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Iran poised to strike Taliban

Iranian intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan can begin any time now, according to senior officials of the Indian external affairs ministry who are monitoring developments in the strife-torn country. Iran's troop build-up on the Afghan border, despite American warnings, points to the inevitability of such action, they say.

The officials say the Iranians have already crossed the border and gone up to 6 km inside Afghanistan. The reversal faced by the Taliban extremists in Bamiyan province last week was the direct result of paratroopers of the northern alliance headed by former Afghan defence minister Ahmed Shah Masood being dropped in the region by Iranian planes.

The ministry has received reports, as yet unconfirmed, that the Taliban have suffered heavy casualties and are retreating south. According to these reports, Pakistani 'volunteers' -- serving and retired personnel of the Pakistani defence forces -- sent by the Jamait-i-Islami to assist the Taliban have retreated into Pakistan.

The reports cannot be confirmed because unlike at the time of the capture of Kabul by the Taliban, when international aid workers spotted Urdu-speaking Pakistanis among the so-called student militia, the extremists have ensured that there are no aid workers anywhere near the fighting zone.

Just like in Kashmir, Pakistan routinely disowns responsibility for the participation of its citizens in the Afghan turmoil even though some of them have been captured by the northern alliance, including a brother of former Pakistani Army chief Gen Mirza Aslam Beg who holds the rank of colonel. Some reports have said Beg's brother was killed in fighting and his body handed over to Pakistan.

The officials say the Taliban's plea to the United Nations and Pakistani Army chief Gen Jehangir Karamat's plea to the Islamic world to intervene immediately to avoid escalation of the conflict clearly indicate that the Taliban are on the defensive. But as Iran is chairman of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, no Islamic country is in a mood to back the anti-Iran activities in Afghanistan.

Neither the Taliban nor Pakistan has the capability to rush reinforcements to the region. But Iran is being inhibited from intervening on a larger scale by fear of the US response. Iran believes that while Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are the prime movers of the Taliban, they have the blessings of the US too.

Still, if the Iranians have indeed succeeded in decimating the Taliban, estimated to number 25,000, within 36 hours by a surgical strike, the myth of the extremists' invincibility stands demolished, say the officials.

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