Word: afghanistan
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...Afghanistan While it won't figure in official talks between India and Pakistan, Afghanistan is the most important subtext. Both countries are starting the long process of positioning themselves for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Central Asian country and want to preserve their influence there. Pakistan fears that Kabul will end up with close links to New Delhi, allowing India to essentially "surround" Pakistan; India worries that if the Taliban return to power, India will face more terrorist attacks at home. Influential Indian foreign policy analyst C. Raja Mohan has even suggested, in a recent editorial...
...flying to Central Asia to meet with American handlers at the U.S.-run Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan. Intelligence Minister Moslehi had already pointed his finger at Washington and the hand of the CIA, claiming to have evidence that Rigi was earlier housed at a U.S. base in Afghanistan and set up with fake documentation by the Americans. Accusations blaming the West for fomenting trouble within Iran's borders are nothing new, though. U.S. officials as well as British diplomats in Tehran have denied any links to Rigi. (How to spend a weekend in Kyrgyzstan...
What's more likely - and more intriguing - is the tacit involvement and cooperation of Pakistan. Jundallah, which means "Soldiers of God" in Arabic, has operated since 2002 in the borderlands between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Tehran has long suspected that the group receives tactical support from forces within Pakistan, including the same elements in the country's notorious military intelligence that helped form the Afghan Taliban. If Islamabad was involved in Rigi's capture, the move, combined with recent arrests of senior Taliban leaders living on Pakistani soil, could be a sign of the country's new seriousness at getting...
...extensive intelligence networks, proved difficult. "There are a lot of ungoverned spaces along this border," says Kamran Bokhari, regional director for the Middle East and South Asia at Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas. Like other groups in the region, Jundallah exploited illicit smuggling routes between Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, possibly trading in arms and narcotics. Though there's little clear evidence, analysts suspect Jundallah received support and succor from a web of shadowy sources, including perhaps Saudi, Pakistani, Israeli and even U.S. intelligence agents. "The one consensus among experts on this matter is that Rigi...
...largely cordial ties until Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. By the 1990s, they found themselves facing each other across a post-Cold War battle line as Pakistan built up the Afghan Taliban, whose Sunni puritanism grated against Iran's state Shi'ism. Following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Islamabad allowed the U.S. the use of two military bases in Pakistani Baluchistan for counterterror operations. This predictably drew Iran's ire and deepened its fears of external forces conspiring to undermine its interests both at home and in Afghanistan...