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In a very interesting bit of coincidental timing, two stories have emerged on the role of Iran in Afghanistan. The Times of London (behind a subscription paywall) reported on Friday that “intelligence officials have revealed that the Iranian government is releasing significant al-Qaeda terrorists from jail so that they can help to reorganise its battered structures in border areas of Pakistan.” The Times also reported that Iran is directly aiding the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Conveniently providing confirmation for this story, NATO informed the press that an Iranian Revolutionary Guard al-Quds officer was captured Saturday by NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.
Dawn (via AFP) provided more details from The Times’ article:
Citing Pakistani and Middle Eastern officials speaking anonymously, the Times said Iranian authorities were giving covert support to the Islamist militants as they fight against Nato troops.
“In many cases they are being facilitated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards,” The Times quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying.
The Times said those released include Saif al-Adel, a high-ranking Egyptian al Qaeda member on the FBI’s most wanted list for alleged involvement in the deadly 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.
They also include Suleiman Abu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti accused of being Al-Qaeda’s official spokesman at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and Abu Khayr al-Masri, a key aide to al Qaeda deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
Three members of the family of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were also among those freed, the officials were quoted by the Times as saying.
More details on the captured Iranian come from AFP:
The man, described as a “key Taliban weapons facilitator”, was captured Saturday in Zhari district, Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan, a volatile district targeted in recent coalition offensives.
He was targeted “for facilitating the movement of weapons between Iran and Kandahar through Nimroz province,” a spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.
It is thought he was connected to smuggling small arms between the countries.
“The now-detained man was considered a Kandahar-based weapons facilitator with direct ties to other Taliban leaders in the province,” the ISAF spokesman added in a statement.
The most interesting part about the timing of these two stories is that they came out just as the US (or ISAF), Afghanistan and Pakistan were holding their Tripartite Commission. The photo above comes from Thursday. ISAFMedia provided the following caption for the photo:
Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the International Security Assistance Force, met with Afghan Chief of General Staff LTG Sher Mahammed Karimi, and Pakistan Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, during a Tripartite Commission, Dec. 23. The commission is a recurring event, and today’s discussions centered on regional cooperation and economic development, as well as post-Lisbon way ahead on reconciliation and reintegration programs and transition. ISAF is a key component of the international community’s engagement in Afghanistan, assisting Afghan authorities in providing security and stability while creating the conditions for reconstruction development.
Given that this meeting was going on at the time of the revelations of Iran’s involvement, it is interesting to go back and note that the story on Iran’s release of al Qaeda militants states that the information comes primarily from Pakistani sources. Further, the AFP article on the capture of the Iranian in Afghanistan observes:
Kabul has insisted that Iran, as a neighbouring country, has a legitimate concern in helping the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan.
So it would appear that while Afghanistan sees a “legimate” role for Iran in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US are doing their best to keep Iran in a negative light while they meet with Afghanistan to discuss reconstruction.
49 Comments
“a senior Pakistani intelligence official”
That is certainly a credible source…not
I’m sure they’ll say Iran is involved with NK too….Oh yeah…
I don’t believe a single thing any of these oxymorons say.
Here it comes! The excuse®.
Interesting! Hmm, notice they never mention the Saudi’s in any of this?
The story gets bigger and the web of players too. How can anyone tell who is friend or foe? Oh yeah, it’s supposed to be that way.
Be afraid people, mushroom clouds and all that.
Good Morning, Friend. Do you still have my email address?
Ummm. Not sure. My inbox has been messed up lately. I’ll look.
Oh, nevermind. I’ll send you a note later.
I’m sorry. If I do, I can’t find it.
Right…and be afraid, very afraid particularly of thermoses…that may erupt into mushroom clouds..
Found it. Incoming. :)
Divide and Conquer?
“Wikileaks Song” by Jahfrey Rootzway (Reggae style) (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL8vygwS0vU )
I think just conquer. The US seems to be hell bent on making as many enemies as possible.
