By Danielle Pletka, Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan
American Enterprise Institute
February 19, 2008
American Enterprise Institute
February 19, 2008
Afghanistan
Support for Insurgents
Iran’s economic involvement in Afghanistan and its role in the refugee crisis are indisputable, but they are almost totally ignored by the Western media. Even the expulsion of more than 130,000 Afghans, accompanied by the complaints of international organizations, generated hardly any notice. The seizure of two or three truckloads worth of military supplies for the Taliban, however, was widely reported and highly controversial and has served, quite improperly, as a litmus test for Iranian intentions in Afghanistan. The weapons shipments themselves were small—at least those that NATO and Afghan forces seized. The significance of these shipments can only be understood within the larger context of Iranian involvement in Afghanistan and the security situation within Afghanistan.
The first significant report of Iranian weapons in Afghanistan in 2007 came from a press conference with then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace on April 17. Pace announced: “We have intercepted weapons in Afghanistan headed for the Taliban that were made in Iran. It’s not clear in Afghanistan which Iranian entity is responsible. ”The shipment included mortars and plastic explosives and was seized near Kandahar within the previous week. Pace was careful to obfuscate the question of Iranian government control over the shipment: “We know that there are munitions that were made in Iran that are in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And we know that the Quds Force works for the IRGC [Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps]. We then surmise from that one or two things. Either the leadership of the country knows what their armed forces are doing, or that they don’t know. And in either case that’s a problem.”50 The next day, Brigadier General Joseph Votel, deputy commanding general for operations of Combined Joint Task Force-82 (CJTF-82), was asked about Pace’s statement in a press conference at Bagram Air Base. He explained that the caches Pace was referring to were found outside of his area of operations, “so I don’t know all the particulars of those finds.” Pressed further, he said, “I’m not sure I really have the visibility to address that particular problem. . . . Being in Regional Command East, you know, our focus is more over on the Pakistan border, so we certainly don’t see [any] direct influence from Iran. . . . Right now it’s not having an impact here in Regional Command East.”51
This exchange highlights an important problem in the command arrangements in Afghanistan that has seriously hindered the Coalition’s ability to comprehend—or at least articulate—the scale and intentions of Iranian intervention in Afghanistan. The 2006 transition in the Afghan mission from American leadership to NATO leadership created at least two major problems in the command structure of the mission (see Figure 1). It shifted operational control of American forces in Afghanistan from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)—the four-star headquarters now under Admiral William Fallon that has responsibility for the area from Pakistan to Morocco—to a NATO headquarters—Joint Forces Command–Brunssum (JFC Brunssum), commanded by German General Egon Ramms. JFCBrunssum reports to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, commanded by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Bantz Craddock, who is also the commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM). But CENTCOM retains responsibility for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, both through the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, which operates both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and through Operation Enduring Freedom. The force executing Enduring Freedom is CJTF-82, based around the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Major General David Rodriguez. But CJTF-82 is also the headquarters and force responsible for executing the NATO–International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Regional Command (RC) East. It is therefore nominally under the control both of the CENTCOM commander, Fallon, and of the EUCOM commander, Craddock, via an American headquarters in Bagram, Afghanistan, and a German-commanded headquarters in Brunssum. The rest of Afghanistan is the responsibility of four other ISAF headquarters: RC West (Italian command), RC South (British command), RC North (German command), and RC Capital (Turkish command).
This exchange highlights an important problem in the command arrangements in Afghanistan that has seriously hindered the Coalition’s ability to comprehend—or at least articulate—the scale and intentions of Iranian intervention in Afghanistan. The 2006 transition in the Afghan mission from American leadership to NATO leadership created at least two major problems in the command structure of the mission (see Figure 1). It shifted operational control of American forces in Afghanistan from U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM)—the four-star headquarters now under Admiral William Fallon that has responsibility for the area from Pakistan to Morocco—to a NATO headquarters—Joint Forces Command–Brunssum (JFC Brunssum), commanded by German General Egon Ramms. JFCBrunssum reports to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, commanded by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Bantz Craddock, who is also the commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM). But CENTCOM retains responsibility for counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan, both through the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force, which operates both in Iraq and Afghanistan, and through Operation Enduring Freedom. The force executing Enduring Freedom is CJTF-82, based around the headquarters of the 82nd Airborne Division, commanded by Major General David Rodriguez. But CJTF-82 is also the headquarters and force responsible for executing the NATO–International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Regional Command (RC) East. It is therefore nominally under the control both of the CENTCOM commander, Fallon, and of the EUCOM commander, Craddock, via an American headquarters in Bagram, Afghanistan, and a German-commanded headquarters in Brunssum. The rest of Afghanistan is the responsibility of four other ISAF headquarters: RC West (Italian command), RC South (British command), RC North (German command), and RC Capital (Turkish command).
