pakistan’s

Challenges for Postmodern Iran-Pakistan Relations
Afghanistan and Central Asia
During the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, both Pakistan and Iran supported
the Afghan mujahideen in their war against the Soviet army in Afghanistan and the Soviet- and
Indian-backed Najibullah regime in Kabul. However, Iran supported mainly the Persian-speaking
Shiite factions in Afghanistan. Ater the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the Najibullah
regime, when Pakistan supported first Gulbuddin Hekmatyar against the Rabbani faction and
then subsequently the Taliban from 1995 onward, Iran viewed this support as being directly
antithetical to its own security interests. This perception resulted in a cooling of relations with
Pakistan and an increasing convergence with India on the issue. 1 Since then, Iran’s and India’s
views on the Afghanistan situation have continued to converge.
Taliban and al Qaeda elements, dispersed but not eliminated by U.S. ground force operations
in 2001–2, took refuge and then re-established their bases and launching pads largely in
Pakistani Baluchistan. This shit was very unsettling for Iran, given the harshly anti-Shiite
views of these groups. Together Iran and Pakistan have absorbed approximately 95% of refugees
from war-ravaged Afghanistan. Iran is host to approximately 1 million Afghan refugees, while
Pakistan has some 1.5 million. 2 The complex ethnic, tribal, linguistic, and sectarian divides within
Afghanistan are reflected in large part in the makeup of these refugee populations, adding to the
risk of a potentially explosive conflict.
Despite these divisions, the imperatives of development and growth forced both Pakistan
and Iran to seek areas of collaboration economically, even as ideological tensions remained as
undercurrents. A common quest for energy security—with Pakistan looking to acquire access to
energy sources in Iran—promised to bridge doctrinaire theological rits between the two countries.
This also held true for India’s relationship with Iran. Thus, the quest for energy security and
economic development served as an aspiration for bringing the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan,
and Iran once again tantalizingly close to collaborating for their collective good and prosperity.
Indeed, for Pakistan (as for India), Iran was the most natural choice of sourcing, particularly
given that its gas reserves, virtually untapped until the turn of the twentieth century, are huge
and second only to Russia’s reserves. In the early 1990s, Iran and India signed a memorandum
of understanding (MOU) for construction of a 2,500-kilometer gas pipeline from Iran’s South
Pars Fields to Delhi, India, and they had completed feasibility studies by the end of the decade.
Pakistan, while initially playing the role of spoiler, subsequently showed keenness in reviving
the project. Such a pipeline passing through its territory would pay Pakistan a windfall of up to
$500 million or more annually in transit fees, as well as allowing the nation to import gas through
the same pipeline for its own growing needs and thereby lower domestic prices. 3
1 In 1994, during the Rafsanjani era, a white paper issued by the Iranian Defense Ministry publicly and openly declared that Pakistani and
Saudi collusion in arming and training Taliban fighters was a threat to Iran’s own security interests in the region. Ironically, this issue
also saw Iran sitting on the same side of the table with India and the United States in the back-channel talks that tried to broker peace in
Afghanistan. For further discussion of the armed support given by Iran and Pakistan to opposing sides in the Afghan civil war of the 1990s,
see Human Rights Watch, “Afghanistan—Crisis of Impunity: The Role of Pakistan, Russia and Iran in Fuelling the Civil War,” Report, July
2001.
2 See “2015 UNHCR Country Operations Profile—Islamic Republic of Iran,” UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 2015, http://
www.unhcr.org/pages/49e486f96.html; and “2015 UNHCR Country Operations Profile—Pakistan,” UNHCR, 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/
pages/49e487016.html. Since 2002, UNHC has facilitated the return of almost 3.8 million refugees.
3 See “Project Focus: Iran-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline,” Gulf Oil and Gas, http://www.gulfoilandgas.com/webpro1/projects/3dreport.
asp?id=100730.
PAKISTAN’S RELATIONS WITH IRAN u KARIM
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