AFP: Herat’s silk weavers struggle to keep an ancient trade alive

October 15, 2007

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — An important stop on the ancient Silk Route, the beautiful city of Herat has for centuries lured travellers and businessmen.

But today it is fighting to keep alive one of the symbols of this splendid past — silk spun from the delicate cocoons of silk worms.

About 120 kilometres (74 miles) east of the Iranian border, the key city in the 14th century Timurid empire of conqueror Tamerlane still prides itself on the skill of producing the precious material.

But the small industry is being crushed by competition from China, which has 70 percent of the world silk market, and its neighbours Pakistan and Iran.

Of the 156 enterprises in the province, few are dedicated to the production of silk and only 100 families make their living from the craft. This is a marked drop from a few years ago.

“In 2002 there were more than 300 manufacturers with 800 employees in the province,” says the head of Herat province’s trade unions, Abdul Qadir Akbari.

“We prefer to invest in products that are easy to export, like biscuits sold in the neighbouring former Soviet republics,” explains the secretary of the province’s separate industrial union, Mir Mohammad Mashouf.

In Afghanistan the delicate work of producing silk is still done by hand because there is no money to bring in modern machines, says Akbari, himself involved in sericulture.

“It takes between 45 and 50 days for an average family of five people to raise 40 kilogrammes (88 pounds) of cocoons,” he says.

“We give them boxes imported from China that contain the leaves of the white mulberry tree to feed the eggs, which will develop into the cocoons,” he says.

The next stage is unravelling the cocoon, when one has to avoid breaking the fine thread that can reach between 300 and 1,500 metres (yards).

In Herat, just four to five manufacturers are in the industry and they “barely survive,” says Akbari.

Ghalem Haidar Azimi runs his business from an old suburb of mudbrick houses.

His dozen employees work eight hours a day, six days a week, to produce 40 kilogrammes a month of rough silk which he says he can sell for 40 dollars a kilogramme. This thread then has to be treated and refined.

It is too expensive to hope to export on a world market where one can bargain for silk half the price.

“Here we find silk from China and more often a Pakistani imitation (polyester) much cheaper,” says Azimi.

Mohammad Amine, who runs a fabric shop near the city’s landmark Friday Mosque, says: “Today, artificial silk from Pakistan costs 20 dollars for a quarter kilogramme, already dyed. Here, four kilogrammes of silk costs 160 dollars and it still has to be dyed.”

The Pakistani thread is also easier to use, says this former warrior who lost a leg fighting the Taliban in the 1990s. “In one day, we can make three shawls with this material, compared to one with the real silk from here.”

Silk shawls are prized in the region. Men traditionally keep them for their turbans, even though it’s a sign of wealth forbidden by Islamic teaching.

“It is hard work that benefits few people,” says Jamshedi Ghulam Mohammad, an expert in their manufacture.

There are also silk carpets, he says, although those from Iran are more valued.

“Thirty years ago, Afghan silk carpets sold well: 75 percent of them were exported compared to hardly two percent today,” Mohammad said.

AFP: Iranian, Chinese weapons seized in Herat Province

September 22, 2007

HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) — Afghan authorities said they had seized dozens of Iranian and Chinese-made weapons after a brief battle Saturday with Taliban fighters near the border with Iran.

The weapons found in the western province of Herat included about 40 mines and rocket-propelled grenades, the government’s intelligence agency said in a statement.

They were found in a vehicle that Taliban fighters abandoned following an exchange of fire in the province’s Ghoryan district on the Iranian border, it said.

“The weapons were seized after Taliban escaped and left one of their vehicles behind with the weapons,” it said.

An intelligence official told AFP separately and on condition of anonymity that the arms appeared to have been manufactured in Iran and China.

Some of the rockets showed to reporters carried Persian writing and the coat of arms of Iran, which reads “Allah.”

US and British officials have alleged that the Taliban are being supplied by weapons that arrive from Iran, although not necessarily from Tehran, which denies involvement.

A sizeable convoy carrying explosives was seized early this month by NATO troops in the western province of Farah, which also borders Iran, the top NATO general here, General Dan McNeill, said last week.

“The geographic origin of that convoy was clearly Iran but take note that I did not say it’s the Iranian government,” the US general told AFP.

Officials with NATO’s International Security Assistance Force told the Washington Post the weapons stash included armour-piercing bombs, which have been especially deadly when used against foreign troops in Iraq.

The NATO-led force interdicted two smaller shipments of similar weapons from Iran into southern Helmand province on April 11 and May 3, the Post said.

US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte reiterated last week concern about weapons from Iran supplying the Taliban and said Washington was also discouraging China from selling arms to that country.

RFE/RL: U.S. Worried Iran Sending Chinese Weapons To Taliban

(reported Friday, September 14, 2007)

Afghanistan: U.S. Worried Iran Sending Chinese Weapons To Taliban

By Ron Synovitz

September 14, 2007 (RFE/RL) — U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte says Washington has complained to Beijing about Chinese weapons shipments to Iran that appear to be turning up in the hands of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

Negroponte confirmed the U.S. concerns over China’s weapons deals with Tehran after a 10-ton weapons cache was discovered in the western Afghan province of Herat.

