Afghan town swings from U.S. to Iran

HERAT, Afghanistan -- A renowned leader of Islamic resistance forces during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Herat's Gov. Ismail Khan has had complex and shifting relations with Iran and the United States.

When the Taliban seized Herat in the northwest corner of Afghanistan in 1995, Khan was imprisoned, but escaped three years later and fled to Iran. When the U.S. military led the campaign to topple the Taliban in late 2001, it helped return Khan to power in Herat.

Soon after, both Washington and Tehran appeared to vie for Khan's allegiance, and he subtly played the powers against each other to win support from both. Some of the first U.S. soldiers based in Herat lived in Khan's governmental guest residence, Jihad House. At the same time, some of the troops in Khan's private militia were spotted toting weapons marked "Iran Ministry of Defense."

Today, relations between Khan and the Americans are cordial, but cooler. The United States has distanced itself from Khan to show that its priority is supporting the central government, which Khan has sometimes defied.

"We're all fairly distant now," one Western observer said. "We don't have the frequency of meetings we had last year. Times have changed."

Old ties bind

Herat's ties to Iran are centuries-old and extend into every aspect of life. It's closer to the Iranian border than Kabul, Afghanistan's capital. Heratis speak their own language rather than Dari, which is common in other parts of Afghanistan. Though both languages are derivatives of Farsi, the Herati language is truer to its Persian roots. Shops in the province are stocked with Iranian products. People are more likely to seek medical care or work in Iran's major cities than in Afghanistan's. Women drape themselves in long, black prayer scarves in the Iranian fashion. New homes, some of them mansions by Afghan standards, are being built all over Herat in an ornate style popular in Iran.

"I don't feel like a foreigner in Herat," said Mansur Zadeh, 34, an Iranian physician who arrived recently to run the Iran Clinic, which provides free medical care. It is funded through a Tehran nongovernment organization and is monitored by the Iranian government.

"I feel like this is part of Iran," Zadeh said.

The Taliban, a radical Sunni Muslim movement, tried to eradicate Shiite Iran's religious influence on Herat, burning Shiite mosques and religious schools. Today, however, more than a quarter of Herat's population is Shiite, and their numbers are growing, Shiite leaders said. Shiites run the largest religious school in the province, Sadeqya, which has more than 500 students.

The school's administrator, Said Jawad Hassan Zada, an Afghan, said he is eager for Afghanistan to adopt a new constitution making his religious beliefs the law of the land. "Anything in the constitution must be according to Islamic law -- and nothing other than Islamic law," he said.

The Iranian government did not respond officially to written questions about its reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, submitted through its consulate in Herat.

Former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking in Tehran last month, said it was "an absolute necessity" to combat the "new crusaders" and "imperialists" from the United States, which he accused of entrapping Afghanistan, not helping its people rebuild.

"They were telling them lies," he said in a speech broadcast live by Iranian radio. "It said that it wanted to reconstruct Afghanistan. However, a long time has passed since then, and they have not done anything important for Afghanistan."

But one Iranian observer in Afghanistan said that both reformers and hard-liners in Tehran realize it is not in Iran's interest to destabilize Afghanistan by interfering politically and undercutting the central government. Iran's reconstruction spending, he said, is intended to stabilize all Afghanistan, which will ultimately make Iran safer.

"We are not going to give individual support to Ismail Khan or anybody else," he said. "It's very clear: If we want to see peace and security, we have to support the central government. There is no other alternative for us.

"Maybe people aren't going to put out red carpet for the Americans. ... But it's not possible to have a puppet here. That time has passed."

But those in Herat who are organizing underground political parties to promote democracy and women's rights say Iran's clout is a source of concern.

"The influence of Iran in Herat will have a bad outcome for the next generation of Afghans -- their ideas and activities," one organizer said. "They are fostering an anti-American, anti-Western attitude. It's important that we achieve what we want, not what Iran wants. If Iran controls us, we will not have democracy."