Iran on Thursday warned a key international conference that a long-term US military presence in Afghanistan would fan regional insecurity and could plunge the war-torn country back into further chaos. Representatives from 29 countries gathered in Kabul for the conference, weeks after NATO agreed at a summit in Chicago to stick to plans to withdraw the bulk of 130,000 foreign combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The Taliban militia, leading a 10-year insurgency against US military and President Hamid Karzai’s government, has begun the annual fighting season with a series of attacks which saw US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta admit that violence was rising.
Karzai sought to reassure neighbours that strategic partnership deals signed by Kabul with several Western powers — particularly the United States — to govern relations beyond 2014, would not damage ties. But the foreign minister of Iran, an enemy of the United States that welcomes NATO’s departure from its eastern border, alluded to the Kabul-Washington pact by saying it added to security concerns among Afghanistan’s neighbours. “A particular country intends to prolong its military presence in Afghanistan in pursuit of its extra regional objectives. This certainly adds to the security concerns of Afghanistan’s neighbouring countries,” said Ali Akbar Salehi. The strategic partnership deal and efforts to establish foreign military bases in Afghanistan ran against regional and international moves to achieve peace, and “could turn this country once again into scene of security rivalries” he said. Afghanistan has long been a focus of imperial rivalry and scene of foreign intervention, most recently since the 2001 US-led invasion but also in the 1980s uprising against Russian troops that ultimately helped bring down the Soviet Union. Washington denies it is seeking to establish permanent military bases in Afghanistan, but American military sources say they envisage around 15,000 forces remaining in Afghanistan after the 2014 withdrawal.
