The recent arrest of a Taliban fighter suspected of trafficking weapons from Iran to Afghanistan comes at the end of a year in which Iran greatly increased its efforts to disrupt the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan, military and intelligence officials say.
Over the past year, military officials have uncovered evidence of Iran training Afghan insurgents to make less detectable bombs out of plastic and supplying them with automatic rifles and other small arms. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard has also tutored Taliban sympathizers in guerrilla warfare tactics.
The Afghan man captured last week in Nimroz province was seen crossing from Iran into Afghanistan by a joint security team that had targeted him for capture.
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He was found to be working closely with the Quds force, a special unit within the Revolutionary Guard tasked with exporting Tehran's Islamic revolution throughout the Middle East and Southwestern Asia. And he had connections to high-level Taliban leaders, coalition officials told The Washington Examiner.
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Iranian trainers are suspected of working in insurgent camps in the provinces of Herat, Farah, Helmand and Nimroz, and evidence suggests that trainers are also in areas of northern Afghanistan, according to numerous Afghan and U.S. officials.
A Western intelligence official, who works in South Asia, said that "generally, weapons that are provided by Iran are the older stuff -- or stuff that is difficult to trace back to [Iran]," adding "Iranians fear that the Afghans could use the weapons against them in the future." |