| | Tehran accused of arming Taleban with weapons and explosives The Times
03/18/2010
By Tom Coghlan
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The Iranian Government has been accused by Afghan and Western officials of delivering tonnes of weaponry to the Taleban, including plastic explosives, mortars, grenades and technical manuals.
Weapons and documents shown to Channel 4 News indicate that more than ten tonnes of weapons have been intercepted at Iran’s desert border with Afghanistan in the past year, with a tonne and a half recovered in the past week.
The reports come as General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Iran also provided a base for al-Qaeda operatives. Afghanistan’s intelligence agency estimates that about 60 per cent of the weaponry it has intercepted from Iran has been supplied by the Iranian Government rather than black market dealers.
In a report on Iran’s weapons smuggling to the Taleban — to be aired by Channel 4 News this evening — one Afghan Taleban commander claims that the Iranian border is assuming greater importance than that into Pakistan.
“Day by day the Iranian border becomes more important for us, especially now in Pakistan there are many problems for the Taleban,” said Commander Noori, a senior insurgent in Kunduz. “Many of the Taleban have been imprisoned and also they arrest any Taleban who comes out of the madrassas \,” he said.
Nato’s International Security Assistance Force said that the Taleban did receive weapons and training support from Iran, though it did not believe it was at a level that was decisive to the outcome of the war.
Allegations of Iranian support for the Taleban, using secretive units of the Quds (Revolutionary Guard) have been made in the past. In 2007 General Dan McNeill, then the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, claimed that a consignment of roadside bombs was intercepted by British special forces crossing into Farah province from Iran.
“I cannot see how it is possible for at least the Iranian military, probably the Quds force, to not have known of this convoy,” he said.
The Taleban and its al-Qaeda allies have been on the back foot in recent months, as the US military surge and increasingly successful attacks from unmanned drones decimated their leadership.
The drones’ latest victim, according to US officials, is believed to be a top al-Qaeda figure linked to the December attack on a CIA post in Afghanistan. Hussein al-Yemeni, said to be in his late 20s or early 30s and described as an important al-Qaeda planner and explosives expert, is believed to have been among 15 people who died when their hideout in the Pakistani town of Miram Shah was struck last week.
A US counter-terrorism official described al-Yemeni as a conduit in Pakistan for funds, messages and recruiting, and a specialist in planning suicide missions.
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