The result of this byzantine command arrangement is that it is very difficult for anyone to develop a coherent, detailed understanding of what is actually going on in Afghanistan. ISAF commander General Daniel McNeill theoretically holds the position in Afghanistan equivalent to the one General David Petraeus holds in Baghdad, but not in reality. McNeill operates within a NATO framework overseeing the soldiers of twenty-six NATO and twelve non-NATO countries, many of them deployed with national caveats that restrict the operations they can undertake. His immediate subordinates, apart from Rodriguez, are NATO commanders, not American commanders, and they are accountable to and take orders from their own national governments as well as from McNeill. Even the media suffers from this arrangement. American reporters regularly interview American commanders, from McNeill to individual brigade commanders, but rarely interview even the British commanders of neighboring RC South, let alone the Turkish, German, or Italian commanders of the other sectors. Following the details of a complex story like the movement of a few truckloads of Iranian weapons from Iran through Herat and Farah provinces (in RC West) into Nimruz, Helmand, and Kandahar provinces (in RC South) and possibly into the areas in which U.S. forces regularly operate is extraordinarily difficult. This difficulty is one of the reasons for the confusion surrounding the story of Iranian weapons moving around Afghanistan and helps explain why the American division commander in eastern Afghanistan can reasonably claim to have no real idea of the scope or purpose of Iranian arms shipments captured to his immediate west.
The command confusion is only part of the problem, however. Another, perhaps greater, issue is the determination of military officials at all levels from early on to distinguish between the presence of Iranian weapons in Afghanistan and the implication that the Iranian government was deliberately sending them there. Thus, the commander of American forces in the westernmost sections of RC East explained on April 24, 2007, that “there may be an Iranian presence throughout the battle space. But is it state-sponsored? Is it state-sanctioned? I have absolutely no ability to link that together at this time.”52 Even Dutch Major General Ton van Loon, then-commander of RC South—where the weapons were found—refused to clear up the confusion when he was asked about “the latest report that weapons from Iran have been found in Afghanistan.” Instead he replied: “It’s very hard to say something about that. We, of course, received the information that this might be the case. We cannot deny or confirm it. We know that there are some high-end weapons like the AGS-17, which has shown up in Helmand. Whether this weapon has been brought into Iran [sic] is for us very hard to actually be very firm about.”53 At a Kabul press conference ten days later, ISAF spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Maria Carl was more specific: “The weapons seized included RPG-7 launchers, light guns, and explosive devises. The arms bore the distinct hallmarks of Iran, she claimed.”54 Carl stopped short of addressing the question of the involvement of the Iranian government.
The issue surfaced more dramatically following the seizure of another shipment in early June. Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, commander of the Afghan Sixth Border Brigade, told Afghan media that his forces had seized Iranian “high-intensity anti-tank bombs” from a mountain cave in western Herat province. Major General Kiramuddin Yawar, the border police commander for the western zone, showed the Pajhwok Afghan News Agency six bombs that bore “all the Iranian hallmarks.” An anonymous “intelligence official” (nationality not specified) “revealed around 10 Iranian-made bombs had been seized so far in Herat’s Shindand district alone.”55 It is not clear if these are one or two caches—the Ghurian district in which Safi says his forces had found six bombs is not that close to the Shindand district, which has no border with Iran. It is quite possible that there were two separate caches, as McNeill announced on June 5: We have intercepted at least two convoys that have contained munitions or weapons. Some of those munitions and weapons clearly of— are Iranian origin. . . . We do have two events in which we have recovered explosively formed penetrators [EFP]. . . . In one case, it was not highly sophisticated in terms of giving it a technology-type measurement; in the other case, it was fairly sophisticated. In both cases, they had characteristics of EFPs that I had read about that have been found and indeed used in Iraq and are said to have originated from Iran.. . . We intercepted those convoys. . . inside of Afghanistan. We intercepted them out west. In the case of one of them, there were mortar rounds that were clearly of Iranian origin. There were also explosives, plastic explosives, packaged to make it look like U.S.-made C-4, which is an up-scale version of plastic explosives. It’s my understanding that similar types of explosives have been found in Iraq, and once again, the information says they originate from Iran. . . . The convoys were intercepted inside of the Afghan border with Iran—in one case, well inside; in the other case, inside.56 McNeill took pains, however, to emphasize that [w]e don’t have conclusive evidence to say that this was something officially sanctioned by the government of Iran. But I might point out that in the experience I’ve had in Afghanistan, which is going on for almost a year and a half, over two tours now, it’s not uncommon to find weapons or munitions from lots of countries. . . . I just stand by what I said. I haven’t seen conclusive evidence there’s anything in the way of formal sanctioning by the Iranian government for what we have found in the way of weapons and munitions that have come into this country.57
