Foreign
Devils In
The Iranian Mountains
By M K Bhadrakumar
26 February, 2007
Asia
Times Online
In
a rare public criticism of Pakistan, the Tehran Times commented last
week that an exclusive Islamabad-Washington nexus is at work manipulating
the Afghan situation. The daily, which reflects official Iranian thinking,
spelled out something that others perhaps knew already but were afraid
to talk about publicly.
All the same, the commentary
gave a candid Iranian insight into the state of play in Afghanistan.
It estimated that without a comprehensive rethink of strategy aimed
at addressing the problems of weak political institutions, misgovernance,
corruption, warlordism, tardy reconstruction, drug trafficking and attendant
mafia, and excesses by the coalition forces, the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) couldn't possibly hope to get anywhere near on top
of the crisis in Afghanistan.
The commentary pointed a
finger at Pakistan's training the Taliban and providing them with "logistical
and political support". It highlighted that US Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates, who visited Islamabad recently, chose to sidestep the
issue and instead bonded with President General Pervez Musharraf. This
is because Washington's priority - that the "new cold war"
objective of NATO is to establish a long-term presence in the region
- can be realized only with Musharraf's cooperation.
The Iranian outburst was,
conceivably, prompted by the spurt of trans-border terrorism inside
Iran's Sistan-Balochistan province, which borders Pakistan. Ten days
ago, a militant group called Jundallah killed 11 members of Iran's elite
Revolutionary Guards in an attack in the city center of Zahedan. Iranian
state media reported that the attack was part of US plans to provoke
ethnic and religious violence in Iran. Balochs are Sunnis numbering
about 1.5 million out of Iran's 70 million predominantly Shi'ite population.
Iranian Interior Minister
Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi alleged that in the recent past, US intelligence
operatives in Afghanistan had been meeting and coordinating with Iranian
militants, apart from encouraging the smuggling of drugs into Iran from
Afghanistan. He said the US operatives were working to create Shi'ite-Sunni
strife within Iran.
American investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh has copiously written about recent US covert operations
inside Iran. With reference to the incidents in Zahedan, Stratfor, a
think-tank with close connections to the US military and security establishment,
commented that the Jundallah militants are receiving a "boost"
from Western intelligence agencies. Stratfor said, "The US-Iranian
standoff has reached a high level of intensity ... a covert war [is]
being played out ... the United States has likely ramped up support
for Iran's oppressed minorities in an attempt to push the Iranian regime
toward a negotiated settlement over Iraq."
Iran is fast joining ranks
with India and Afghanistan as a victim of trans-border violence perpetrated
by irredentist elements crossing over from Pakistan. Tehran, too, will
probably face an existential dilemma as to whether or not such acts
of terrorism are taking place with the knowledge of Musharraf and, more
importantly, whether or not Musharraf is capable of doing anything about
the situation.
Iran, perhaps, is somewhat
better placed than India or Afghanistan to resolve this dilemma, since
it is the US (and not Pakistan) that is sponsoring the trans-border
terrorism. And what could Musharraf do about US activities on Pakistani
soil even if he wanted to? The Iranians seem to have sized up Musharraf's
predicament.
A Foreign Ministry spokesman
in Tehran, while announcing last Sunday that the Pakistani ambassador
to Iran was being summoned to receive a demarche over the Zahedan incident,
also qualified that it was Iran's belief that the Pakistani government
as such couldn't be party to the creation of such "insecurities"
on the Pakistan-Iran border region.
Indeed, Tehran is used to
the US stratagem. Sponsoring terrorist activities inside Iran has been
a consistent feature of US regional policy over the past quarter-century.
Tehran seems to have anticipated the current wave. Last May, in a nationwide
television address, President Mahmud Ahmadinejad accused Iran's "enemies"
of stoking the fires of ethnic tensions within Iran. He vowed that the
Iranian nation would "destroy the enemy plots".
A Washington conference last
year brought together representatives of Iranian Kurdish, Balochi, Ahvazi,
Turkmen and Azeri organizations with the aim of forming a united front
against the Tehran regime. An influential US think-tank, American Enterprise
Institute (AEI), went a step further and prepared a report from the
neo-conservative perspective on what a Yugoslavia-like federated Iran
would look like.
John Bradley, an author on
the Persian Gulf, has written in the current issue of The Washington
Quarterly magazine that Balochistan province is "particularly crucial
for Iran's national security as it borders Sunni Pakistan and US-occupied
Afghanistan ... In fact, the Sunni Balochi resistance could prove valuable
to Western intelligence agencies with an interest in destabilizing the
hardline regime in Tehran."
Bradley added, "The
United States maintained close contacts with the Balochis till 2001,
at which point it withdrew support when Tehran promised to repatriate
any US airmen who had to land in Iran as a result of damage sustained
in combat operations in Afghanistan. These contacts could be revived
to sow turmoil in Iran's southeastern province and work against the
ruling regime."
Bradley revealed that US
policymakers are taking a great interest lately in Iran's internal ethnic
politics, "focusing on their possible impact on the Iranian regime's
long-term stability as well as impact on its short-term domestic and
foreign policy choices". He specifically cited a classified research
project sponsored by the US Department of Defense that is examining
the depth and nature of ethnic grievances in Iran's plural society.
"The Pentagon is especially
interested in whether Iran is prone to a violent fragmentation along
the same kinds of faultlines that are splitting Iraq and that helped
to tear apart the Soviet Union with
the collapse of communism,"
Bradley wrote.
