Blood in the Sand: A 1998 Taliban – Iran War Timeline
Setting
On August 8th, 1998, a detachment of the main Taliban army storms the city of Mazar-i-Sharif , a headquarters of the Afghan Northern Alliance(NA) and long standing symbol of the ongoing civil war between the two sides.
As retribution for the June 1997 massacre of 3000 Taliban prisoners by Abdul Malik Pahlawan, Taliban forces begin to massacre thousands of captured NA soldiers, noncombatants and their perceived collaborators.
Among those killed are 8 Iranian diplomats out of a staff of 10 and one Iranian state news agency correspondent after a small band of Taliban troops seize the city’s Iranian consulate. The rest are taken hostage.
This came on the same day that several Pakistani diplomats relayed to Tehran an assurance from the Taliban that the safety of the Iranian consulates and diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif were guaranteed as the occupation of the city commenced.
After receiving demands from Tehran for information on the status of the diplomats, and wishing to the hide the killings from the world, a Taliban spokesman in the days following the capture of the city, declares to outside media that the status of the Iranian diplomatic staff is unknown.
Tehran protests the statement, levying responsibility on the Taliban government to produce information on the whereabouts of the diplomats.
A false investigatory commission is started by Kabul in days after August 8th.
On September 10th, results of the investigation are announced to the world by a Taliban spokesman for the office of the Taliban’s Ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Hakim Mujahid.
According to results of the investigation,the diplomats' bodies had been found at a mountain near Mazar-i-Sharif. In addition, the statement declared that at the time of the city’s capture, the Iranian consulate had been empty.
The same night on Iranian state television, the Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement as response to the Taliban's report, declaring the dead diplomats as martyrs, comparing them to the soldiers who died defending the nation’s borders during the Iran-Iraq War. In addition, the statement also called on the Taliban to return the bodies of the diplomats immediately, return several other Iranian hostages that the Taliban had detained, and to arrest those who carried out the attack, as Tehran holds both the Taliban and the Government of Pakistan responsible.
On September 11th, Mohammed Omar, known to his subordinates and the Afghan people as Mullah Omar, declared in a public admission that Taliban soldiers had “either intentionally or unintentionally” killed the diplomats during the capture of Mazar-i-Sharif in the previous month, causing a massive uproar for retributive violence by the people of Tehran.
At the same time the Taliban began their assault on the Northern Alliance-held town of Bamiyan; a home to a large number of Afghani Shiites.
Though president Mohammad Khatami urged restraint and patience as he showed his willingness to defer temporarily to the United Nations to determine blame for the murder of the diplomats, calls by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and the people of Iran for a retaliatory intervention to prevent a second round of sectarian-motivated killings in Bamiyan give Ayatollah Khamenei a reason to consider a military solution to Taliban problem.
With crowds of angry Iranians gathered outside his Tehran residence shouting “Death to the Taliban! Death to the Taliban!”, and with the Iranian state television agency broadcasting that they had proof that Mohammed Omar himself ordered the attack on the consulate himself after several Iranian officials said they had been on the phone with their counterparts when the shooting in the consulate stated, the Ayatollah had all the evidence he needed.
With a fresh round of wargames completed only days prior, on September 12th, 1998, Ayatollah Khamenei, angered by the massacre of the diplomats, fearful of another round of Shia killings should Bamiyan fall to the Taliban, and secretly seeking to aid their allies in the Northern Alliance annihilate the Taliban and push Pakistani influence from their borders, unilaterally assumes supreme command of the armed forces and announces to the 70,000 Revolutionary Guard troops stationed along the eastern border to advance into Afghanistan.
Their goals:
- Crush the Taliban in Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Helmand and Kandahar provinces
- Relieve the Northern Alliance in Bamiyan
- Arrest the bandit Mohammed (Mullah) Omar