Pakistan, Iran Mend Fences After Taliban Fall

by Nadeem Iqbal

Last week, at the end of a two-day visit to Islamabad, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi announced at a joint news conference with his Pakistani counterpart that both countries had come closer on the Afghan issue after the removal of the Taliban, and have agreed to help establish a broad-based, multi-ethnic government under UN auspices.

Kharrazi said that though it was natural to have minor differences, the major differences on Afghanistan were mostly over and now it was essential to speed up and rebuild ties.

A former foreign minister, Sartaj Aziz, agreed that the ouster of the Taliban does remove a major irritant between Iran and Pakistan.

But he said there are still differences over the deployment of multinational forces in Afghanistan, as Iran wants the force under the umbrella of the United Nations but Pakistan is ready to accept one outside of the United Nations.

However, Aziz added: "In the future shaping of things in Afghanistan, both countries do not have much role to play."

"Pakistan has been saying repeatedly that it is for the Afghans to decide about their future. So now the environment is conducive to enhance economic and commercial cooperation," he said.

Pervez Iqbal Cheema, president of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute, said in an interview that the main difference between Pakistan and Iran was over how to accommodate each other's interests in Afghanistan. The impression coming out of the recent meetings between visiting Iranian team and Pakistani officials indicates that these differences have been removed to a considerable extent.

"The differences touched their lowest ebb in 1998," Cheema said, when the Taliban captured the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif and some Iranian diplomats were killed.

Iran indirectly blamed Pakistan, thinking that it had considerable influence over the Taliban. "But the fact is that Pakistan's influence over Afghanistan was exaggerated by Indian propaganda, who wants to project Pakistan a fundamentalist state by linking it with the Taliban," Cheema argued.

Of the six countries surrounding Afghanistan, Pakistan shares the longest border (2,450 kms) with it, followed by Tajikistan with 1,206 kms and Iran with 936 kms. Pakistan's Pashtun population also has strong affinities with the majority Pashtun population of Afghanistan.

Pakistan-Iran differences date back to 1988, when the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan and Iran for the first time tried to bring in a Shia political group, Hizbe Wahdat, to share power in Kabul.

The Shia sect, a Muslim sect in Afghanistan, is followed by the Hazaras, an ethnic minority that the Taliban has been accused of discriminating against and isolating.

Shia Iran, therefore, never recognized the Sunni sect of the Pashtun Taliban, and instead supported the Northern Alliance.

Another area of disagreement is the route for oil and gas pipelines and rail links from the landlocked Central Asian republics to the ports of Pakistan or Iran via Afghanistan. Islamabad claims that the port of Karachi is the nearest link, while Tehran says it is Bander Abbas.

Sectarian killing in Pakistan, which led to the deaths of Iranian diplomats and citizens, had also soured ties.

This aimed to boost economic cooperation, trade and communication links in three important regions of the Asian continent -- Central, West and South Asia.

Six summits of the heads of member states have been held but the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan-Iran differences remained a stumbling bloc to ECO.

The proposed pipeline project carrying Iranian gas through Pakistan to India also remains a non-starter. But a ray of hope emerged when Kharrazi announced that a joint technical committee would prepare a feasibility study for the Iranian pipeline and suggest to both governments how to move ahead on the project.

The project is only viable if it is extended to Pakistan's arch-rival India, as Iran stands to make $3.06 per MMBTU (Million British Thermal Units) of gas sold to India but would get only $1.48 if the commodity does not go beyond Pakistan.

Pakistan itself had hoped to earn about $14 billion in 30 years from the project, including $8 billion in transit fees, $1 billion in taxes and $5 billion in savings.

Said the English-language daily The Nation this week: "The two countries have a lot of healing to do. The rigidly sectarian face of the Taliban government, viewed by some as a surrogate of Pakistan, was not the only irritant in the relationship. It has been downhill for some time."

Apart from sectarian violence in Pakistan and rivalry over pipeline plans, it argued, "Pakistan's going nuclear has been seen by Tehran not entirely as an unmixed blessing. As Tehran moved away from Islamabad, it turned to New Delhi, and that relationship's development has taken on a momentum of its own, disquieting to Pakistan. The Taliban episode was perhaps the final straw. "

"However, the diplomatic effort on both sides now appears firmly fixed on the common interests and incentives for change. This bodes well for relations coming back on track," the paper said.