Though officially Kabul's ally, Iranian loyalties are less than clear, GRAEME SMITH reports

You can smell the tension along the Iranian border. A thick stench of rotting fruit and vegetables hangs over market stalls in the border town of Taftan, near the three-way juncture of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

The wild country here on the edge of the Afghan desert has grown notorious as a shipment point for drugs and weapons, a source of worry for all three governments. For years, those concerns rarely interrupted the work of ordinary traders, but last week the Pakistani authorities caught seven Iranians trying to sneak across the border at night, and a squabble ensued over which country had the right to interrogate them.

Iran closed its border in protest, and for several days the town was awash with food destined for Iranian shelves, long rows of packing crates crawling with flies.

Mullah Zafran, president of the Taftan fruit market, said these interruptions of trade are becoming more frequent. "There is no discipline on the border," he said, bitterly.

The scene in Taftan is one of several signs of growing anxiety along Iran's eastern border. The country's western flank has received vastly more attention in recent days, as the United States accuses Iran of helping insurgents in Iraq. But some observers have also started to question Iran's strategy in the Taliban heartlands of southern Afghanistan and the tribal regions of Pakistan.

Officially, Tehran remains closely allied with Kabul, having poured more than $200-million (U.S.) into the reconstruction of its war-torn neighbour. Iran's Foreign Minister met with Afghanistan's outgoing ambassador to Tehran on the weekend, praising their warm relations and calling for more economic co-operation.

Behind the smiles, however, lies a heated debate.

Nearly every Afghan politician criticizes Pakistan for stoking the Taliban insurgency, but they're divided about Iran. Some describe their neighbour as exerting only political and commercial influence, broadcasting anti-American radio and TV programs and using predatory business practices to gain control over parts of the Afghan economy.

"They are meddling, for sure," a senior Kabul politician said. "But for now, we can't say they are interfering in the military aspect." In Kandahar, another politician said he believes that Iran supports the Ishaqzai tribal faction within the Taliban. The Afghan politician said he recently met with an Iranian official and challenged him about the rumours, which produced only a shrug from the Iranian.

"He said, 'What should we do? If we knew that the United States would behave like this, we would not have opposed the Taliban at first,' " the politician said.

Support for the Taliban would be a major reversal for the Shia government in Iran, which nearly went to war with the Sunni Taliban regime over the killing of seven Iranian diplomats in 1998. Iran continued to give weapons and other assistance to the Taliban's enemies in northern Afghanistan until the regime was overthrown.

But the arrival of foreign soldiers in Afghanistan brought new concerns for Tehran, especially as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization increases its troop strength in provinces near the Iranian border. NATO's chief of staff in southern Afghanistan, Canadian Colonel Mike Kampman, responded cautiously when asked about Iran's response.

"You put all this in the larger international atmosphere, or environment, and you can imagine the tensions of any sort of Western presence that gets close to that border," Col. Kampman said.

Lieutenant-General Rahmatullah Raoufi, southern regional commander for the Afghan army, said he hasn't seen any firm indications that Iran backs the insurgency. "We don't have any evidence," he said. "We just don't know." A few hints -- rumours, mostly -- suggest the Iranians may have established links with the insurgents.

A 22-year-old Taliban fighter from Maywand district, west of Kandahar, was shot in the chest during a fight with NATO troops in September, and dragged off the battlefield by his comrades.

He returned home several months later, with his wounds healed, and told his neighbours that the Taliban took him for treatment to a hospital in Tehran.

"He kept talking about the Iranian nurses," said a neighbour "He said, 'They were really beautiful, and I wish I could speak Persian.' "

A Taliban source said he knows of opium barons who have dramatically increased their regular cash payments to insurgent leaders in Quetta, Pakistan. The smuggling routes often run across the Iranian border, and the source speculated that somebody inside Iran is putting cash in the drug convoys for delivery to the insurgents.

A Taliban fighter in Kandahar, however, was skeptical about Iranian support. "We get some Kalashnikovs from Iran, but we have to pay for them," he said. "If they want to help us, they should give them free." Free or not, Iranian weapons have been reported in Panjwai district, where Canadian troops recently fought insurgents.

Gul Mohammed, a villager from Sangisar, about 40 kilometres west of Kandahar city, said Taliban fighters burned his cousin's home and stole two Russian-made Kalashnikovs during the fighting in his village this summer. He approached the fighters on his cousin's behalf, he said, asking them to give the weapons back.

The insurgents were reluctant to give back the Russian rifles, which are prized in Afghanistan for their quality. Instead, the fighters offered Mr. Mohammed two rifles they described as "Iranian Kalashnikovs," shorter weapons with two grey plastic pistol-grips and folding metal stocks. His description sounded closer to the Hungarian AMD-65 than any Iranian rifle, but the insurgents said the weapons and ammunition were both supplied by Iran.

"The guns were new," Mr. Mohammed said. "The black paint was very shiny."

Such claims are difficult to verify; Afghanistan has issued AMD-65s to some police officers, and corruption in the country's law enforcement means police weapons often wind up in the hands of insurgents.

In fact, the Afghan police officer who stood guard outside Iran's consulate in Kandahar last week was carrying the same weapon, a weathered AMD-65.

Inside the building, in an office decorated with hundreds of tiny mirrors and a portrait of Ayatollah Khomaini, the head of Iran's reconstruction efforts in southern Afghanistan shook his head when asked whether Iranian weapons are being used by the Taliban.

"It's impossible," said Sheik Hossein Zeineddin, director of the Iranian Council in Kandahar. "We are working in a very transparent way."

Echoing the arguments made by Pakistani authorities, however, Mr. Zeineddin added that it's difficult for Iran to stop insurgents from crossing the expanses of open terrain that form his country's border with Afghanistan.

"We have a 900-kilometre border with Afghanistan," he said. "Who can control every kilometre?"

But the problems with the border are less of a threat to Afghanistan than to Iran, Mr. Zeineddin added, because the Western allies now operating in the region are trying to make trouble for his country.

He alleged British forces are using drug dealers in Helmand province for espionage against Iran. At the same time, he said the United States and Pakistan are supporting the Baloch tribes in their separatist insurgency in southeastern Iran.

A gracious man, wearing a suit jacket and speaking fluent English, Mr. Zeineddin said his suspicions about the Western powers haven't stopped him from pursuing a humanitarian mission in southern Afghanistan. Some of the initiatives he described, such as subsidizing Ariana Afghan Airlines' regular flights to Tehran, and training 300 literacy teachers as Persian-language instructors, seemed designed to extend Iran's influence in this Pashto-speaking area.

But he also gave a long list of other Iranian projects that appeared to support NATO's goal of rebuilding the country: a trade school, a sports centre, a women's clinic, a library, a soccer pitch, renovations for an orphanage and several others.

The frustration of trying to implement these projects with the Afghan government -- money gone missing, and Afghan officials refusing to take responsibility for their work -- shows why insurgent groups such as the Taliban don't require help from outside the country, he said.

"Now, there's so much corruption, no wonder the people go back to the Taliban," Mr. Zeineddin said.

Inevitable ambitions

Iran will eventually be able to develop sufficient weapons-grade material for a nuclear bomb, according to internal European Union documents obtained by the Financial Times. The "reflection paper" prepared for EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana says the limiting factor to Tehran's ambitions are technical difficulties rather than United Nations resolutions, and concludes that problems with Iran cannot "be resolved through economic sanctions alone."

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