Daud Sabah, who holds Canadian as well as Afghan citizenship, attacked the Islamic Republic Sunday, saying it was violating international law by not allowing Afghanistan to import fuel from whereever it wished to do so.
Sabah, who was appointed governor of Herat province by President Hamid Karzai, had just returned from an official visit to Iran when he was interviewed on Shamshad TV, a private Afghan station.
Herat abuts Iran and imports all its fuel from across the Iranian border. In December, Iran started holding up most of the oil tankers arriving at the border with fuel for Afghanistan. There was no explanation at first, but later Iranian officials told Afghanistan it would not permit fuel bound for NATO forces to enter Afghanistan.
The Afghan government repeatedly and publicly said none of the fuel it was importing was destined for NATO.
Eventually, Iran announced that Afghanistan could import all the fuel it wants from Iran, but it continues to bar imports of fuel from Iraq and Turkmenistan that had transited Iran. Previously, Afghanistan bought no Iranian fuel.
Governor Sabah complained that Iran was over-charging for its fuel sales and bleeding Afghanistan for Iran’s own benefit.
Sabah said Iran charges Afghan buyers $200 more for fuel than they need to pay Iran’s neighbors. Presumably he meant $200 more per ton. But he did not specify and he did not say what percentage the Iranian sales price was above fuel from Turkmen-istan or Iraq.
Like many Afghan officials, Sabah’s family lives abroad for safety. His wife and two children live in Little Rock, Arkansas. Sabah, 47, was an aide to President Karzai before being named as provincial governor by Karzai.
Sabah said, “Iran’s demand is against international agreements, conventions and protocols. Since we are a land-locked country, we can import anything unconditionally.”
He was presumably referring to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which gives a landlocked country the right of access to and from the sea without taxation of traffic through transit states. But imports from Iraq and Turkmenistan do not go by sea.
A total of 47 countries in the world, or about one-fourth, are land-locked and have often complained about difficulties with trade restrictions imposed by neighbors.
Shamshad TV closed its report on Sabah’s interview by noting Iran’s previous complaint that fuel crossing the border from Iran was going to NATO. “Now, it seems Iran itself wants to sell its fuel to NATO,” the television station’s reporter commented.