Maybe I’m reading too many books, but if one asks the question, Who profits from war, the answer is usually the Arms Manufacturers. Am I being naive?
On the outside or on the inside too? Seems very dangerous for our country to be so divided, so polarized. And, then taking money from the outside too seems like an extremely dangerous thing to do.
Hmmm…speaking of WL…interesting how much EyeRan was mentioned in the intentionally leaked documents that those bad, bad “guys” leaked. That is one of the reasons I think it is a set-up.
You’re never naive. :)
I agree with all of that
It’s been that way for sometime. After fighting in wars for the wealthy Italian bourgeois, why did Francis of Assisi ditch his dad? War profiteering.
Sometimes I am. Sometimes my need to see the good in humanity has blinded me to realize how much evil exists. But, thanks for the vote of confidence.
I didn’t know that. Francis’ dad was a profiteer? That’s some interesting inspiration.
I think it was Washington himself who didn’t believe in the US having parties. Maybe it’s time for no parties, no borders and everyone just getting along.
Okay, now I do sound naive.
I don’t know about naive demi. He was just ahead of his time. I’ve often thought that an alien invasion would do humanity some good, if we stood any chance of fending it off and surviving that is.
Something to level the playing field? How about a phony armegeddon to take away all the phony good folks? I’ll pray on that one. :)
Do you know why we sometimes run out of reply buttons?
Yep, Francis was a social justice radical for his time. He also helped elevate the position of women in his society. He worked with Claire to found a respected alternative for women to escape slavery. They built a sanctuary (convent) together. His brothers had a monastery as well for political reasons to avoid being shutdown by the aristocracy as good-for-nothing hippie frauds. It was quite the sell job to get the rich to let go of the women as the medieval European way was to trade them for money and political power. But since Francis was authentic in his renunciation of materialism and because he was of the aristocratic caste, he got away with it.
There’s a Poor Claire’s Mission up on the hill near my house. I run into the nuns from there at the local stores and always enjoy chatting with them. Renews my faith in people each time.
Nope. No idea. It always happens about the same point though. It’s probably just a part of the formatting. After all, the indentation is pretty extreme by then.
Something to make people realize that we are more closely akin than we are different. We share almost 99% of the DNA with Chimps and Bonobos. We share orders of magnitude more DNA with each other.
Is that why I like you so much? We are more the same than we are different?
A little Gulf-of-Tonkin stocking-stuffer for the world, on Christmas Eve. How nice.
Of course, when we invade and set up our sockpuppet government(albeit, one that’s becoming a bit unruly…) we can then excoriate the Iranians for sending in 3 people, while we try to make the place safe for the Fortune 500, with half of our military and $2 billion a week…in the process, killing any of the wogs who don’t want to become part of our 51st state.
Jane has a fresh post already in progress: A Holiday Message From Bradley Manning
The radical anti-materialism hippies had to be complete celibates (this was not the case in ancient India for true adepts) in order to exist because of the ruling caste’s (banksters and their private armies) medieval habits of thinking about power, property, inheritance and the constant, unending excuses for wars-of-acquisition (e.g. the big world war of that time was the Crusades) encoded in their laws that they adopted from the Roman Empire. Where does the marital ring come from? This is at least as old as Roman culture as this was a symbol of a contract. Marriage for love– although still conflated with medieval ideas about women as property — is a very modern idea.
Of all the Orders, the Franciscans have a lot of cred still today. Keeping it simple and refraining from having political status is a smart safety valve. I think reading up on the history of the Roman Catholic Church is very instructive as it is the history of an international government that could have only been possible only through military campaigns and the forcing of a certain belief structure and world view. The Roman Emperors co-opted it pretty fast. It was used to reinforce and consolidate the political power of existing aristocracy that would join the club. This international government is imploding now. It sowed the seeds of its own destruction very early in its history … I’d say at least by the First Council of Nicaea (link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea ).
