			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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IRAN RAISES THE STAKES IN THE AFGHAN WAR
by
Eric Margolis  24 Oct 1996



The conflict in Afghanistan is entering a critical new phase
as this shattered nation's powerful neighbors become ever
more deeply involved in its 7-year old civil war.

Uzbeks  and Tajiks, bitter foes until recently, have
temporarily allied against Taliban, the ethnic Pathan
movement secretly supported by Pakistan.  As of this
writing, combined Uzbek and Tajik forces are laying siege to
the capitol, Kabul, which was recently taken by Taliban.

A regional intelligence source has just provide me with 
exclusive details  of rapidly escalating,  but still covert
Iranian involvement in the war:   

*Twenty 20 Iranian military transport aircraft landed last
weekend at Mazar-i-Sharif, northern stronghold of the ex-
communist, Uzbek warlord, Gen. Rashid Dostum. The Iranian
planes  delivering tons of ammunition, 18 tanks, and six
combat helicopters. 

*Iran has also been supplying Tajiks, led by ex-president
Rabbani, and his field commander, Ahmad Shah Massoud. 
Tajiks speak Dari, an offshoot of Persian..   

*A fleet of 12 unmarked AN-32 military transports has been
shuttling in and out of  a Tajik-controlled airfield at
Dalkhan, delivering arms, munitions and warstocks from Iran. 
Included in the shipments, say my sources, are 13 Scud-B
missiles, with a range of 300 kms.

Interestingly, Iran has no AN-32's in its inventory.  They 
must come from either Russia, or the communist regimes of
neighboring Tajikistan and/or Uzbekistan, both of whom fear
the political Islam espoused by Taliban as a mortal threat. 
Tajikistan's communist regime is kept in power by 25,000
Russian troops, partly financed by US loans, who are
battling Tajik Islamic and democratic rebels, .

In spite of its defeat in the Afghan war, Russia remains
involved in Afghanistan through the KGB, Afghan communists,
and close likes to the Uzbek warlord, Gen. Dostum, whose
forces are armed, equipped and trained by Russia.  Moscow is
content to keep the Afghan pot boiling until it decides, at
some later date,  to reoccupy this strategic nation.

Iran  seeks to exclude Pakistani and Indian influence from
Afghanistan, and block the north-south transit routes from
Central Asia down to Karachi - as the column first reported
in 1992, on the basis of intelligence information.  Tehran's
strategy is 1. to expand its influence in the region; 2.
channel Central Asian energy and mineral exports through
Iran over a newly opened railroad linking Turkmenistan to
the northern Iranian  city of Mashad, and thence  down to
the Gulf at Bandar Abbas.

India is also meddling in Afghanistan. Delhi and Moscow
backed the Afghan communist regime of Najibullah, who was
just hanged by Taliban.  For the past decade,  Indian
diplomats and agents of RAW, Delhi's powerful intelligence
service, have intrigued to thwart Pakistani influence in
Afghanistan.  India has also supplied arms, munitions,
training and advisors to anti-Taliban forces.  Indian pilots
flew Afghan government aircraft.  

China,  preoccupied by Muslim uprisings in Chinese
Turkestan, has so far stayed out of the latest Afghan
fracas. The US, after flirting with Taliban, severed
contacts this week when the press made exaggerated claims
that Taliban were wildmen who oppressed women because of
Islam.  Most Taliban are rural primitives. Their brusque
treatment of women reflects tribal-cultural, rather than
religious, mores.  

Still, their more clever Tajik enemies managed scored a PR
knockout, aided by anti-Taliban western reporters,  by
painting Taliban as ugly fanatics.  Amusingly, horrified
western reaction to the recent Taliban conquest of Kabul was
virtually identical to Victorian consternation over the fall
of Khartoum to the Mahdi's army of dervishes a century ago. 

Power vacuums are always dangerous.  Afghanistan and Iraqi
Kurdistan are the two scary examples.  Some sort of lasting
political settlement must be imposed on both war-torn tribal
regions before their neighbors get sucked into a big wars in
these geopolitical fault zones.   

Afghanistan, stepchild of 19th century British and Russian
imperialism, continues to haunt us like a very bad dream.   

copyright   eric margolis 1996

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