Pace was similarly positive in a June 3 press conference that Iranian weapons—including EFPs—had been seized in Afghanistan and that he did not know whether or not the Iranian government was intentionally sending them there.58 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates took a similarly ambivalent stance in a June 5 joint press conference with Karzai, but the Afghan president was less ambivalent: “We don’t have any such evidence so far of involvement of the Iranian government in the supplying [sic] the Taliban. We have a very good relationship with the Iranian government. Iran and Afghanistan have never been as friendly as they are today. In the past five years, Afghanistan have [sic] been Iran’s very close friend. . . .”59
Clarity briefly emerged on June 13 when Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said, “There’s irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now” transferring arms to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. He added, “It’s certainly coming from the government of Iran. It’s coming from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps command, which is a basic unit of the Iranian government.”60 The Afghan and American governments almost immediately began to walk it back, however. The same day, Gates said: I think it’s been a couple of weeks or so since I was asked about the Iranian supply of weapons to Afghanistan. I have seen additional analysis in the interval that makes it pretty clear there’s a fairly substantial flow of weapons. I would say, I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to the effect—to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities that we’re seeing, it is difficult to believe that it’s associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it’s taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government. . . . My impression is that the weapons are intended for the Taliban. I don’t know that we have seen any evidence of Qods Force in Afghanistan.61
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack added that he could not establish a “hard link . . . between an Iranian government–approved program and the transfer of those arms,” but that it is “hard to believe that they’re not” involved. “And if they don’t know about it, then that raises other troubling questions, that they don’t fully control what’s going on inside their own country.”62 Asked about Burns’s statement, McCormack said, “I think what Nick was doing was giving voice to all of these concerns and suspicions that all of us have.”63 Burns himself revised the statement a little the next day: What I meant to say was that there is irrefutable, clear evidence that Iranian-origin weapons have found their way into Afghanistan, and they have been intercepted by allied forces, and those weapons, we believe, were destined for the Taliban. Secretary of Defense Gates said yesterday that he finds it very difficult to believe that the Iranian Government is not aware of these or connected to these, so this is a change in Iranian government policy. For a long time, we assumed that the Iranians were the foe of the Taliban and were going to give constructive support to the Afghan government. But now we have a situation where there is this very disturbing evidence that Iranian origin weapons have been conveyed across the border into Afghanistan for the Taliban.64
Safi, however, continued to stoke the fire, announcing on June 18 that “more than 20 armed men crossed the border from Iran into Afghanistan and entered a town. . . . [A]ccording to intelligence information, the group of armed militants crossed the border into the Anardara District of Farah Province on 18 June.” He added, “Two pickup trucks with over 20 armed people onboard crossed the border from Iran to Afghanistan.” Safi explained that according to intelligence, “the men were heading toward the Zirkoh area in Farah province, which has been the site of escalating militant activity in recent months.” A few days later, he said, “We had some reports that two vehicles entered our country fromthe border areas. . . . There were only some reports. We have not seen them personally. We have ordered our forces to control such movements. However, we did not find any other incidents.”65 According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), “Safi also has told Western and Afghan journalists that remnants of Iranian ammunition were discovered on the ground in Herat Province after fierce clashes last weekend between Taliban and Afghan police. He said five antitank mines with Iranian markings were also seized at the border two weeks ago.”66
