by Ahmed Rashid
‘The positive climate between Iran and Saudi Arabia is encouraging and both sides are ready to co-operate for the resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan,’ Iran's new Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said in May 1998.1 A suave, English-speaking diplomat who for 11 years had represented Iran at the UN, Kharrazi's soft diplomatic manner and style were representative of a revolution that had mellowed.
Iran's new leaders were deeply antagonistic to the Taliban, but they were pragmatic enough to realize that peace in Afghanistan was necessary for economic development and political liberalization in Iran. Stability in their neighbourhood would also help Iran end its international isolation. Khatami was far from looking for a fight with the Taliban, yet just six months later, after the Taliban killed nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar, Iran had mobilized a quarter of a million soldiers on its border with Afghanistan and was threatening to invade. As tensions with the Taliban escalated, the new relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia took on even more importance.
Afghanistan has been just one area of conflict in the intense rivalry between the Persians and the Arabs. Both peoples have conquered and ruled one another against a background of dispute between Sunni Arabia and Shia Persia. In 1501 Shah Ismail of the Safavid dynasty turned Iran into the first and only Shia state in the Islamic world. Both the Persians and the Arabs had ruled over Central Asia and Afghanistan, although Persian rule and its culture and language was much more long-standing and left a permanent mark.
In the twentieth century the long war between revolutionary Iran and Iraq (1981-88), which led to some 1.5 million casualties, only deepened this rivalry as all the Arab states had supported Saddam Hussein's Iraq. As that war began, another was just beginning in Afghanistan and here too the age-old rivalries would continue – this time in the context of the Cold War and the US aim to isolate Iran with the help of the Arab states.
Ostensibly both Iran and Saudi Arabia were on the same side in the Afghan conflict. They strongly opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, supported the Mujaheddin and backed international measures to isolate the Afghan regime and the Soviet Union. But they supported opposing factions of the Mujaheddin and Iran never severed its diplomatic links with the Kabul regime. Saudi support to the Mujaheddin was in line with the US and Pakistani strategy of providing the bulk of funds and weapons to the most radical Sunni Pashtun groups and ignoring the Shia Afghans. The Saudis also separately funded Afghans who promoted Wahabbism.
Dollar for dollar, Saudi aid matched the funds given to the Mujaheddin by the US. The Saudis gave nearly US$4 billion in official aid to the Mujaheddin between 1980 and 1990, which did not include unofficial aid from Islamic charities, foundations, the private funds of Princes and mosque collections.2 There were also direct funds given to the ISI, as in 1989 when the Saudis handed over US$26 million dollars to bribe Afghan leaders during the negotiations to form the Mujaheddin interim government in exile in Islamabad.3 The Mujaheddin leaders were obliged to appoint an Afghan Wahabbi as interim Prime Minister.
In March 1990, the Saudis came up with an additional US$100 million for Hikmetyar's Hizb-e-Islami party who were backing an abortive coup attempt from within the Afghan army against President Najibullah by Hikmetyar and General Shahnawaz Tanai in Kabul.4 After 1992 the Saudis continued to provide funds and fuel to the Mujaheddin government in Kabul. The fuel, chanelled through Pakistan, became a major source of corruption and patronage for successive Pakistani governments and the ISI.
Due to the estranged relations between Iran and the USA, the Afghan Mujaheddin groups based in Iran received no international military assistance. Nor did the two million Afghan refugees who fled to Iran receive the same humanitarian aid which their three million counterparts in Pakistan received. Tehran's own support to the Mujaheddin was limited on account of budgetary constraints because of the Iraq-Iran war. Thus throughout the 1980s, the USA effectively blocked off Iran from the outside world on Afghanistan. It was a legacy which only further embittered the Iranians against the USA and it would ensure much greater Iranian assertiveness in Afghanistan once the Cold War had ended and the Americans had left the Afghan stage.
Iran's initial support to the Mujaheddin only went to the Afghan Shias, in particular the Hazaras. It was the era in which Iran's Revolutionary Guards funded Shia militants worldwide – from Lebanon to Pakistan. By 1982, Iranian money and influence had encouraged a younger generation of Iran-trained radical Hazaras, to overthrow the traditional leaders who had emerged in the Hazarajat in 1979 to oppose the Soviet invasion. Later, eight Afghan Shia groups were given official status in Tehran, but Iran could never arm and fund them sufficiently. As a result, the Iran-backed Hazaras became marginal to the conflict inside Afghanistan and fought more amongst themselves than against the Soviets. Hazara factionalism was exacerbated by Iran's short-sighted, ideological policies in which the Hazaras loyalty to Tehran was viewed as more important than unity amongst themselves.
