Taliban claims of Iran training dismissed by diplomats

By Ben Farmer in Kabul

Published: 2:40PM GMT 21 Mar 2010

Iranian security officials are teaching militants to attack checkpoints, mountain bases and convoys, as well as plant deadly roadside bombs, the Sunday Times reported.

Groups of Afghan militants were given an expenses-paid three month course at a camp near the Iranian town of Zahedan.

One unnamed low-level commander from Ghazni province in Afghanistan told the Sunday Times: “Iran paid for the whole trip. We paid the travel fees to begin with and once we got to Iran they refunded us.

They paid for our food, our mobile phone cards, any expenses.”

British and American officials have previously said elements within Tehran and its Revolutionary Guard have provided modest support to the insurgents in Helmand, but have not seriously attempted to tip the balance against the coalition as they did in Iraq.

Shia Muslim Iran is deeply suspicious of United States military intervention on its border, but is also believed to be unwilling to see an extremist Sunni Taliban regime as a neighbour.

Last year border officials said explosives including anti-tank mines regularly flowed across the Iranian border into Afghanistan.

Two unnamed Taliban insurgents told the newspaper the training sessions had begun last winter. They said it was unclear if their instructors were police, soldiers or members of Iran’s intelligence services. 

The first month was spent on complex ambushes on moving convoys, the second on planting homemade roadside bombs and the third on storming fixed enemy positions.

Both commanders said Iran also supplied them with weapons, using donkeys, camels and horses to carry the supplies into Afghanistan.

However one senior diplomat told the Daily Telegraph that there was intelligence that Iran was instead holding off support to the Taliban and had recently refused requests for arms. 

Iraqi insurgents inflicted heavy casualties on coalition forces with Iranian-made, shaped explosive charges which could blast through armour plating. 

Iran has so far refused to supply significant quantities of similar high-tech weapons to the Taliban. 

Another source said while there were thought to be modest training camps in Iran, they were “a drop in the ocean compared to what is going on in Pakistan”.

“Iran is a distraction in this compared to what is happening in other neighbours.”

Source: The Telegraph