But even Safi was careful to distinguish between Iranian weapons and Iranian intentions, telling RFE/RL, “So far we don’t have any evidence which would satisfy our government and the international community that our neighboring countries have been undermining our country’s [laws]. . . . We would need evidence to prove it. We have ordered our military units to check the reports. We will see what results we are getting after the investigation and assessments in the area.”67 The following month, an ISAF officer and “expert on explosive devices,” Thomas Kelly, told Afghan media “that they had found no evidence regarding arms supply to the opponents from other countries. . . . Last month, intelligence officials announced that a landmine defused near the Polytechnic University in Kabul was similar to ones used by insurgents in Iraq. However, Kelly said tests had proved that the explosive device was different from those used in Iraq.”68
But three days later another story broke. Pajhwok Afghan News reported: “The government of Iran has converted the military camps of former mujahedeen into training camps for the opponents of the current Afghan government.” An anonymous parliamentarian from Herat,
[q]uoting residents of Herat and Farah provinces, who had freshly returned from the neighboring country, said the former mujahedeen training camps in Turbat Jam, Birjand, Taibat and Haji Abad areas had now been converted into training camps for Taliban. He said people who had returned from Iran claimed that high ranking Taliban were also freely visiting those “training facilities.” He added Yahya Khurdturk, a former commander of Islamic Movement of Sheikh Asif Mohsini and currently a member of the Islamic United Front of Ustad Akbari, leader of the Shi’a community, had also got training along with his colleagues at . . . those camps. The MP said Yahya was directly linked to the Revolutionary Guards known as Sipah-iPasdaran [the IRGC]. . . . Ahmad Behzad, another MP from Herat province, said: “We have information that Sepahi Qudus (sacred force) [the Quds Force], a wing of the Pasdaran, is organizing and equipping opposition inside Afghanistan as well as train[ing] them at the centers in Iran.” He termed the alleged training facilities for Taliban as an open intervention in the internal affairs of Afghanistan by the neighboring country. Behzad added: “We have information that such centers are existing not only in the border areas, but also in remote provinces.”69 Safi repeated the accusations in an interview with the Gulf Times, saying that he had intelligence information that militants including former mujahedin, who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan and later plunged the country into a bloody civil war, ousted members of the Taliban and foreign fighters were trained in Iranian military bases. “I have information that 45 fighters led by Yahya Khortarak, who was a mujahedeen commander in Herat province in the past, are now under training in the border town of Turbat Jam in Iran and they want to enter Herat from the Kamana area of the border to carry out some terrorist acts like planting mines, or even maybe suicide attacks,” Safi said. The brigade that Safi commands comprises 1,652 agents, but he says the actual number of men patrolling the 1186km border is barely 900. “We don’t even have one guard per kilometer, but the Iranians have thousands, so it’s impossible that they are unaware of these movements,” he admitted. . . . “I am not talking for any one, neither for Karzai nor for the Americans—whatever I see I say it. I have seen the Iranian-made mines and armed people entering Afghanistan and I know that the militants are trained there,” he stressed.70 The next day, however, Safi twice denied on Afghan radio stations that he had said that Iran was involved in training terrorists.71 The back-and-forth about Iranian weapons and the possible involvement of Tehran in shipping them continued for the rest of the year. In mid August, officials in Balkh province in north-central Afghanistan claimed that they had seized a hundred “YM-type landmines” of Iranian manufacture on the way from Uzbekistan into Afghanistan.72 Three weeks later, an interior ministry spokesman denied that any Iranian-made mines had been seized.73
The next day, Safi and Afghan deputy interior minister General Munir Mangal announced that large caches of Chinese, Iranian, and Russian weapons had been seized in the Ghurian district of Herat province.74 Five days later, U.S. director of national intelligence John Negroponte “rejected any direct supply from China to the militants. However, he said the Chinese officials had told them they had sold such weapons to Iran some time back.”75 In October, Afghan defense minister Abdul Rahim Wardak noted that evidence was piling up that Iranian weapons, including EFPs, were going to the Taliban. He said that he had taken the matter up with the Iranians, who had completely denied it. He added: “There is no doubt that there is something coming from our western border. There are weapons and maybe some financial supports [sic] and others. But to be really completely clear about it, I think it will take a little bit of time to come up with the right conclusion.”76 At the end of the month, Safi coyly explained his apparently shifting views on the matter to a German magazine: “The Interior Ministry has forbidden me to talk with journalists anymore,” he said. “I have never seen weapons from Iran. . . . There are many things that I am not supposed to say.”77
