Amid tensions, US, Iran both give lift to Afghanistan city

HERAT, Afghanistan -- When the US government wanted to show its friendship here after the Taliban fell, it brought fuel to run the generators at the local hospital. When neighboring Iran wanted to show its friendship, it brought electricity to the entire city.

Today, Herat -- just 75 miles from the Iranian border -- is the only place in Afghanistan with power 24 hours a day, impeccably paved highways, and plans for a railroad. Even US officials acknowledge that this stunning progress occurred mostly thanks to Iran.

As tension mounts over Iran's nuclear ambitions and alleged support for militants in Iraq, Afghanistan offers the greatest chance for cooperation between Washington and Tehran. But it also stands the greatest risk of becoming the next battlefield.

Recent events underscore both the risks and opportunities: Iran recently offered to take over the training of Afghanistan's counternarcotics ministry, and US officials have told the Afghan government that they do not object. Last month, Iran signed an agreement with Afghanistan's education ministry to train hundreds of Afghan teachers and develop the curriculum, a task that has put Iranian officials in face-to-face meetings with USAID contractors.

But increasingly, Afghan officials have also begun to accuse Iran of supporting groups that undermine the Afghan government and oppose the presence of US troops.

Two weeks ago, President Hamid Karzai accused embassies of "some of the neighboring countries" of funding a new opposition bloc in Parliament, mostly composed of former warlords who oppose his rule. Political analysts in Kabul said the uncharacteristically blunt statement was a reference to interference from both Pakistan and Iran.

While Pakistan has been the neighbor most frequently accused of supporting militants, Iran has become an increasing target of Afghan suspicion.

A former general from the Northern Alliance, an armed group that fought against the Taliban, said Iran has been training disgruntled, unemployed former Northern Alliance fighters in the Iranian city of Mashad and sending them back to Afghanistan "to make propaganda against the Americans and the government."

The general, who asked that his name not be used because he fears for his security, said Iran is also rebuilding a group of Afghan fighters known as Sepah-e-Mohammad -- "Soldiers of Mohammad" in Farsi. He said the group was established to fight the Taliban, but that it could one day turn against US troops.

Iran's ambassador to Kabul, Mohammad Reza Brahimi , said he felt sorry to hear such allegations, calling them false.

"We have strongly supported Karzai's government," he said. "We have not supported any other specific group or individual other than the Afghan government and we will never do that. . . . There is nothing to show the involvement of the Iranian government in supporting the anti-Afghan government militants."

Five years ago, Afghanistan appeared to be a rare opportunity for Washington and Tehran to mend relations, cut off in 1979 after Islamic fundamentalists ousted the pro-American shah and took American diplomats hostage.

The United States and Iran shared a common enemy: Afghanistan's Taliban regime. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban in December of that year, US and Iranian diplomats worked closely -- for the first time in decades -- to set up the framework for the new Afghan government at a conference in Bonn, Germany.

"They were, in many ways, our principal collaborators at that meeting," said James Dobbins , President Bush's envoy to the gathering. Dobbins said the Iranian envoy, Javad Zarif , persuaded the Northern Alliance to share power with other factions, a crucial step in establishing Karzai's government.

At the time, cooperation was so good that Al Qaeda suspects who were arrested in Iran ended up in the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Dobbins said the Iranians even offered to help train Afghan troops under US leadership but that Washington did not respond to the offer. Eventually, the cooperation faded.

Now US diplomats are under orders not to engage their Iranian counterparts at the numerous, multination meetings convened in Kabul and abroad to coordinate aid and other issues.

Some said the enmity has taken a toll on reconstruction efforts. Most humanitarian aid and equipment for Herat, Afghanistan's third-largest city, has to be shipped through Pakistan and trucked across the country, because US aid can't be shipped through Iran.

Counternarcotics appears to be another missed opportunity to cooperate. Iran, which suffers from high rates of opium abuse, has offered to take over the mentoring of Afghanistan's counternarcotics ministry. But coordination remains weak between Iranian and Afghan border police, who are aided by American advisers.

"We are not working together," said Zia Rahman , head of logistics for the border police at the check point at Islam Qala. "We are doing [it] ourselves on our side, and they are doing [it] themselves on their side."

Tense relations have also complicated a new US effort to modernize the Islam Qala border post in order to capture hundreds of millions of dollars in customs revenue currently lost to corruption.

Iran has expressed anger at the daily visits to the border by American advisers implementing the effort, Rahman said.

Iran has also protested a $70 million US project to rehabilitate a Soviet-era military air base near Herat. US planes have used the base.

Izzatullah Wasifi , the former governor of Farah, an Afghan province just south of Herat, said Iranians are nervous about American troops on their doorstep. He said he traveled frequently to Iran during his 15-month stint as governor, which ended last year, to try to persuade Iranian officials to pave a road in Farah, put up electricity lines, and open a new border crossing.

He said the meetings were always attended by a well-known Iranian general responsible for Afghanistan whom he identified as Sardar Razavi .

Wasifi said US officials gave him mixed signals about getting help from Iran, at one point asking him why he wanted to open a border crossing with an enemy of the United States.

Yet Iran has pledged $560 million in assistance to Afghanistan, spending more than half of it on highways, electricity lines, and a fiber-optic cable that have helped Herat blossom. By comparison, the United States has spent more than $10 billion for the country, including funding a highway to link Herat and Kabul. But little of that aid is visible in Herat.

Instead, the city is blanketed with reminders of Iran's deep cultural, political, and economic ties. On a main street lined with small stores, nearly every shopkeeper and customer interviewed had once lived in Iran as a refugee.

Many women here don black veils customary in Iran -- not blue burqas. Sometimes they wear sneakers and jeans underneath. Like women in Iran, they flock to the market and to school, enjoying more freedoms than women in much of Afghanistan who are expected to stay home.

Iranian businesses sell everything here, from plastics to ice cream to old machinery. So many cheap Iranian products flood the market in Herat that US officials accuse Iran of using state-owned companies to put their Afghan competitors out of business.

But Shafiq Ahmad , deputy manager of the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, a governmental organization that promotes investment, said that Iranian businesses would ultimately help Afghanistan prosper.

He could only think of one American business here, and noted: "Their presence is very small."

Iran has roughly 30 diplomats in Herat, while the United States has only one.

Few American charities can be spotted here. But Iranian charities, including the Khomeini Helping Committee, have sprung up across the region.

That worries some Afghan officials, who say Karzai's government should do more to curb the activities of Iranian charities that speak out against the Afghan government and the United States.

But Homayn Kamgar , Afghanistan's head representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Herat, said his country must keep good relations with Iran and the United States.

"We are just asking everyone for friendship," he said. "We don't need any more enemies."

Farah Stockman can be reached at fstockman@globe.com.