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Iran accused of training Afghans to fight US

Herat, Afghanistan - Erstwhile enemies who once stood on the brink of war, Iran and the Taleban now appear linked by conflicts against the US, as officials and political analysts accuse Teheran of training and arming the Afghan insurgents.

Colonel Rahmatullah Safi, border police commander in the three western provinces of Farah, Badghis and Herat, claimed that his forces seized and intercepted weapons including anti-tank mines on the Afghan-Iranian border that were intended for the Taleban.

‘Since Americans are in a difficult situation in Iraq, Iran wants to turn Afghanistan into a second Iraq for them and their international allies,’ Safi said in his headquarters 15 kilometres outside Herat city.

‘The Iranian officials try to keep foreign forces in the country busy in the fight with Taleban, so they don’t have the chance to put more pressure or attack Iran because of its nuclear programme,’ he said.

Safi also said that he had intelligence information that militants including former mujahedeen, who fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan and later plunged the country into a bloody civil war, ousted members of the Taleban 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 1186-kilometre border is barely 900.

‘We don’t even have one guard per kilometre, but the Iranians have thousands, so it’s impossible that they are unaware of these movements,’ he admitted.

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