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198 TALIBAN SHIA VERSUS SUNNI: IRAN AND SAUDI ARABIA 199leaders during the negotiations to form the Mujaheddin interim governmentin exile in Islamabad. 3 The Mujaheddin leaders were obliged toappoint an Afghan Wahabbi as interim Prime Minister.In March 1990, the Saudis came up with an additional US$100 millionfor Hikmetyar's Hizb-e-Islami party who were backing an abortive coupattempt from within the Afghan army against President Najibullah byHikmetyar and General Shahnawaz Tanai in Kabul. 4 After 1992 theSaudis continued to provide funds and fuel to the Mujaheddin governmentin Kabul. The fuel, chanelled through Pakistan, became a majorsource of corruption and patronage for successive Pakistani governmentsand the ISI.Due to the estranged relations between Iran and the USA, the AfghanMujaheddin groups based in Iran received no international military assistance.Nor did the two million Afghan refugees who fled to Iran receivethe same humanitarian aid which their three million counterparts in Pakistanreceived. Tehran's own support to the Mujaheddin was limited onaccount of budgetary constraints because of the Iraq-Iran war. Thusthroughout the 1980s, the USA effectively blocked off Iran from the outsideworld on Afghanistan. It was a legacy which only further embitterthe Iranians against the USA and it would ensure much greater Iranianassertiveness in Afghanistan once the Cold War had ended and theAmericans had left the Afghan stage.Iran's initial support to the Mujaheddin only went to the Afghan Shias,in particular the Hazaras. It was the era in which Iran's RevolutionaryGuards funded Shia militants worldwide - from Lebanon to Pakistan. By1982, Iranian money and influence had encouraged a younger generationof Iran-trained radical Hazaras, to overthrow the traditional leaders whohad emerged in the Hazarajat in 1979 to oppose the Soviet invasion.Later, eight Afghan Shia groups were given official status in Tehran, butIran could never arm and fund them sufficiently. As a result, the IranbackedHazaras became marginal to the conflict inside Afghanistan andfought more amongst themselves than against the Soviets. Hazara factionalismwas exacerbated by Iran's short-sighted, ideological policies inwhich the Hazaras loyalty to Tehran was viewed as more important thanunity amongst themselves.By 1988, with the Soviet withdrawal now imminent, Iran saw the needto strengthen the Hazaras. They helped unite the eight Iran-based Hazaragroups into the single Hizb-e-Wahadat party. Iran now pressed for Wahadat'sinclusion in international negotiations to form a new Mujaheddingovernment, which was to be dominated by the Peshawar-based Mujaheddinparties. Even though the Hazaras were a small minority and could notpossibly hope to rule Afghanistan, Iran demanded first a 50-per-cent andthen a 25-per-cent share for the Hazaras in any future Mujaheddin government.As the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia intensified with theSaudis importing more Arabs to spread Wahabbism and anti-Shiisminside Afghanistan, Pakistan kept the balance between them. A close allyof both states, Pakistan stressed the need to maintain a united frontagainst the Kabul regime. The Iran-Saudi rivalry escalated after the 1989withdrawal of Soviet troops when Iran drew closer to the Kabul regime.Iran considered the Kabul regime as the only force now capable of resistinga Sunni Pashtun takeover of Afghanistan. Iran rearmed Wahadatand by the time Kabul fell to the Mujaheddin in 1992, Wahadat controllednot only the Hazarajat but a significant part of western Kabul.The Saudis meanwhile suffered a major set back as their two principleneo-Wahabbi proteges, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar and Abdul Rasul Sayyaf,split. Hikmetyar opposed the newly constituted Mujaheddin governmentin Kabul and joined up with the Hazaras to bombard the city. Sayyafsupported the Mujheddin government. This division was an extension ofthe much larger Saudi foreign policy debacle after Iraq invaded Kuwait in1990. For 20 years the Saudis had funded hundreds of neo-Wahabbi partiesacross the Muslim world to spread Wahabbism and gain influencewithin the Islamic movements in these countries.But when Riyadh asked these Islamic groups for a payback and to lendsupport to Saudi Arabia and the USA led coalition against Iraq, themajority of them backed Saddam Hussein, including Hikmetyar and mostAfghan groups. Years of Saudi effort and billions of dollars were wastedbecause Saudi Arabia had failed to evolve a national interest-based foreignpolicy. The Saudi predicament is having a westernized ruling elitewhose legitimacy is based on conservative fundamentalism, while thosenot part of the elite are radically anti-Western. The elite has promotedradical Wahabbism, even as this undermined its own power at home andabroad. Ironically only the moderate Afghan groups, whom the Saudishad ignored, helped out the Kingdom in its hour of need. 5As the Afghan war intensified between 1992 and 1995, so did the rivalrybetween Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and the Pakistanis made frequentattempts to bring all the factions together. However, they also madeevery effort to keep Iran and the Hazaras out of any potential agreements.In the 1992 Peshawar Accord which Pakistan and Saudi Arabia negotiatedbetween the Mujaheddin on how to share power in Kabul and in the subsequent,but abortive, 1993 Islamabad and Jalalabad Accords to end thecivil war, Iran and the Hazaras were sidelined. The exclusion of Iran in the1990s by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, similar to treatment by the USA ofIran in the 1980s, was to further embitter Tehran.The Iranians had also become more pragmatic, backing not just the