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Dumps of Iranian, Russian & Chinese arms found in Herat
Saturday September 08, 2007 (2115 PST)
HERAT CITY: A senior Interior Ministry official claimed four depots of arms manufactured by Iran, China and Russia had been discovered in Ghorian district of the western Herat province.
The arms dumps were located with the help of residents, Deputy Interior Minister Gen. Munir Mangal told a news conference here. However, he would not go into finer details of the weapons discovered - their types, dates of production or the time of smuggling into the province, bordering Iran.
A team had been constituted to ascertain the makes, models and manufacture dates of the arms, revealed the deputy minister, currently on an official visit to meet police units in the western zone, where similar discoveries have been made in recent months.
In an exclusive chat with Pajhwok Afghan News, 4th Border Police Brigade Commander Col. Rahmatullah Safi said the depots contained 33 landmines, 138 mortar rounds, 100 warheads, 90 boxes of heavy machine-gun bullets and 422 rounds of other heavy guns.
The weapons seized also included one mortar and 20 Klashnikov assault rifles, the police officer claimed, disclosing the mines were manufactured by Iran and the ammunitions by China. Provincial police and border brigade personnel were led to the site by residents of the district, he continued.
Col. Safi opined either the arms might have poured into the district recently or dumped carefully from war shipments to Afghanistan during the three decades of strife.
High-ranking Bush administration officials and local security personnel often accuse the Iranian government of shipping weapons to Taliban insurgents.
In mid-June, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Assistant Secretary Nicholas Burn alleged they had seen a new intelligence analysis that broadly suggested 'a fairly substantial flow of illegal weapons' from Iran to Taliban fighters.
"Given the quantities that we have seen, it is difficult to believe that its associated with smuggling or the drug business or that its taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government, Gates had told reporters in Germany in mid-June.
During his daylong trip to Kabul last month, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vehemently denied his country was supporting opponents of the Karzai government. He rejected the allegations as baseless, assuring Iran was fully backing the political process in Afghanistan.
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Pakistan News Service - PakTribune
I just wanted to post something other than a research piece by a journalist to point out the opinions on the the side of the spectrum, that I favor.
That said, I do believe that the ISI has connections to the Taliban. The most overt example of this is their "alliance" with Mullah Nazir. Mullah Nazir was a crucial ally in their drive against "foreign fighters" out of South Waziristan. He did this despite severe opposition from Baitullah Mehsud (the new leader of the United Taliban front) and survived an assassination attempt later. This also illustrates something interesting, the presence of factions within the Taliban which could be persuaded, and in this case were, to adopt a relatively pragmatic and non anti-state stance. Mullah Nazir is also speculated to be part of a GoP effort to divide S Waziristan and isolate the Mehsud (an article I posted in another thread). To that extent I would agree that the ISI is retaining links to some factions of the Taliban and supporting them (and of course we know that the support never remains isolated to the groups it was intended for) . This would also explain the GoP's position that the Karzai Govt. and NATO need to try and engage the Taliban (or some factions that would be interested) and have them participate in the political process.
Pakistan's interest in this is obviously to not see complete control of Afghanistan in the hands of a "hostile government", though there are other reasons - the downsides are that even the "pragmatic Taliban" would argue in favor of social policies that the West would find "abhorrent". In the Tribal areas however, and specifically the territory that is under Pakistan's control, cultural norms are already skewed in favor of the social policies of the Taliban - in fact the "Pragmatic Taliban" would possibly bring about an improvement on the Law and Order front, something to be welcomed by both the people of FATA and the rest of Pakistan. If coupled with economic activity and development, the hope is that that the society of FATA could evolve into a more moderate one.