The cache found in Ghurian district, near the border with Iran, included artillery shells, land mines, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers with Chinese, Russian, and Persian markings on them.

Britain’s Foreign Office has also confirmed that it has complained to Beijing about Chinese-made HN-5 antiaircraft missiles confiscated from Taliban fighters who were captured or killed by British Royal Marines in Helmand Province. Beijing has said that it would investigate allegations that the weapons were forwarded to the Taliban through Iran.

When asked in Kabul on September 11 about the Taliban’s use of sophisticated new Chinese weapons, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte also suggested that Iran has been a transit point for Chinese arms deliveries to the Taliban.

“A subject that I have discussed with the Chinese in the past is the fact of their weapons sales to the country of Iran and our concern,” Negroponte said. “We have tried to discourage the Chinese from signing any new weapons contracts with Iran. We are concerned by reports — which we consider to be reliable — of explosively formed projectiles and other kinds of military equipment coming from Iran across the border and coming into the hands of the Taliban.”

In June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Washington had no evidence proving a direct role by the Iranian government in smuggling weapons to the Taliban. But Gates said Washington suspects Tehran is involved.

“I haven’t seen any intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say, given the quantities we are seeing, it is difficult to believe that it is associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it is taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government,” Gates said.

Not Without Tehran’s Knowledge?

Alex Vatanka is the Washington-based Iran analyst for Jane’s Information Group, which publishes “Jane’s Defence Weekly” and other journals about the weapons industry and global security issues. Vatanka says it will remain unclear whether the Ghurian weapons cache is linked to the Taliban until Afghan or U.S. authorities announce details of their joint investigation.

But the presence of Chinese weapons so close to the Iranian border is the strongest evidence to date suggesting Tehran has had at least an indirect role in arms shipments to Afghanistan.

“Whether the government or somebody in Iran could be buying arms from China and, without Tehran’s knowledge, ship it over to Afghanistan — on that volume of weapons — I find that extremely unlikely,” Vatanka says.

“I can only see that happening if somebody pretty senior and in an influential political position in Iran decided to facilitate that without letting everybody in the system know about it,” he continues. “But they still had to be involved somewhere in the state machinery. We’re not talking about rogue elements [in Iran]. Baluchi drug traffickers can’t pull that kind of thing off.”

Many analysts have noted that Shi’ite Iran and the Sunni Taliban had been firm enemies since 1998, when the Taliban regime controlled most of Afghanistan and executed nine Iranian diplomats in Mazar-e Sharif.

But Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, an expert on Islamic militancy in the region and author of the book “Taliban,” says that times appear to have changed. Now, with U.S. forces deployed some 60 kilometers from the Iranian border at Shindad Airfield in Herat Province, Rashid says Tehran and the Taliban have a common enemy.

“I have no doubt that Iran has been involved in channeling money and arms to various elements in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, for the last few years. They have long-running relations with many of the commanders and small-time warlords in western Afghanistan,” Rashid says. “I think Iran is playing all sides in the Afghan conflict. And there are Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns who are being funded by Iran who are active in western Afghanistan. If the Iranians are convinced that the Americans are undermining them through western Afghanistan, then it is very likely that these agents of theirs have been activated.”

Political Backlash

Still, Vatanka says it would be “almost irrational behavior” for Tehran to supply the Taliban with weapons. He says such a move would almost certainly lead to a negative domestic political backlash for Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad’s government.

For that reason, Vatanka says he is eagerly awaiting the assessment of Afghan and U.S. investigators about whether the arms in the Ghurian cache were stashed away by the Taliban or by one of several rival militia factions in Herat Province.

“The question is, what would get even a faction within Iran to make that type of a decision? Maybe you have excellent business ties between the Iranians and the Afghans on the other side — not necesarily the central government in Kabul — but local leaders in Herat who turn around saying, ‘You Iranians are building roads and infrastructure here. You are setting up shops and factories. But for us to be able to guarantee that we can protect your business interests, we’ll need to receive some arms.’ That’s an argument that one could put out: that the Iranians are essentially supplying not the Taliban, but Afghan partners to secure Iranian businesses and interests in western Afghanistan,” Vatanka says.

To date, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has refused to publicly support allegations of a direct link between Tehran and weapons shipments to the Taliban. “We don’t have any such evidence so far of the involvement of the Iranian government in supplying the Taliban. We have a very good relationship with the Iranian government. Iran and Afghanistan have never been as friendly as they are today,” Karzai has said.

Vatanka says that as long as Karzai maintains that position, skeptics around the world will dismiss suggestions from Washington that Tehran is supplying Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.

“From a U.S. point of view, if the insurgency in Afghanistan is essentially escalating based on Iranian assistance, then what Washington really needs to do is to provide far more evidence that points to that — and get Mr. Hamid Karzai in Kabul and the regional governments in Afghanistan to back the U.S. up when it makes these claims against Iran,” Vatanka says.

After the U.S. military failed to find the weapons of mass destruction allegedly being stockpiled in Iraq, Vatanka says, “the skeptics out there are saying, ‘These [new allegations] are being made up by the U.S. to justify another war with Iran’ — which might not actually be the case. Iran might be involved. But because of the lack of evidence, the Iranians are saying, ‘Who else is backing up the U.S. allegations?’”

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