Iran woos Farsi-speaking
nations By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
There are many interrelated reasons why
the United States policy of isolating Iran has
failed, one being the prominent regional role
played by Tehran that simultaneously relies on a
net of bilateral, trilateral and multilateral
arrangements. These are on the rise, irrespective
of the nuclear standoff, sanctions and threats of
military action against Iran.
One
initiative in particular that Iran is genuinely
interested in, and hopeful about its prospects,
deals with trilateral cooperation among the three
Farsi-speaking nations of Iran, Afghanistan and
Tajikistan. Such a union, if formed in the
(intermediate) future, will definitely enhance
Iran's regional status and create new
linkages
between Iran and Central Asia
and beyond.
Forged by the common bonds of
culture and language, this trilateral cooperation
was recently given a "big jump", to quote Iranian
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who attended
a meeting with his counterparts, Khan Zarih and
Rangin Dadfar Sepanta, in Dushanbe, the Tajik
capital, in March. The three men issued a lengthy
joint communique, consisting of a prelude and 12
clauses that emphasized the need to expand
economic, trade, transportation, energy and
cultural exchanges among the three countries, as
well as enhancing cooperation against the common
threats, such as terrorism, extremism, drug
trafficking, organized crime and any "new
threats".
As member states of the regional
organization, the Economic Cooperation
Organization (ECO), Iran, Afghanistan and
Tajikistan have framed their trilateral
cooperation largely within the framework of the
ECO, as a sub-category of their broader,
multilateral cooperation on a regional scale. (The
other members of the ECO are Azerbaijan,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Turkey,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.)
The somewhat
dormant ECO is likely to benefit from any
noticeable improvement in trade and non-trade
cooperation between and among its 10 members, most
of whom simultaneously belong to a number of other
regional organizations, for example the Black Sea
Organization, the Organization of Central Asian
Cooperation, the Commonwealth of Independent
States and Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO).
The idea is that multiple
membership in diverse and at times parallel
organizations has a complementary effect and
represents little or no friction with respect to
these states' simultaneous membership in such
global, and globalizing, organizations as the
World Trade Organization.
Yet, this may be
simplistic and the complex relationship between
various regional and global organizations defies a
simple explanation as there are both positive and
negative side effects that need to be taken into
consideration by the participating states. This is
particularly so when the terms of bilateral or
trilateral agreements, for example on tariff
reduction or preferential treatment, create a
special category of relationships that do not sink
well with broader multilateral arrangements.
A clue to the complexity of this subject
matter, the problem often is (potentially)
accentuated by the competing side effects of
trilateral agreements. A case in point, over the
past decade or so, Iran has explored various
trilateral groupings, such as with India and
Afghanistan, which run parallel to each other and,
yet, do not necessarily complement each other. An
example is the proposed cooperation on energy
between Iran, Pakistan and India over a gas
pipeline from Iran, where Pakistan is wary of
India's role and influence in Afghanistan.
Similarly, the ECO-based initiative to
enhance cooperation among the Farsi-speaking
nations has a definite geocultural dimension or
ramification, at least as far as Turkey and other
Turkish-speaking ECO members are concerned. Iran
has always been suspicious of Turkey's, or for
that matter Kazakhstan's, attempts to forge closer
ties to the Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan and the
Turkish-speaking Central Asian states; such
attempts, particularly by Turkey during the early
and mid-1990s, were perceived as being directly
anti-Iranian in nature.
Since then, mutual
fears and concerns of pan-Turkism and
pan-Persianism have been much dissipated by the
growing maturity of Iran-Turkey and
Iran-Azerbaijan relations in particular, based on
mutual and shared interests, and the initial sound
and fury of a "new great game" in Central Asia and
the Caucasus has been replaced by the cold,
realistic logic of cooperation and
interdependence.
Nevertheless, as far as
Iran is concerned, in addition to economic and
trade issues, it is also confronted by a set of
unique security and strategic considerations that
are connected with the other issues. Thus, for
example, Iran's cooperation with Afghanistan,
perceived as a crucial gateway to both the South
Asian sub-continent, China and Central Asia,
impacts Iran's interaction with both the US and
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as
well as the issue of Iran's quest for membership
in the SCO (which includes Tajikistan) as well as
China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Uzbekistan.
