TEHRAN – Head of Iran’s Strategic Foreign Relations Council Seyed KamalKharrazi warned against the negative consequences of the presence of theISIL terrorist group in Afghanistan for the neighboring countries,including Iran.
“Reliable sources have confirmed that after the defeat in Syria and Iraq,terrorist groups, including the ISIL, are sent to other places, speciallyAfghanistan and North Africa,” Kharrazi said on Sunday, addressing theSeventh World Peace Forum held at Tsinghua University in Beijing themed’Constructing a Security Community: Equality, Equity and Justice’.
The senior Iranian foreign policy official underlined that the ISILactivities in Afghanistan is a threat to Iran as well as other countriessuch as China, Russia and Pakistan.
The full text of Kharrazi’s speech at World Peace Forum is as follows:
In the Name of God
I am delighted to speak in this panel today on an important topic: TheInternational Fight against Terrorism. I have to thank Tsinghua Universitywhich has provided me with this opportunity.
Ladies and Gentlemen
As you are aware, in recent decades, we have witnessed the emergence oflarge and horrific radical terrorist groups in the Middle East and NorthAfrica who claimed to be Muslim, while doing against the teachings ofIslam. Some of these groups managed to capture lands and form their owngovernments and states.
Al-Qaeda, Taliban, ISIL, Al-Nusra, Boku Haram and others are examples ofsuch savage groups. Among them, Taliban and ISIL managed to form theirgovernments, but due to their extremely violent and barbaric behavior, theysoon lost their public support.
ISIL was the strongest and most violent group which managed to spread itsrule in the Middle East and elsewhere by recruiting people from 80countries. However, the question is: How these radical groups emerged sorapidly?
Who supported them to set the region on fire? Wasn’t that planned byregional and international powers?
In order to respond to these questions, one should find what is thebackground and ideology of these groups, and explore who provided them withfinance and arms.
As a matter of the fact, the root ideology of these radical groups who arenamed Salafies is Wahhabism, which has been founded and promoted in SaudiArabia. However, during the past years, many Wahhabi preachers have beendispatched to seminary schools across the world to make the Muslimsinformed about the basics of that ideology.
For more clarification, I would like to draw your attention to an interviewby Mohammad Bin Salman, the Saudi Crown Prince who told the Guardian on 24October 2017 that: “After the Iranian revolution in 1979, people wanted tocopy this model in different countries, one of them is Saudi Arabia. Wedidn’t know how to deal with it. And the problem spread all over the world.Now is the time to get rid of it.”
Yes, it is true. Saudi Arabia based on its long-run strategy had beentrying to attract the youth from the Muslim world and even non-Muslimcountries to the University of Medina to receive Wahhabi-Salafi teachings.
However, these students returning to their countries after graduationworked as Imams in the mosques set up by Saudi Arabia to promote Wahhabism.In Pakistan, in particular, thousands of seminary schools were establishedto train the students who were later recruited by radical groups such asthe Taliban, Sepah Tayebbeh, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and other groups.
On the other hand, the chaotic atmosphere after the fall of Saddam Hussein,the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, led to the growth of TakfiriWahhabi groups in the Middle East by the financial, logistic, intelligenceand training contributions of some Persian Gulf Arab states, and thepolitical support of some western powers. Albeit, now that these groups aredefeated, all of their supporters claim to be against them.
As you are aware, Donald Trump the president of the United States, duringhis election campaigns exposed that ISIL was created by Hillary Clinton,the then Secretary of State. In another case, Joe Biden the then-USVice-President, in a televised address in 2015 confirmed the role ofPersian Gulf Arab states in supporting ISIL. Moreover, the former PrimeMinister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad Bin Jasim confessed in an interview with AlMayadin on 26 June 2017 to the cooperation of Qatar with the US, Turkey andSaudi Arabia to provide support for armed groups in Syria.
Ladies and Gentlemen
With the sacrifice of the Iraqi, Syrian, Iranian and other voluntaryforces, Daesh (ISIL) has been disintegrated, but not yet eradicated.According to the authentic information, they are now being relocated toAfghanistan.
The growing attacks of ISIL in Afghanistan show that they have now targetedAfghanistan which is neighbor to Iran, China, Pakistan, and Russia.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The regional experience of Iran in resisting against Wahhabism whichconsiders other ideologies as false and entitled to eradication has a longhistory. The founder of this ideology was Mohammad Bin Abdul Wahhab, aSaudi clergy, lived in the eighteenth century. His school of thought wasthen announced as the country’s official religion by the Saudi rulers in1744.
The first regional confrontation with Wahhabis was in 1802 when theyattacked the city of Karbala in Iraq from Saudi territory, killed manyinnocent people and destroyed the holy shrines of the Shia Imams. They alsoflooded the city with water so that such holy places are being totallydestroyed.
In that time, Fath Ali Shah Qajar was ruling Iran and the Ottoman Empirewas in power in Istanbul, having Iraq under its control. Iran governmentand the Ottomans sent their army to Karbala. As the result, Wahhabis leftthe city and fled to Saudi Arabia. Since then, our region has experiencedsimilar incidents on various occasions with its peak being the recent waveof violence by Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Taliban, Boku Haram, Jeish-ul Islam,ISIL, etc.
Dear Chairperson
To conclude my remarks, I believe the following measures are necessary tobe taken against such radical terrorist groups:
It is necessary for strategic think tanks to work on the roots of such anextremist ideology, and their findings should be shared by other countries.Conferences, seminars, and meetings should be convened to discuss variousaspects of Salafi-Takfiri ideology.
Since the presence of ISIL is rising in Afghanistan, it is necessary toexchange views and hold regular meetings on how to confront this viciousphenomenon. Iran, Pakistan, China, Russia and the Central Asian countriesshould be pioneers in planning for coordinated measures against it.
As this ideology may attract the youth in other societies, it is necessaryfor the media to inform the public opinion in general, and educate theyouth in specific, about the destructive role of this school of thought.
Seventh World Peace Forum was attended by former politicians and opinionleaders of think tanks from across the globe. Current solutions to thesecurity challenges faced by the international community are discussedduring the forum. Besides topics such as anti-terrorism and anti-nuclearproliferation, security issues– including trade conflicts and economicsecurity, AI technology and its impact on international relations–are alsoto be high on the agenda this year.