On September 22, 2021, Professor Fan Hongda of the Institute of Foreign Studies in the Middle East published an opinion article in Lianhe Zaobao entitled "Relations between Iran and the Afghan Taliban" (see Lianhe Zaobao, September 22, 2021, 19th edition), the full text of which is as follows:
Iran's relations with the Afghan Taliban
Image credit: Getty Images
Since the great political changes in Afghanistan in mid-August this year, Iran's attitude towards the Taliban and Iran-Afghanistan relations have attracted special attention from many parties.
Given the fairly close historical, linguistic and cultural ties between Iran and Afghanistan, the military rivalry between Iran and the Afghan Taliban regime in 1998, and iran's regional policies, which are seen as aggressive by the United States and countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, Iran's relations with the Taliban and their dominant Afghanistan are indeed worth discussing.
What is the relationship between Iran and the Taliban? In short, it is a relationship that is very different at different times.
In the 1990s, the rise of the Taliban, guided by the more extreme Sunni ideology, posed an ideological challenge to the Islamic Republic of Iran, guided by Shiite thought. Before coming to power in Afghanistan for the first time in 1996, the Taliban also defeated Iranian-backed Afghan politics.
In 1998, Pakistani forces with close ties to the Taliban killed 11 Iranians, including nine diplomats and a journalist, in Afghanistan, and Iran deployed heavy troops on the border between the two countries, and war was on the verge of breaking out. These factors made Iran unhappy with the Taliban at the time.
Iran's attitude toward the Taliban during this period was also closely related to the progress of Iran-US relations. During President Khatami's first term (1997-2001), U.S.-Iran relations showed a trend of relaxation, coupled with pre-existing poor relations with the Taliban regime, Iran sided with the Taliban in the 2001 Afghan war and in the subsequent UNITED Nations negotiations on Afghanistan. During this period, Iran refused to interact with the Taliban and joined the United States in opposing the Taliban.
However, the relaxation of US-Iran relations has not lasted. In his 2002 State of the Union address, U.S. President George W. Bush referred to Iran, North Korea, and Iraq as "axis of evil." After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq in 2003, the United States overestimated its ability to influence developments in the Middle East and continued to harden its stance toward Iran. The news that the United States will go to war against Iran after the Iraq War continues. During the Obama era, the United States began to engage with the Taliban, and Iran felt increasingly necessary to establish ties with the Taliban.
Since 2007, there have been reports in the United States that Iran has supplied weapons to "insurgents" in Afghanistan. Especially after the establishment of the Islamic State of Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), a branch of the terrorist group Islamic State in Afghanistan, in 2015, Iran is very worried about the infiltration of terrorist forces into the country. Iran was fighting the ISIS in Syria and Iraq, and fearing that the weak Afghan government would not be able to crack down on ISIS-K, it stepped up its engagement with the Taliban.
In May 2018, the Taliban reportedly launched an attack on farah, a city near the Iranian border, when Afghan government officials accused Iran of directly financing and equipping farah's Taliban.
The withdrawal of troops from foreign countries in the Middle East is a long-term demand of Iranian diplomacy. In 2020, the Taliban negotiated with the Trump administration to reach an agreement to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan in 2021, which is in line with Iran's regional policy goals.
The complete withdrawal of U.S. troops indicates that the Taliban will once again take over the country, so Iran has stepped up its interaction with the Taliban, the most obvious manifestation of which is that in early July 2021, Iran invited the Taliban delegation to Tehran for a two-day dialogue and reached a six-point consensus. According to Iranian media, after the Taliban regained control of Kabul in August, Iranian officials called on the media not to negatively describe and report on the Taliban.
A new Taliban government is a foregone conclusion. It is clear that Iran must face its neighbor Afghanistan after the withdrawal of its U.S. forces seriously and prudently. There is also a lot of room for cooperation between the two countries.
Both the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Taliban are very different from before 2001. For example, at that time, Iran had not yet suffered such severe international sanctions as it is now, and the Taliban had not yet tasted the bitterness of being ousted from power by the US-led coalition. The experience of the past 20 years will give Iran and the Taliban some resonance in their views on the United States.
The Taliban's involvement with terrorist forces, combined with some of the much-maligned policies it introduced during its first administration, has led it to be considered a terrorist organization by some countries.
Now the Taliban are once again the leader of the country, and they are facing a country with more than 20 terrorist organizations and an increasingly active terrorist force. The terrorist attacks carried out by ISIS-K at Kabul airport on August 26 demonstrated that counter-terrorism has clearly become an urgent task for the Taliban.
The provinces of Sistan and Balochistan, which border Afghanistan, are inherently unsafe places with relatively high levels of terrorist activity. In the current circumstances, there is room for cooperation between Iran and the Taliban in counterterrorism.
According to the UN REFUGEE Agency, as of October 2020, there were 780,000 Afghan refugees in Iran. U.N. agencies estimate that 2 million undocumented Afghans and 600,000 Afghan passport holders live in Iran. In fact, as early as 2015, Iran's interior minister said that there may be 2.5 million Afghans in Iran. Neither Tehran nor Kabul can ignore the presence of such a large number of Afghans. This could become an important issue for Iran's cooperation with Afghanistan.
Economic, trade and resource cooperation will remain one of the main themes of cooperation between Iran and Afghanistan. What is almost certain is that Iran will continue to provide energy sources such as oil to Afghanistan, and Iran will also need water from Afghanistan. Iran will also be concerned about the reconstruction of Afghanistan and will actively participate in it. As a major producer and manufacturing power in West Asia, Iran will strive to find a larger market for goods in Afghanistan in the future.
In 1979, Iran established the Shiite Islamic Republic, and the Taliban are about to form a new Regime with Sunni Islam. There are views that The commonality of Islam will be a positive factor in Iran-Afghanistan cooperation in the future, while others believe that the differences between Shiites and Sunnis will increase the likelihood of confrontation between the two countries.
In fact, after more than 40 years of difficult development, Iran and the Iranian people already know what kind of development path is not appropriate. After a dismal administration from 1996 to 2001 and the ups and downs of the past 20 years, the Taliban also know basically what the future cannot go. In short, when looking at relations between states in the Islamic world, there can no longer be overemphasized on the practical influence of religion.
Source: Lianhe Zaobao
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