Essay on: Pakistan's relationship with Iran

In the post-Cold War era, Pak-Iran relations have suffered owing to the unruly situation in Afghanistan.

The Taliban pheno-menon is related to Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The US President Jimmy Carter approved “a broader covert action programme that instructed the CIA to provide military weapons and ammunition and support for the Afghan anti-communist resistance fighters, who soon became widely known as mujahidin or freedom fighters.” [Charles G. Cogan, “Partners in time: the CIA in Afghanistan since 1979”, World Policy Journal (1993)] 

In April 1980, the hostage rescue mission in Iran failed which gave impression of declining US power. In order to counter this impression, the Carter administration “continued to seek a broader security relationship with Pakistan to buttress covert CIA — ISI ties.” [Dennis Kux, op.cit., p.253]

On insistence of the US, the Saudis were persuaded to contribute financial assistance in a way to match the “US contribution to the plan dollar for dollar.” [Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows, p.148]

The ISI and Jama'at-e-Islami provided boarding, lodging and housing facilities for military training to cement mujahidin groups together. According to French scholar Oliver Roy, this had become a joint plan organized by the Saudis, the Muslim brotherhood and the ISI with assistance from Pakistan's Jama'at-e-Islami. [Oliver Roy, Afghanistan from holly war to civil war.]

On insistence of the US, the Saudis were persuaded to contribute financial assistance in a way to match the “US contribution to the plan dollar for dollar.”

The JUI set up hundred of madrassas in Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa and Balochistan along the Pushtun belt. The young Pakistanis and Afghan refugees were provided free education, food and lodging along with semi-military training. [Lubna Abid Ali, Post — Revolutionary Iran, p.191] The famous deeni madrassa at Akora Khattak (KP) Dar-ul- Uloom Haqqania had been founded in 1947. There are around 2000 Talibs from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asian states. Senator Sami-ul-Haq is chief of this madrassa. General Zia-ul-Haq had asked the District Zakat Committees to give madrassas money from Zakat funds. According to a survey conducted in 1997 by the Home Department of the government of Punjab, there were 169 deeni madrassas in Rawalpindi. Most of these madrassas were serving as hideouts for criminals. [The News, May 26, 1997]

The vast majority of Taliban are Sunnis, who follow the Hanfi fiqah. There are about 14 per cent Shias in Afghanistan who live in province of Bamian. Foreign Minister of Iran Alaudin Borujerdi visited Bamian in December 1995 and held talks with Karim Khalili to bring Afghan Shia factions together. 

In 1995 when the Taliban captured Herat, the commander Ismail Khan of Herat took shelter in neighbouring Iran. Heart, with Iranian assistance, was re-captured along with Farah and Nimroz. Tehran established training camps in eastern Iran where Persian-speaking Afghans from Herat, Farah and Nimroz were trained to fight the Taliban. (The News, February 1, 1996.] Russian provided Iran $10 billion worth of weapons between 1989 and 1993. Russia had been apprehensive of Pushtun-dominated Tiban. 

Iranian tried to establish a broad-based government in Afghanistan to end the hostilities. On January 25, 1997 at Tehran conference, Prof Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbidin Hikmatyar, Karim Khalili and representatives of Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ahmad Shah Masood participated. Additional Secretary Iftikhar Murshid from the Pakistan Foreign Office also attended. However, Taliban refused to participate. [The News, April 17 and 18, 1996]

The US President Jimmy Carter approved “a broader covert action programme that instructed the CIA to provide military weapons and ammunition and support for the Afghan anti-communist resistance fighters, who soon became widely known as mujahidin or freedom fighters.”

On August – 1998, the Taliban were involved in indiscriminate killings in Mazar-e-Sharif contrary to Islamic injunctions, no one was allowed to bury the dead for at least a week. [Michael Winchester, “Ethnic cleansing in Afghanistan”, Asiaweek, November 6, 1998] The Taliban wanted to cleanse Shias from the north. The Shia population was given three choices: to convert to Sunni Islam, leave for Iran or die. The Spah-e-Sahaba party entered Iranian consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif, herded 11 Iranian diplomats, intelligence officers and journalist into the basement and shot them dead. Tehran had contacted Pakistan government to guarantee the security of their consulate, because the Iranian knew that ISI officers had driven into Mazar with the Taliban. [Ahmad Rashid, The Taliban, p.74] Within three days an intense civil strife ensured in the Mazar when Hazaras resisted being disarmed. The Taliban were massacred, 250 Pakistanis were killed and 550 captured as prisoners. The turning point in Pak-Iran relations came when the head of Iranian cultural centre was killed in Multan in September 1993. The relations suffered a serious blow when Tehran started military exercises along the Iran-Afghanistan border. The tension subsided with the intrusion of UN special representative Lakhdar Brahimi who met Mullah Omar in Kandahar on 14 October 1998. The Taliban killed hundred of Pakistani Shias between 1996 and 1999. The sectarian bloodshed undermined Pakistan's relations with Iran. [Source: Lubna Abid Ali: Post-Revolutionary Iran Foreign Policy]