The US administration asked
Congress for US$75 million last year for promoting "democratic
change" within Iran. But the main drawback for US policy is that
with the possible exception of the Kurds, none of Iran's ethnic minorities
is seeking to secede from the Iranian state. Also, it is not a situation
where ethnic minorities are subjected to persecution or discrimination
in Iran. The majority Persian community and ethnic minorities alike
feel the alienation endemic to the problem of poverty, economic deprivation,
misgovernance, corruption and lawlessness.
Indeed, the US policy to
light the fire of ethnic and sectarian strife could well end up creating
an "arc of instability" stretching from Iraq to Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Even right-wing Iranian exile Amir Taheri, who is usually
a strong backer of the Bush administration's interventionist policy
in the Middle East, has warned that although fanning the flames of ethnic
unrest and resentment is not difficult and that a Yugoslavia-like breakup
scenario might hasten the demise of the Iranian regime, it could also
"unleash much darker forces of nationalism and religious zealotry
that could plunge the entire region into years, even decades, of bloody
crisis".
The irony is that Afghanistan
is being put to use as a launch pad by the US for sponsoring terrorism
directed against Iran, when the raison d'etre of the US occupation of
Afghanistan during the past five years has been for the stated purpose
of fighting a "war on terrorism". Besides, Iranian cooperation
at a practical level went a long way in facilitating the US invasion
of Afghanistan in 2001. Even Iran's detractors would admit that during
the past five years, Tehran has followed a policy of good-neighborliness
toward the Kabul government, no matter Washington's dominance over President
Hamid Karzai. In fact, Iran figures as a major donor country contributing
to Afghanistan's reconstruction.
From this perspective, US
President George W Bush's speech at an AEI function on February 15 outlining
his new Afghan strategy assumes great importance. The fact that Bush
chose a citadel of neo-conservatism to unveil the "top-to-bottom
review" of his new Afghan strategy was symbolic. In essence, Bush
underlined the imperative of a long-term Western military presence in
Afghanistan. There was a triumphalism in Bush's tone that he brought
NATO into Afghanistan - as if that was a strategy by itself. He couldn't
hide his glee that NATO had been brought by the scruff of its neck into
the Hindu Kush - where it was going to slouch along the soft underbelly
of Russia and China for the foreseeable future.
Bush summed up his sense
of achievement: "Isn't it interesting that NATO is now in Afghanistan?
I suspect 20 years ago if a president stood in front of the AEI and
said, 'I'll make a prediction to you that NATO will be a force for freedom
and peace outside of Europe,' you probably never would have invited
the person back. Today, NATO is in Afghanistan."
In his entire speech, Bush
didn't refer even once to the role of the United Nations in Afghanistan.
Also, Bush's speech completely sidestepped the urgent need to pressure
Pakistan to clamp down on the Taliban. Actually, Bush ended up praising
Musharraf's "frontier strategy" in the tribal agencies. To
be sure, the Tehran Times was right in concluding that Washington, with
the "cooperation of regional powers like Pakistan", is realizing
the long-term NATO military presence in Afghanistan.
Soon after Bush spoke at
the AEI, spin-doctors in Washington began spreading word in select media
that al-Qaeda was back in business in the Pakistani tribal areas. Self-styled
counter-terrorism officials in Washington who refused to be named will
now have us believe that the al-Qaeda "leadership command and control
is robust" and "the chain of command has been re-established".
As the New York Times put
it, "Until recently, the Bush administration had described Osama
bin Laden and [Ayman] al-Zawahri as detached from their followers and
cut off from operational control of al-Qaeda." But all of a sudden
the picture has changed. The daily said, "The United States has
identified several new al-Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including
one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against
targets beyond Afghanistan [emphasis added].
"US analysts said recent
intelligence showed that the compounds functioned under a loose command
structure and were operated by groups of Arab, Pakistani and Afghan
militants, allied with al-Qaeda."
In other words, the "war
on terror" in Afghanistan has come full circle. A few things stand
out. First, as Bush pithily summed up, Musharraf "is an ally in
this war on terror and it's in our interest to support him in fighting
the extremists". The restoration of democracy in Pakistan will
have to wait. Second, the US and NATO military occupation of Afghanistan
is for the long haul. The specter of al-Qaeda's resurgence is sufficient
to justify it. Third, the US military presence in the Central Asian
region will also continue for the foreseeable future, no matter what
Russia or China feels about it.
Fourth, regional powers must
appreciate that it is the United States that stands between them and
the deluge of Islamic extremism. They must therefore cooperate with
the US (and NATO) and trust Washington to represent their best interests
in the devilishly obscure Pakistani tribal areas. Finally, this is a
long-term ideological struggle - freedom and democracy versus extremism
and obscurantism. And wherever there is "democracy deficit"
- be it oil-rich Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan or Turkmenistan - the US has
a right to intervene.
Meanwhile, what does Tehran
do about the Zahedan incident? Does it retaliate against NATO in Afghanistan?
Should it hold Musharraf accountable for the covert US operations staged
from Pakistani soil? In chess, this is called a classic zugzwang - having
to choose between two bad options.
M K Bhadrakumar served as
a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service for more than 29 years,
with postings including ambassador to Uzbekistan (1995-98) and to Turkey
(1998-2001).
Copyright 2007 Asia Times
Online Ltd.