid in 2001–09 and a further 1.6 billion dollars pledged—making it Afghanistan’s sixth largest bilateral aid donor.472 But when the Indian consulates that had operated until 1989 re-opened in Jalalabad and Kandahar in 2003, it was seen as an act of offensive politica
l warfare by Pakistani officials. Pakistan has repeatedly claimed that these consulates have been used to support the secular nationalist insurgency in Baluchistan and to collect intelligence against Pakistan. By mid-2008 there were an estimated 4,000 Indian civilian and security personnel working in Afghanistan, which further raised Pakistani fears. Pakistan also perceives India’s involvement in reconstruction programs as a threat, especially the program of road building, some carried out by India’s Border Roads Organization (especially the Zanaj-Dilarm highway), believing it is a cover for establishing an Indian military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan. The BRO’s paramilitary nature and roots in India’s long-standing internal counter-insurgency campaigns are widely perceived in Pakistan as a harbinger of greater Indian military involvement. The Indian government’s access to the Farkhor airbase in Tajikistan, granted by that government with Moscow’s apparent approval, fed Pakistani perceptions of a threatening encirclement.

  Musharraf’s back-channel diplomacy on Kashmir that led to the end of cross-border support for the insurgency in Kashmir in 2003–04 was matched by India’s unwillingness to make meaningful concessions to improve relations with Pakistan or soften its control of Kashmir, widely resented by Pakistanis across the political spectrum. India has offered Pakistan little reconciliation and no concessions for its ending the cross-border insurgency in Kashmir and threatened military retaliation for attacks by terrorist groups tolerated by the Pakistani security services. Insurgents in Pakistan desperately needed to prevent any India-Pakistan rapprochement in order to sustain the momentum of their conflict. The 2002 attack on the Indian parliament and the 2008 Mumbai attack are examples of the terrorist need to preserve India-Pakistan hostility. India, like Israel and the US, is seen in Pakistan as providing terrorists more fodder for recruits and attacks by appearing to be waging a global war against Islam. That the Mumbai attack also targeted a Jewish community center shows that solidarity with Islamic violence worldwide has an important motivational factor.473