Afghanistan and Iran: Edgy neighbours

The Economist

IS IRAN unwittingly sending supplies to American forces in neighbouring Afghanistan which may in future be used against it? That fear lies behind Iran’s recent decision to block the trans-shipments of fuel to its landlocked neighbour, causing shortages and price rises, and leading Afghanistan’s chamber of commerce to threaten a trade embargo.

The Afghan government, and the NATO forces it hosts, insist that the petrol and diesel in question serves civilians alone. But Iran thinks it no coincidence that trans-shipments more than doubled in 2010, when America launched its “surge” against the Taliban. In public Iranian officials blandly attribute the bottlenecks to “technical” problems linked with their own recent decision to lift fuel subsidies. But privately, says Waheed Mujdeh, an Afghan specialist, they insist recent fuel purchases “exceed Afghanistan’s civilian needs”.

The spectacle of hundreds of stranded fuel tankers at the border crossing of Islam Qala, in north-eastern Iran, recalls similar scenes last autumn along Pakistan’s frontier with Afghanistan, when the Pakistanis blocked traffic in protest against American missile attacks on their territory. Iran’s government fears more calculated American hostility, perhaps in conjunction with a long-mooted aerial assault against the country’s nuclear installations. The Iranians already accuse America of exploiting its presence in Afghanistan to foment a separatist insurrection by the nomadic Baluch, whose territory straddles Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Iran’s Afghan policy has been to make life uncomfortable for the occupiers but without destabilising its own borderlands. To this end, Iran trains the Taliban and furnishes it with light weapons but carefully directs the militants to the south and east of Afghanistan. Besides a shared antipathy to America, little common ground stands between Shia Iran and the militantly Sunni Taliban, and the Iranians regard President Hamid Karzai as the better long-term bet, providing cash (bags of it, according to WikiLeaks) and applauding his increasingly anti-American stance. The Iranians also fund schools, mosques and the media.

The Americans are caught between two conflicting desires: to stabilise Afghanistan and to destabilise its western neighbour. They endorse the idea of a regional solution to Afghanistan’s problems yet hit Iran with sanctions because of its nuclear programme. The Iranians, for their part, mull a regional conference on Afghanistan, an empty gesture, for the Americans would not attend. As often with outsiders, helping the Afghans may not actually be the main point.