Water

I am traveling in Afghanistan with a colleague who is here to look at water issues while I look at agriculture issues. So far we have been attending the same meetings as irrigation and agriculture are closely linked and there is often information for both of us. There was a time when I was very interested in water issues and I considered becoming a water specialist. As a Political Science college student I wrote a paper on the role of water in the Middle East conflict. I have been learning a lot on this trip about the complexity of the water issue in Afghanistan.

Many of the major regional rivers have their headwaters in Afghanistan and as a result, Afghanistan has around 75 billion cubits of water every year. This number did not mean a lot to me until it was put into context. The Nile River basin which covers 10 countries has 90 billion cubits per year. And the entire area from Iran to Morocco has only 375 billion cubits per year. In other words, Afghanistan has a lot of water. But Afghanistan is also a mountainous rocky patch of land so much of this water flows to its neighboring countries unless it is obstructed.

Afghanistan has a 1000 year history of irrigation, but over the past 30 years much of the traditional irrigation system has been destroyed from war or neglect. The area under irrigation was halved during the period of the war. While Afghanistan’s economy shrank and its water consumption declined, its neighbors, Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan have been developing, expanding agriculture and industry, increasing their water consumption, much of which comes from Afghanistan.

The problem is that now Afghanistan wants to start expanding and intensifying its irrigation systems and using water for household and industrial use, but because its neighbors have been freely using the water for all these years, they now claim a right to the same flow of water. So it is in the interest of these countries to keep Afghanistan in chaos so they do not increase their water consumption or look to regulating the flow to its neighbors. The region is not exactly stable, but it is interesting that the Taliban is now based in Pakistan launching attacks on Afghanistan from there. (In fact, today the Taliban issued a Fattwa for the killing of Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan). There is also some suggestion that other countries may have manipulated the situation.

One river in the south flows from Afghanistan to Iran. During the war between the Mujahadeen and the Russians Communists (1979-1989), it is said that Iranians crossed the border and masked themselves as Mujahadeen attacking communists. Instead, they killed 30 irrigation engineers who were working on the canal. They continued to attack anyone who tried to repair the canals, forcing Afghanistan to allow all the water to flow freely into Iran. The result is that today the canals that functioned for hundreds of years are filled with sand. The area is still too unsafe to work in.

Negotiating with neighboring states on water consumption is one of the many issues that must be prioritized by the new government in order to avoid conflict with neighbors. This is complicated by the fact that the Communists, Mujahadeen and Taliban all burned records, books and buildings as they left Kabul and many of the records on water are lost. There was an agreement on water signed between Iran and Afghanistan in the 1970’s, but no one has been able to find a copy of the agreement so they may have to start from scratch.