The blockade started in mid-December with no explanation whatsoever. Within a few days, Iranian officials were telling their counterparts that they objected to the fuel going to foreign troops stationed in Afghanistan.
The Afghan government repeatedly said none of the fuel went to the foreign troops and all of its was destined for the private market. Iran continued to talk about gasoline going to the Americans and other armies in the country.
Last Wednesday, Afghan-istan’s new ambassador in Tehran called a news conference to say that Iran had agreed to end the blockade after the two countries had reached an agreement. He did not say what the agreement was, however.
But on Sunday, Iranian Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi announced that Afghanistan had agreed to buy all its refined oil products from Iran and no one else. As a result, he said, deliveries across the border had now resumed.
“Afghanistan’s private sector now buys all its needed products from Iran,” Mir-Kazemi said, according to the Oil Ministry’s Shana news service. “There has been an agreement with Afghan officials.”
But the very next day in Kabul, Deputy Commerce Minister Gholam-Hossain Aylaqi objected strongly that that was not the agreement Afghanistan made with Iran. He said Afghanistan agreed to buy all the fuel needs for western Afghanistan from Iran, but not the needs for the entire country.
“We have agreed to buy the fuel needed in western and southwestern Afghanistan [from Iran]. We have not agreed and will not agree to buy all our supplies from Iran,” he said. He explained that it was unreasonable to buy fuel for the northern and eastern provinces from Iran because fuel from nextdoor Pakistan and Central Asia was cheaper than Iranian products.
Finance Ministry spokesman Aziz Shams later echoed the Commerce Ministry, saying Afghanistan could not afford to buy all its supplies from Iran.
The fuel that Iran has been holding up at the border has not been Iranian fuel. Afghanistan previously bought nothing from Iran. It bought fuel from Iraq, Turkmenistan and Russia that was trucked across Iran to Afghanistan. That accounted for about one-third of Afghanistan’s fuel imports. It is that foreign fuel that Iran stopped and that is now to be replaced with Iranian fuel products.
The fact that Iran only lifted the blockade on Afghanistan after the Afghans agreed to buy Iranian fuel products puts a whole new cast on the blockade. Now that the border has been opened after a sales deal was accepted, it suggests Iran’s goal from the start may have been to coerce Afghanistan into buying from Iran. The talk of American troops using the fuel may just have been a red herring.
Afghanistan has no oilfields or refineries of its won and so must import all its petroleum products.