As a result, the recent
breakthrough in the long sought after trilateral
cooperation with Afghanistan and Tajikistan, if
carried through with meaningful implementation,
actually readies Iran for SCO membership, where it
has observer status, as it signals a greater
degree and level of Iran's integration in a region
deemed important by the SCO. It was therefore
hardly a coincidence that Mottaki made his
announcement about Iran's intention to join the
SCO in Dushanbe while participating in the
above-said trilateral meeting.
Here, an
important priority of Tehran is to create the
necessary infrastructure for greater economic
interaction with neighboring Afghanistan and "near
neighbor" Tajikistan, in light of the relatively
low level of trade with both countries - in 2006,
Iran's net exports to Afghanistan were barely more
than US$500 million, compared to $7 million in
imports.
Similarly, Iran's exports to
Tajikistan for the same year stood at $128.4
million compared to $6.6 million imports from
Tajikistan. This is not to mention Iran's economic
assistance to both countries, for example, free
shipment of oil to Tajikistan.
As part of
its effort to enhance inter-regional trade, Iran
has been an enthusiastic supporter of the ECO's
vision for an ECO free-trade area by 2015, as well
as ECO's trade agreement, that seeks to lower
trade duties to 15% on 80% of goods traded within
eight years.
The ECO has also been
involved in a number of projects in Afghanistan,
such as the Kabul zoo, building parks and health
centers, and the upcoming ECO summit will likely
result in more such projects for war-ravaged
Afghanistan.
At last November's meeting of
the ECO's council of ministers in Herat,
Afghanistan, specific attention was given to
building new transportation linkages and to
implementing the rail and road parts of the ECO's
Transit Transport Framework Agreement. This is an
issue of interest to India as well, a participant
in the project known as the North-South Corridor
that aims to connect Iran's Persian Gulf port city
of Chahbahar to points in India via Afghanistan.
For now, however, significant security,
financial, political and other hurdles have slowed
considerably the implementation phase of most ECO
projects and it remains to be seen if the new
boost in trilateral cooperation mentioned above
will also boost cooperation among the ECO states
as a whole - the fate of this trilateral
cooperation depends to a large extent on
substantive improvements in bilateral relations.
Concerning the latter, last October,
Afghanistan and Tajikistan began reviving their
cross-border trade and this has been welcomed by
Tehran that lacks a common border with Tajikistan
and attaches a great deal of importance to the
Afghan corridor to Tajikistan. During the past 20
years, Tehran, by signing some 150 cooperation
agreements with Dushanbe, has devoted a great deal
of energy to expanding commercial relations with
Tajikistan, as a result of which today Iranians
own dozens of factories, companies and engineering
firms in Tajikistan.
Having played a key
role in mediating the internal tensions in
Tajikistan during the 1990s and beyond, Iran since
the mid-1990s has steadily increased its level of
cooperation with Tajikistan. A case in point, in
late 1996, Iran's first deputy president, Hassan
Habibi, visited Dushanbe and signed 11 agreements
on industrial, agricultural, transport, education
and cultural exchanges.
In his July 2006
trip to Dushanbe, Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad and his counterpart, President Emomali
Rahmon, signed a number of similar agreements.
Ahmadinejad described his trip as "very positive"
and cited Iran's key contribution with the two
projects of building the Anzab tunnel in northern
Tajikistan and the Tudeh stone power plant.
However, Iran's expanding relations with
Tajikistan and Afghanistan are not particularly
welcomed by the US, which reportedly kept Afghan
President Hamid Karzai from attending a Tehran
summit of the three Farsi-speaking nations in 2006
(although Karzai at the time cited bad weather).
Compared with the Tajik president, Karzai
has so far shown a lesser degree of enthusiasm for
a union of Farsi-speaking nations, putting the
priority on specific joint actions such as
narcotics. Rahmon, on the other hand, is closely
aligned with Russia's foreign policy priorities,
which include a basic misgiving about the US's
military presence in Afghanistan. Meanwhile,
Washington pursues its own agenda of fostering
ties with Central Asian states through a
cooperation agreement and US officials are set on
regarding their competition with Iran in the
region in zero-sum terms. And that, in a nutshell,
means doing whatever possible to block or retard
the development of any cultural, linguistic or
political convergence between Iran and its Central
Asian neighbors.
Kaveh L
Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of
After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's
Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author
of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown
Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2,
Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote
"Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard
International Review, and is author of
Iran's Nuclear
Program: Debating Facts Versus
Fiction.
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