The other half of this story. The US sanctioned Iran to try and destabilize the regime and bring it down. Since August the supply of gasoline has been a major problem (its price and availability) for the average working stiff in that country. So, Iran made a deal with Eritrea to refine gas for them in exchange for Iran spending a ton of money updating a Russian-built refinery. The USA threatened the Eritrean government with military action if it folllowed through on its deal with Iran. Several days ago Iran shipped a number of troops and some ballistic missiles to Eritrea to defend it from American attack. Why is anyone surprised that Iran would stop cooperating with us on Afghanistan given our behavior toward them? Peace
in case this thread is still active …. i’m quite flummoxed to come out with a rationale as to why pakistan would be interested in painting iran in a negative light – sure it serves US/nato/isaf to spin it that way but i would have thought iran is important to pakistan in cornering afghanistan to toe the pak military/isi domination and also in controlling that long border area in balochistan
Perhaps Ho Chi Minh Trail as well? An excuse for drone attacks on the Iran border to stop the flow of small arms?
Where do you see Pakistan painting Iran in a negative light? Thanks. Peace
Fixed-width column for the text, and indenting the replies. They need to do something about it; maybe the reply button can be moved to the left side. (I hate the nested comments for this reason.)
Unfortunately, it isn’t humanity who has its hands on the reins of power. It’s whatever the antithesis of humanity is, so always expect the worst.
I don’t see any difference between Iran operating in Afghanistan, if that is in fact true, and US forces operating in Pakistan. As a matter of fact, the latter is more offensive since there aren’t any overt hostilities occurring there.
Another good book on the church is The Jesuits by Malachi Martin.
That can be remedied by going to a previous post within the thread by the same person you want to reply to and writing your comment. It will appear at the end of that particular thread within the post.
That and the people who then control the resources, deliver them, build the Embassies and bases, military contractors, NGOs of many stripes, corporations who ‘rebuild’ after wars that really never end. Coming closer? ;o)
And still, as taxpayers, we pay for the wars. Machiavellian system we sit still for, isn’t it?
One more level of irony hits me on further reflection. Note that the “Tripartite Commission” that ISAF is touting in their photo ostensibly is about “reconstruction” in Afghanistan, but the three figureheads for the meeting are all the military heads of the respective forces in the area. That says it all. This is about war, not reconstruction.
I was making that assertion because Pakistan is the stated source of the stories revealing that Iran is releasing al Qaeda terrorists into Afghanistan and running weapons there.
The renunciates of many cultures sought to break that cycle and bring folks to their senses in the process. They support true human freedom. This is the real meaning behind the word “saint.” Politicians come along and attempt to co-opt their image and accomplishments for their own purposes. It’s an old human pattern but really took off with the rise of the city-states. You get to see it now in a modern context.
Iran is “important” to Pakistan, which has interests, many of which which have little or nothing to do with the US’s ill concieved war. Iran is a regional power and a competitor with Pakistan. Both nations aspire to be millitary hegemons in the region. Iran is a potential threat to Pakistan WRT Kashmir and has threatened in the past to cooperate with India over various disputes with Pakistan.
Trusting the Pakistan intel “ISI” is never a good idea given the fact they themselves support the Taliban.
Meanwhile while the US – and Pakistan – try to justify the war dead and welfare payments to “defense companies”, our friend CHina is buying the future in terms of political and economic power by announcing that they will bail out the EU in its banking/budget crisis by lending money to the IMF for the IMF to loan the EU countries.
Reconstruction is a euphemism for World Bank/IMF funded projects for development of privatized public assets or property by the installed quislings in order to exploit the native resources/natives.
Breaking: ISAF now has withdrawn their claim that the captured arms smuggler was al-Quds. Oops!
See my follow-up post: http://my.firedoglake.com/jimwhite/2010/12/24/oops-isaf-withdraws-claim-captured-arms-smuggler-was-iranian-al-quds/
thanks for that – it never made sense to me to have pakistan overtly working against iran – a lot of US/isaf spin is tailored to suit audiences who have no interest in or knowledge of – faraway lands even if their soldiers are sent there to die and kill – it’s a stupefying subversion of democracy