Iran makes its mark in
Iraq By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad is making all the right noises on his
landmark two-day visit to Iraq, which began on
Sunday, but at the same time Tehran is keeping its
options open in the broader context of its ties
with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan and
with al-Qaeda-linked militants.
"This is a
new page in the history of the relations between
the two countries," said Ahmadinejad, the first
Iranian president to visit Iraq since the 1979
Iranian revolution. "We have the same
understanding of things and the two parties are
determined to strengthen their political, economic
and cultural cooperation," said Ahmadinejad, while
offering Iraq a US$1 billion loan for development
projects to be handled by Iranian companies.
Iran's influence in Iraq - with which it
fought an eight-year war in
the 1980s
- has risen steadily since the US-led invasion of
the country in 2003 to oust the Ba'athist regime
of Saddam Hussein and it supports the
Shi'ite-dominated government of Prime Minister
Nuri al-Maliki as well as Shi'ite militias.
However, Tehran is widely accused - most
notably by the United States - of also backing the
anti-Shi'ite al-Qaeda-led Iraqi insurgency. It is
on this issue that the Shi'ite and Kurd-dominated
government in Baghdad will want to press
Ahmadinejad.
To a large extent, the answer
to this apparent contradiction lies in the
changing face of broader regional alliances,
particularly with reference to Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
For years, Iran's intelligence
and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)
were engaged in a covert war against the Taliban
and Salafi Islamic militant movements (like the
Jordanian-based anti-Shi'ite Jamaat al-Tauhid of
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which later merged with
al-Qaeda) and made countries like Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Lebanon a battle ground for proxy
wars.
But in the post-September 11, 2001,
era of the "war on terror", traditional alliances
have been shaken up and now the Taliban and
regional Salafi militant organizations are no
longer targets in Iran's covert wars.
Changing
times Soon after the September 11
attacks, and with Afghanistan about to be invaded,
China secretly approached the Taliban with an
offer of help as Beijing was aware that the
Taliban would be routed without inflicting any
harm on the Americans. This offer was made despite
the fact that the Taliban were hosting Muslim
separatists of China's Xinjiang region.
The message was conveyed through the
Taliban's ambassador in Pakistan, Mullah Zaeef.
However, Taliban leader Mullah Omar rejected the
overtures outright on the grounds that it would
upset the separatists in Xinjiang, who would
consider that the Taliban had betrayed their
cause.
Mullah Omar, did, though, want
support from Iran. He sent a delegation to Tehran
which tried to smooth over the contentious issues
between them. The killing of Shi'ites, the
delegation explained, as well as the kidnapping
and execution of Iranian diplomats during the
Taliban rule, were the acts of individual
commanders who had personal tribal feuds.
Iranian officials met the delegation, but
did not respond to the Taliban's call for help.
Meanwhile, Taliban commanders associated
with Jalaluddin Haqqani took matters into their
own hands and in defiance of Mullah Omar's
directives they established connections with
China. In 2006, they received their first shipment
of arms through the Wahkhan corridor, the only
territorial link between Xinjiang and Afghanistan,
but the goods were seized by Pakistani security
forces. Subsequently, Haqqani's group did succeed
in getting some arms from China.
And in
2007, they established ties with Tehran. According
to a Haqqani family source who spoke to Asia Times
Online on the condition of anonymity, "We can give
no word on the modalities of our relationship with
Iran, other than to say it provided us with money
and arms."
This development took place at
a time that the Taliban and local Shi'ite groups
clashed in Khurram Agency in northwest Pakistan.
The strongest Shi'ite outfit - the banned
Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqah-i-Jaferi (now renamed the
Islamic Movement) - is financed by Tehran and many
of its leaders have been educated in Iran and they
are considered the most important Iranian proxy in
Pakistan. "We [Taliban] had sustained severe
damages and then Sirajuddin Haqqani [son of
Jalaluddin], Moulvi Fariq Muhammad [from Bajaur
Agency] and Baitullah Mehsud [Pakistani Taliban
leader in South Waziristan] sent a few thousand
fighters to save us from complete defeat," a
Pakistani al-Qaeda member told this correspondent
recently in Peshawar.
"We
moved forward and blocked all their supply lines
and cornered them on the Afghan border. Then
Pakistani air force aircraft bombed their
positions [Shi'ites'] and they were forced to flee
into Afghanistan." Those Shi'ites, about 5,000 in
number, were given refuge by the Afghan government
of President Hamid Karzai. He said that since
Pakistan had once given Afghanis shelter, when the
Taliban made some Pakistani people's lives hell,
they would be given refuge. At the same time, Iran
provided a convenient corridor to al-Qaeda
traveling from Afghanistan through Iran into Iraq
to fight against the Americans, despite the
knowledge that Iraqi Shi'ites, Iran's allies,
would also be casualities.
These strange alliances are
not restricted to regional players.
International players have their own intrigues, a senior
Pakistani security official explained to Asia
Times Online.
"British intelligence worked
on a theory back in 2004 that if al-Qaeda and the
Taliban, regrouping in Waziristan, could be
engaged to fight against Pakistani forces,
pressure on North Atlantic Treaty Organization
troops in Afghanistan would be reduced," the
official said.
"They used agents to spread
their ideas through little-known religious
decrees, saying that attacking Pakistani troops
was a priority, and this at a time when Pakistan
had mounted military operations in the tribal
areas [against militants]. This thinking became
popular and now we see the Afghan front is quieter
and Pakistan faces the worst sort of
insurgencies."
Meanwhile, while in Iraq Ahmadinejad
is expected to ask his counterparts for
the release of 11 IRGC members held in Iraqi jails
(exclusively run by Iraqis, not the US) and he
will pledge good ties with the Iraqi government.
There is also the possibility Tehran will
offer to mediate in talks with southern Iraqi
Shi'ite militias influenced by the IRGC to get
them to cooperate with the Iraqi government.
All the while, Iran's connections with
al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the regional "war on
terror" theaters of Afghanistan and Iraq will
remain intact.
Syed Saleem
Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan
Bureau Chief. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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