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© St. Petersburg Times, published February 26, 2002
TEHRAN, Iran -- Afghan and Iranian officials in Tehran this week described themselves as brothers, sharing a common border, religion and language. Iranian businessmen wooed their smiling Afghan counterparts by reciting poems in Farsi, evoking a shared cultural heritage.
But behind the warm handshakes, harsh realities have created rifts between the two countries. Chief among them is that the United States, Afghanistan's primary international backer, recently grouped Iran as part of an "axis of evil" that includes Iraq and North Korea.
Iran and the United States, enemies since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the taking of U.S. hostages in Tehran, worked briefly together in ousting the Taliban in Afghanistan and ridding the country of al-Qaida terrorists. The prospect of friendly relations dates to the 1997 election of reformist President Mohammad Khatami in 1997. Now the two countries seem to have resumed their adversarial role.
Iran and Afghanistan also have their own frictions to deal with. Some 2.8-million Afghan refugees live in Iran, and many Iranians say the immigrants, who are willing to work for pennies a day, should go. It is not a new issue: Afghans have been streaming into Iran since the Russian invasion 23 years ago.
"They can't just get up and go right away," said Mohammad Khajezadeh, a representative of Afghan immigrants in Iran. "There have to be jobs for them. There has to be groundwork laid for their return."
Another issue is the smuggling of opium -- Afghanistan's No. 1 crop -- into Iran along the porous 600-mile border, creating an epidemic of heroin use. In Iranian cities, heroin costs less than cigarettes. Street crime is on the rise, and Iranians are fed up. Afghanistan's interim president, Hamid Karzai, received wild applause from a group of Iranian businessman here when he promised to combat drug smuggling.
But overshadowing all of those difficulties are the claims by the United States that elements in Iran are attempting to subvert Afghanistan's new government. The Bush administration has said Iranian operatives are actively supporting anti-Karzai elements in western Afghanistan, a charge Iran denies.
After Bush's claims, authorities in Tehran placed Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who vocally opposed the Karzai government, under house arrest and cut his phone lines. Iran announced the discovery of more than 100 foreign al-Qaida associates at its borders and promised to deliver them to their respective embassies.
Iranians worry that soured relations with the United States will cost them dearly in contracts once the reconstruction of Afghanistan gets started. Iran has pledged nearly $600-million in aid to Afghanistan over the next five years.
"Because Iran's political base in Afghanistan is currently weak, it is not getting a role in the execution of key projects," said Hossein Abdullahi, the head of an Iranian paint company. "Any business it gets is second- or third-hand."
Whatever the merit of U.S. charges against Iran, there are hard-line elements in the country worried about the prospect of a secular, pro-American Afghanistan on their eastern border. The sight of Kabul residents dancing in the streets after the Taliban's fall had a particular resonance for young people in Iran, where public dancing is forbidden.
Powerful figures have voiced their displeasure at Afghanistan's direction. A day before Karzai's arrival in Tehran, Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president, warned the new Afghan leaders not to become "instruments in the service" of the United States. Otherwise, he said, they will be regarded "in the same way as the U.S. oppressors."
Khatami had a different message. When an Afghan TV reporter asked him a question this week, Khatami first noted his pleasure that there is again such a thing as an Afghan television reporter.
"Until recently in Afghanistan television and freedom of expression were outlawed," he said. "The Afghan's winter of pain is ending. And the spring of a new life is beginning."
It might have been a commentary on Iran itself.