By 1988, with the Soviet withdrawal now imminent, Iran saw the need to strengthen the Hazaras. They helped unite the eight Iran-based Hazara groups into the single Hizb-e-Wahadat party. Iran now pressed for Wahadat's inclusion in international negotiations to form a new Mujaheddin government, which was to be dominated by the Peshawar-based Mujaheddin parties. Even though the Hazaras were a small minority and could not possibly hope to rule Afghanistan, Iran demanded first a 50-per-cent and then a 25-per-cent share for the Hazaras in any future Mujaheddin government.
As the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified with the Saudis importing more Arabs to spread Wahabbism and anti-Shiism inside Afghanistan, Pakistan kept the balance between them. A close ally of both states, Pakistan stressed the need to maintain a united front against the Kabul regime. The Iran–Saudi rivalry escalated after the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops when Iran drew closer to the Kabul regime. Iran considered the Kabul regime as the only force now capable of resisting a Sunni Pashtun takeover of Afghanistan. Iran rearmed Wahadat and by the time Kabul fell to the Mujaheddin in 1992, Wahadat controlled not only the Hazarajat but a significant part of western Kabul.
The Saudis meanwhile suffered a major set back as their two principle neo-Wahabbi proteégés, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, split. Hikmetyar opposed the newly constituted Mujaheddin government in Kabul and joined up with the Hazaras to bombard the city. Sayyaf supported the Mujheddin government. This division was an extension of the much larger Saudi foreign policy débâcle after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. For 20 years the Saudis had funded hundreds of neo-Wahabbi parties across the Muslim world to spread Wahabbism and gain influence within the Islamic movements in these countries.
But when Riyadh asked these Islamic groups for a payback and to lend support to Saudi Arabia and the USA led coalition against Iraq, the majority of them backed Saddam Hussein, including Hikmetyar and most Afghan groups. Years of Saudi effort and billions of dollars were wasted because Saudi Arabia had failed to evolve a national interest-based foreign policy. The Saudi predicament is having a westernized ruling elite whose legitimacy is based on conservative fundamentalism, while those not part of the elite are radically anti-Western. The elite has promoted radical Wahabbism, even as this undermined its own power at home and abroad. Ironically only the moderate Afghan groups, whom the Saudis had ignored, helped out the Kingdom in its hour of need.5
As the Afghan war intensified between 1992 and 1995, so did the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the Pakistanis made frequent attempts to bring all the factions together. However, they also made every effort to keep Iran and the Hazaras out of any potential agreements. In the 1992 Peshawar Accord which Pakistan and Saudi Arabia negotiated between the Mujaheddin on how to share power in Kabul and in the subsequent, but abortive, 1993 Islamabad and Jalalabad Accords to end the civil war, Iran and the Hazaras were sidelined. The exclusion of Iran in the 1990s by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, similar to treatment by the USA of Iran in the 1980s, was to further embitter Tehran.
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br /> The Iranians had also become more pragmatic, backing not just the Afghan Shias but all the Persian-speaking ethnic groups who were resisting Pashtun domination. Iran had a natural link with the Tajiks – they originate from the same ancient race and speak the same language – but the Iranians had been incensed by Ahmad Shah Masud's brutal attacks on the Hazaras in Kabul in 1993. Nevertheless, Tehran now realized that unless it backed the non-Pashtuns, Pashtun Sunnis would dominate Afghanistan. In 1993, for the first time, Iran began to give substantial military aid to the President Burhanuddin Rabbani in Kabul and the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and urged all the ethnic groups to join with Rabbani.
Iran's new strategy intensified its conflict of interest with Pakistan. Islamabad was determined to get its Pashtun proteges into Kabul and both the Pakistanis and the Saudis were determined to keep the Hazaras out of any power-sharing arrangement. Pakistan's adroit diplomacy in the 1980s in providing a balance between Saudi and Iranian interests was now abandoned in favour of the Saudis.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of Central Asia had given Iran a new impetus to end its international isolation. Iran moved swiftly into Central Asia with a path-breaking trip by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayti in November 1991, who signed an agreement to build a railway line between Turkmenistan and Iran. But here too the USA tried to block Iran with US Secretary of State James Baker declaring in 1992 that Washington would do everything to block Iranian influence in Central Asia.6 The neo-communist rulers in Central Asia were initially deeply suspicious of Iran, fearing it wanted to spread Islamic fundamentalism.
