November 19, 2021
The Islamic Republic is complaining bitterly that the West refuses to help it support the multitude of Afghans pouring into the country while simultaneously pushing Afghans refugees back over the border into Afghanistan.
The Raisi Administration is also almost daily asserting that the United States is arming and aiding the Islamic State inside Afghanistan in order to destabilize that country. The Islamic State is believed to be behind numerous attacks on Afghan Shias, including bombings at two Shiite mosques on successive Fridays.
But the regime is devoting more effort to blaming the attacks on Shias on the United States than on the Islamic State. President Raisi himself has joined in the criticisms, saying October 27, “Terrorist incidents in Afghanistan hurt the heart of every human being and there is no doubt that the Americans are involved in such incidents and do not want the Afghan people to achieve peace and security.”
The Taliban themselves, who back in their rule of the country in the 1990s regularly abused Shiites, are now trying to show they are turning over a new leaf; they have appointed one Afghan Shia to the cabinet.
The Iranian regime boasts of how much it is doing to aid the Afghans who are fleeing into Iran and complains about how little the Western powers are doing. But the International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, said November 11 that both Iran and Pakistan are pushing refugees back across the border. It said Iran pushed 28,000 Afghans back into Afghanistan just in the last week of October.
The Norwegian Refugee Council issued a report November 10 saying 4,000 to 5,000 Afghans are now fleeing into Iran every day with the total from the Taliban takeover in August through early November at about 300,000. It agreed that Iran could not take care of such numbers without help from other countries.
Trade between Iran and Afghanistan is also hampered. Iran said the Taliban issued a directive in early November saying Iranian truck drivers might enter Afghanistan only once every 25 days. And Afghanistan’s Tolo News reported that no Afghan goods have been exported through Iran’s Chabahar port since the Taliban takeover in August, instead sending exports through Pakistani ports—a hint that the Taliban want to minimize ties to Iran and maximize ties to Pakistan.