Steve Quayle News Alerts

May 21, 2002

Iranian border guards recently arrested 33 Pakistanis who may have been al-Qaida fighters, raising the possibility of a major shift for Iran, which so far has been uncooperative in assisting Washington's war on terrorism, says Stratfor, the global intelligence company.

The Pakistanis were trying to cross into Iran illegally, the Balochistan Post reported. Such incidents are common on the well-tread smuggling routes across the countries' shared border. But strangely enough, the Iranian security services handed the suspects back to Pakistani authorities, rather than jailing them as usual.

It is possible that the suspects were simply smugglers. But they may also have been al-Qaida fighters, who reportedly used the same routes as drug smugglers to escape from Afghanistan earlier this year. If Iran truly is arresting al-Qaida suspects in its own territory and handing them over to Pakistan, it would signal a significant shift in Tehran's stance toward Washington.

In an effort to stanch the hemorrhage of illegal drugs into the country, the Iranian government has armed tens of thousands of villagers, constructed hundreds of miles of trenches and fences and posted roughly 130,000 law-enforcement officers on its borders. Even so, drug runners regularly outnumber and outgun the police.

Iran is a transit route for traffickers bringing drugs out of Pakistan and Afghanistan and into the Persian Gulf, Europe and Central Asia. In return, smugglers take subsidized Iranian fuel – about 12 cents a gallon – into Pakistan and Afghanistan. And locals smuggle duty-free goods into both countries.

If the arrested Pakistanis were drug smugglers, they likely would have been executed. And merchandise smugglers would have likely been imprisoned inside Iran. That Iran sent the suspects back to Pakistan suggests they might have been al-Qaida fighters, who reportedly used the traditional heroin smuggling routes that lead into Iran to escape Afghanistan – via Pakistan – last winter, The London-based Guardian reported.

The paper reported that al-Qaida members paid smugglers up to $25,000 to help get them out of Pakistan, where many crossed from the Balochistan province into eastern Iran and on to the Iranian port of Bandar-e-Abbas. Some sources suggested that even elements of Iran's security services might have helped the al-Qaida members get across.

The New York Times reported this spring that U.S. intelligence believed al-Qaida activists were re-forming along the Afghan border in Balochistan province, based on the monitoring of Internet activity and websites hosted by groups friendly to al-Qaida. The report was substantiated by Afghan warlord Taj Mohammed Wardak, who told the BBC that Taliban leader Mullah Omar fled to Balochistan in late 2001.

The combination of recent U.S. military sweeps in eastern Afghanistan and Pakistani security operations in western Pakistan may be encouraging al-Qaida and Taliban fighters to look for safer accommodations. Iran's security services may have already picked up some militants, or Iran may simply be signaling to Washington that they are taking a tougher line toward al-Qaida or other extremist threats than they did earlier in the year.

Such a change from the Iranians would be surprising, but not entirely unexpected. Reports have been surfacing for weeks about quiet negotiations in Cyprus between Iranian and U.S. government representatives. The substance of those talks is unclear, but it is clear that al-Qaida is a top priority for Washington in its relationship with Tehran. The Iranian government has publicly opposed most of Washington's war on terrorism since Sept. 11. Actively assisting the United States by handing over al-Qaida suspects would be a noteworthy shift for Tehran.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27697