Iran, Afghanistan announce security cooperation against ISIL

Ashraf Ghani’s two-day visit to Iran is his first since taking over from president Hamid Karzai in September, and comes a day after ISIL claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Jalalabad that killed 33 people.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani , left, shakes hands with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani during an official welcoming ceremony following Mr Ghani’s arrival in Tehran yesterday. Atta Kenare / AFP

TEHRAN // Afghanistan and Iran announced on Sunday plans for enhanced security cooperation to combat threats from the ISIL group, including possible joint military operations.

Standing alongside visiting Afghan leader Ashraf Ghani, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani said the tumult hitting the region meant intelligence must be shared.

His comments came after ISIL, which holds swathes of Syria and Iraq, said it was responsible for a suicide bombing in Afghanistan’s eastern city of Jalalabad which killed 33 people. More than 100 people were wounded.

The attack on Saturday at a state-owned bank where government workers were drawing their salaries was the first in Afghanistan claimed by ISIL.

Mr Ghani’s two-day visit to Iran is his first since taking over from president Hamid Karzai in September. He was accompanied on the trip by his foreign minister and minister for oil and mines.

The Afghan leader has repeatedly raised the prospect of ISIL making inroads in his country, though the militant group has never formally acknowledged its presence in Afghanistan.

A former finance minister and World Bank technocrat, Mr Ghani said ISIL presented “a serious danger and different form of terrorism”.

“People die daily, we face barbarism,” he said at a joint press conference with Mr Rouhani who nodded in agreement.

“And without greater cooperation a macabre phenomenon such as Daesh cannot be contained,” Mr Ghani said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL.

Mr Rouhani said: “We have agreed to cooperate further in the fight against terrorism, violence and extremism in the region, especially in border regions.

“We need intelligence sharing and, if necessary, cooperation in operations because the problems that exist are not restricted and gradually spread throughout the region, affecting everyone.”

The two leaders did not specify further what they thought could be done to confront ISIL, which swept into Iraq from Syria last June. The group holds Mosul, Iraq’s second city.

Iran has been central in the Baghdad government’s fightback against ISIL, coordinating Shiite militias and providing military advisers from its powerful Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The largest such operation saw ISIL cleared early this month from Tikrit, a city north of Baghdad and the childhood home of executed Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban have seen defections to ISIL in recent months, with some voicing their disaffection with their supreme leader Mullah Omar who has not been seen in almost 14 years.

A person purporting to be an ISIL spokesman said that the group was behind the Jalalabad bombing. An online post allegedly from ISIL made the same claim, but could not be verified.

Iran and Afghanistan have close ties. In 2001, Tehran took the rare step of cooperating with Washington in a US-led invasion that ousted the Taliban regime from power in Kabul.

* Agence France-Presse