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LONDON: Iranian leaders peering into the fog of war in Afghanistan may rejoice at the punishment dished out to the Shia-hating Taliban, but find the new US military presence on their doorstep disconcerting.
Iran, after swiftly condemning the September 11 attacks on the United States, opted for neutrality, offering humanitarian cooperation with the West, but opposing US military action.
Despite its thundering rhetoric against US intervention, Iran itself almost went to war with its neighbour after Taliban fighters slew nine of its diplomats in 1998.
Many ordinary Iranians, frustrated with President Mohammad Khatami’s failure to push through his reformist agenda against a conservative camp headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, suspect their country missed a golden opportunity.
“They feel Iran could have changed direction,” said Mehrdad Khonsari, a London-based Iranian editor.
PAKISTAN LUCKS OUT: Nevertheless, analysts suggest that Iran risks seeing its neutrality in the Afghan conflict going virtually unrewarded, while Pakistan reaps political, economic and diplomatic benefits from its sudden abandonment of its former Taliban clients.
“President Musharraf has done remarkably well in playing a difficult hand,” said George Joffe of Cambridge University’s Centre for North African Studies. “For him, the Taliban’s collapse now is music from heaven.”
Iran supported the Shia Hazara minority, as well as Persian-speaking Tajiks such as Ismail Khan, a warlord now back in control of his old fiefdom of Herat on the Iranian border. It has even hosted Hekmatyar since his defeat by the Taliban.
The quest for political stability in Kabul may hinge on whether Iran and Pakistan abandon their proxy feuding in favour of a broad-based government that both say they want.
Pressing concerns such as border security, repatriation of Afghan refugees and control of drug trafficking may strengthen voices urging Iran to play a constructive, stabilizing role.
One problem is Tehran’s distaste for the idea of even a figurehead role for Afghanistan’s former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who evokes unwelcome echoes of Iran’s ousted monarch.
Khonsari said Iran’s clerical rulers had reluctantly accepted that the king was likely to return. “It’s an insult to the Iranian revolution and everything they stand for,” he said.
Saeed Leylaz, a commentator for Nowruz magazine, has no doubt that the Taliban’s defeat is a major gain for Iran.
“There is nothing more dangerous for a fundamentalist country than a fundamentalist neighbour,” he said by telephone from Tehran. “Iran has had good cooperation with the Western alliance against the Taliban. Our neutrality has been more important than Pakistan’s cooperation with the West.”—Reuters