But Iran resisted this temptation and also forged close ties with Russia, following the 1989 ice-breaking visit to Tehran by Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze when he met with Ayatollah Khomeini. The Ayatollah's sanction of closer Iranian-Soviet ties just before his death, gave the new Russia a legitimacy in Iranian eyes. Also between 1989 and 1993, Russia provided Iran with US$10 billion worth of weapons to rebuild its military arsenal. Iran improved its standing in the region by forging links with other non-Muslim former Soviet states such as Georgia, Ukraine and Armenia. Tehran declined to support Azerbaijan in its war with Armenia, even though 20 per cent of the Iranian population is Azeri and helped Russia and the UN to end the civil war in Tajikistan.7 Crucially, Iran and the CARs shared a deep suspicion of Afghan-Pashtun fundamentalism and the support it received from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Thus, an alliance between Iran, Russia and the CARs in support of the non-Pashtun ethnic groups existed well before the Taliban emerged.
In contrast, Saudi Arabia made few state-to-state attempts to improve relations with Russia or the CARs. The Saudis took nearly four years before they established embassies in Central Asian capitals. Instead the Saudis sent millions of Korans to Central Asia, funded Central Asian Muslims on the Haj and gave scholarships for their mullahs to study in Saudi Arabia – where they imbibed Wahabbism. These measures only perturbed Central Asia's rulers. Within a few years the rulers of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were to call Wahabbism the biggest political threat to stability in their countries.8
Saudi Arabia viewed the Taliban as an important asset to their dwindling influence in Afghanistan. The first Saudi contacts with the Taliban were through princely hunting trips. Maulana Fazlur Rehman head of Pakistan's JUI organized the first bustard hunting trips for Saudi and Gulf princes to Kandahar in the winter of 1994-95. The Arab hunting parties flew into Kandahar on huge transport planes bringing dozens of luxury jeeps, many of which they left behind along with donations for their Taliban hosts, after the hunt. Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki then began to visit Kandahar regularly. After Turki visited Islamabad and Kandahar in July 1996, the Saudis provided funds, vehicles and fuel for the successful Taliban attack on Kabul. Two Saudi companies, Delta and Ningarcho, were now involved in the gas pipeline projects across Afghanistan, increasing local business pressure on Riyadh to help ensure a Taliban victory.
But it was the Wahabbi ulemain the Kingdom who played the most influential role in urging the Royal Family to back the Taliban. The ulemaplay a leading advisory role to the Saudi monarch in the Council of the Assembly of Senior Ulemaand four other state organizations. They have consistently supported the export of Wahabbism throughout the Muslim world and the Royal Family remains extremely sensitive to ulemaopinion.9 King Fahd had to call a meeting of 350 ulemato persuade them to issue a fatwa allowing US troops to be based in the Kingdom during the 1990 war with Iraq.10 Saudi Intelligence co-operated closely with the ulemaas did numerous state-run Islamic charities, which had funded the Afghan Mujaheddin in the 1980s and now began to do the same for the Taliban. Moreover, the ulemahad the vast network of mosques and madrassasin the Kingdom under their control and it was here during Friday sermons that they built up public grass-roots support for the Taliban.11
According to the Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid, the key players in the ulemawho pushed for Saudi support to the Taliban were Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Baz, the Grand Mufti and Chairman of the Council of Senior ulemaand Sheikh Mohammed Bin Juber, the Minister of Justice and a key member of the Council of the ulema.12 In return, the Taliban demonstrated their reverence for the Royal Family and the ulemaand copied Wahabbi practices such as introducing religious police. In April 1997, Taliban leader Mullah Rabbani met with King Fahd in Riyadh and praised the Saudis effusively. ‘Since Saudi Arabia is the centre of the Muslim world we would like to have Saudi assistance. King Fahd expressed happiness at the good measures taken by the Taliban and over the imposition of Sharia in our country,’ Rabbani said.13 Meeting King Fahd five months later, Taliban leaders said the Saudis had promised more aid. ‘King Fahd was too kind. The Saudis have promised us as much as they can give us,’ said Mullah Mohammed Stanakzai.14
Riyadh's support for the Taliban made them extremely reluctant to exert any pressure on the Taliban to deport Osama Bin Laden, even though the USA was urging them to do so. Only when Prince Turki was personally insulted by Mullah Omar in Kandahar did the Saudis curtail diplomatic links with the Taliban. Significantly, it was a personal insult that guided Saudi decision-making rather than an overall change in foreign policy. Saudi Arabia still appeared to have learnt little from its negative experiences of trying to export Wahabbism.
