Tehran bans Afghans from eastern border provinces for security

The News International, Pakistan ^ | Sunday May 22, 2005-- Rabi-us-Sani 13, 1426 A.H. | staff writer

[gandalftb]

TEHRAN: Iran banned Afghans from residing in the country’s eastern border provinces for unspecified security reasons, a senior Interior Ministry official announced on Saturday. Ahmad Hosseini, head of the ministry’s refugee’s office, who did not elaborate on the reason behind the ban, said the decision includes the border provinces of Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchistan, and that Afghans living in the area have to return to Afghanistan as soon as possible.

There are about a million Afghan refuges living in Iran, Tehran expects half of them to leave the country before the end of this year.

More than 1.3 million Afghan refugees have left Iran through a United Nations repatriation programme in the last three years. About 180,000 Afghanis who sneaked through Iran’s porous 945-kilometre border seeking jobs were deported from Iran last year. In 2003, Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi said his country was holding "a large number of small and big-time elements of al-Qaeda.’’

[gandalftb]

Baluchi warlords are using the SE Iran frontier as a protection zone (ala Cambodia) and renting out safe harbors for the likes of bin Laden/Zawahiri to run al Qaeda, and the notorious Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hikmatyrar to destabilize Karzai's government with leftover Taliban.

There is a strong Baluchi nationalist movement there also. The Baluchis are ethnic Sunni Arab/Semites and have a mutual hatred with the Shiite Persian/Aryan Iranians.

The Iranian government has little control or intel in this area. Finally, most Afghani opium gets to water ports here. Many Iranian Persians are becoming addicted as they are considered apostates and it is permissable for Sunnis to sell to them.

Lack of military cooperation between the four parties, US, Afghans, Pakistan and Iran makes any resolution very messy and this is probably one of the most complex political problems in the world.

Iran wants the Baluchis out, Pakistan wants the Baluchis in, we want bin Laden dead and Karzai wants Hikmatyrar's Hizb-I Islami Gulbuddin group dead. Lack of clear authority keeps all this from happening.

[leadpenny]

You seem to know an awful lot about the area. Is it possible Iran is concerned about our agents living among those who they want out?

[ClaireSolt]

We have them surrounded on three sides and keep recruiting and training more forces. They are very nervous about invasion, I hear.

[leadpenny]

Not to change the subject, but do we have the ground forces to get'r done?

[gandalftb]

The Baluchi tribes don't play well with others and outsiders are quickly spotted. Baluchis have very distinct facial appearance and easily know each other. Similarly, Basques can easily spot Spaniards allowing their extremists to effectively keep op security .

That's the real problem here is that no one, not even the Iranians or Mossad, have good intel here. Baluchis are a fundamentalist Islamic mafia on steroids.

I think the Iranians just want the Baluchis and their narcotrafficking and their terrorist customers gone. Electronic intel will have to carry the load unless we can somehow turn some locals or get some infighting started. Very unlikely, and we can't match the pay from al Qaeda or the narcotaffickers.

[ellery]

VERY interesting -- thanks for the post and the background!

[leadpenny]

Thanks for the insight. Seems as though our best hope for Iran is internal strife. This could help, I take it.

[JerseyHighlander]

Thanks for sharing the insights, now this issue is added to the nuclear production talks, the UN High Commission on Refugees will be shown to be subservient to the UN Non-Proliferation Treaty department.

Which should be a point pounded again and again in the media by UN critics, if your ethnic group doesn't hold economic resources or military power large enough to attract the interests of world powers, your ethnic group can drop dead for all the UN cares.

It amazes me how the UN is held up as some type of Utopian ideal by demogogues in third world countries, and amongst the "intellectual classes" around the world.

[ClaireSolt]

Do we have the force? I don't know. However, we have forces and we have allies we have been working with and training. I don't know under what circumstances we could put the coalition together to invade, but I do hear that the Iranians are very nervous.

[gandalftb]

If we could get Pakistan's support to invade, the enemy just runs to Iran. Remember, Pakistan barely allows us fly overs to Afghanistan on selected air corridors only. Ground units to date have been for intel only in Pakistan. So that would be a big change.

Al Qaeda is so well blended into Iranian Baluchistan (Khalid Sheik Muhammed was Baluchi) that it would take a big sweep by Iranian troops to run them off and the Iranians have always been afraid of the much more warlike Baluchis.

We could just declare Iran a lawless enemy state and just invade selected targets and then move into the Pakistani side, clean up and go onto Afghanistan. Huge logistics, but the battlefield is very accessible to us tactically with the 1,500 km coastline and most targets within 500 km of the coast on a very sparsely settled plain.

Bin Laden is there, all we need to do is out him, and drum up the public support.

[ClaireSolt]

The fear factor is apparently so good, maybe invasion will not be necessary.