Saudi Arabia's initial support for the Taliban convinced Iran that the USA was also backing them in an intensification of its 1980s policies to surround Iran with hostile forces and isolate it. The USA, according to Tehran, had a new aim to promote oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia which would bypass Iran. After the Taliban captured Kabul, Iranian newspapers echoed the long-held views of officials. ‘The Taliban capture of Kabul was designed by Washington, financed by Riyadh and logistically supported by Islamabad,’ wrote the Jomhuri hlaminewspaper.15
However, for Tehran the real fall-out with Afghanistan was internal. The leadership was divided between hardliners, who still hankered after supporting Shias worldwide and moderates who wanted a more measured support for the anti-Taliban alliance and less confrontation with the Taliban. Iran suffered from the same problems as Pakistan in having multiple departments and lobbies trying to push their personal vested interests in the making of Afghan policy. The Iranian military, the Revolutionary Guards, the intelligence agencies, the Shia clergy and the powerful Bunyads or Foundations which are run by the clergy and control much of the state sector economy and also finance foreign policy adventures with their large, unaccounted funds, were just some of the contending lobbies.
All these lobbies had to be kept on an even keel by the Foreign Ministry and Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the Deputy Foreign Minister for Afghanistan. Boroujerdi, who ran Afghan policy for more than a decade was a smart diplomat. He had outlasted the earlier regime of President Akbar Ali Rafsanjani to take up the same appointment under President Khatami, until he was forced to resign after the Iranian diplomats were killed in Mazar. He could be both a dove and a hawk on Afghanistan – depending on whom he was talking to and he
also had to ensure that Iran's conflict of interests with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia did not get out of hand. In contrast, in Saudi Arabia, the Foreign Minister Prince Saud al Faisal, deferred Afghan policy to his younger brother Prince Turki and Saudi Intelligence.16
The collapse of the Afghan state increased Iran's own insecurity by creating a massive influx of drugs and weapons. The spectre of Afghanistan's ethnic conflict threatened to spill into Iran along with the economic burden of supporting millions of Afghan refugees, who were deeply disliked by ordinary Iranians. There are an estimated three million heroin addicts in Iran – the same number as in Pakistan although Iran, with 60 million people, has half the population of Pakistan. The smuggling of fuel, foodstuffs and other goods out of Iran to Afghanistan created losses in revenue and periodic economic problems – just when Iran faced a dramatic fall in revenue because of the drop in world oil prices and was trying to rebuild its economy.
Of even greater concern to the Iranians was that, since 1996, the Taliban were also secretly backing Iranian groups who were anti-regime. In Kandahar, the Taliban had given sanctuary to Ahl-e-Sunnah Wal Jamaat, which recruited Iranian Sunni militants from Khorasan and Sistan provinces. Its spokesmen from Iran's Turkmen, Baluchi and Afghan minorities, claimed that their aim was to overthrow the Shia regime in Tehran and impose a Taliban-style Sunni regime. This was a bizarre aspiration given that over 90 per cent of Iran's population was Shia, although it presumably helped to bolster support among the small band of insurgents. The group received weapons and support from the Taliban and the Iranians were convinced that the Pakistanis were also sponsoring them.
Iranian military aid to the anti-Taliban alliance escalated after the fall of Kabul in 1996 and again after the fall of Mazar in 1998. However, Iran had no contiguous border with the alliance and was forced to either fly in or rail supplies to Masud's forces, which involved getting permission from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. In 1998, Iranian Intelligence flew in plane-loads of arms to Ahmad Shah Masud's base in Kuliab in Tajikistan and Masud became a frequent visitor to Tehran. The danger which the Iran supply line faced was highlighted when Kyrgyzstan's security forces stopped a train in October 1998, in which were discovered 16 railcars loaded with 700 tons of arms and ammunition. The train had been travelling from Iran to Tajikistan with the weapons disguised as humanitarian aid.17