“In some cases, the materials at stake will be viewed as so essential to national survival or economic well-being that compromise is unthinkable. Michael T. Klare author of The Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict
The water-stressed region of Central Asia composed of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan has in common the climate crisis-dwindling waters of the Amu Darya River with which all three nations share a border. After a rapid overthrow of the government that was propped up by NATO and the United States, the Taliban has had no diplomatic relations with most countries. Unforgiving, violent, and cruel, the Taliban have continued mistreatment of their people. Human rights violations are common. But hunger is a real life or death national disaster as the effect of a heating world disrupts rainfall patterns across the globe. Combined with water mismanagement by the Soviets where, water in the Amu Darya River which at one time flowed freely and filled the Aral Sea, once the fourth largest sea in the world, killed the Aral Sea, making it one of the worst ecological disasters on earth.
The Soviets drained the lake for irrigation, killing the fish and drying the lake bed, which winds have turned into salt-laden dust affecting human health and agriculture. The act altered the climate in the region, creating an aridification crisis for the region. The remaining water in the Aral became increasingly salty and was polluted with fertilizer and pesticides, with towns being abandoned and fishing communities collapsing.
The ecological dimensions of the death of the Aral Sea are fairly well known. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral has all but disappeared since 1960. The complex and fragile ecosystems that once characterized the Aral Sea basin have been supplanted by the parched landscape of the Aralkum Desert, leading to a dramatic collapse of biodiversity. Desertification, in turn, has profoundly altered the regional climate, for the absence of the sea’s moderating influence has resulted in drier, hotter summers and more frigid winters.Afghanistan's drought has increased and is predicted to impact most of the country by 2030. The Spring rainfall can no longer be counted on to support agriculture, people are hungry, and an empty stomach knows no morals. The Taliban has acted and are constructing a canal to divert Amu Darya River water to its northern desert to grow food.
Late last month, an Uzbek delegation visited Kabul in an effort to strengthen ties with the nascent Taliban regime. Among the various infrastructure projects discussed between the two parties was the ongoing construction of Afghanistan’s new Qosh Tepa canal in Balkh province. With a plan to divert up to 10 billion cubic meters from the Amu Darya each year, the canal proposes the utilization of a significant amount of water from a basin that already has a history of intensive use by the downstream states of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. As over 100 kilometers of the 285 km-long canal has already been dug, the potential impact of such a project is becoming increasingly palpable each day construction continues.
Devoting over 4,000 workers and numerous capital assets to the project, the Taliban clearly have an interest in seeing this canal completed, regardless of the consequences to the downstream states. Nonetheless, given how much the other states in the region rely on the Amu Darya, protection of existing water distribution agreements is essential. Disagreement, though, is not really an option. Without an understanding between Afghanistan and the other states in the basin, the resulting diplomatic crisis could further isolate the Taliban and exacerbate regional security problems. This is perhaps why the Uzbek delegation was so keen to emphasize that the canal be developed with respect to the existing legal norms. The extent to which a project of such a scope and magnitude can be implemented into the current legal framework is, however, a somewhat dubious proposition.
Although previous agreements regarding the Amu Darya had been negotiated between the Soviet Union and the government in Kabul, going back to 1946, these treaties never directly addressed the issue of water-sharing on the Amu Darya. Later agreements, like the post-Soviet Almaty Agreement, never included Afghanistan as a signatory in any negotiations regarding the use of water in the basin. This left the Soviet Union, and later the independent Central Asian states of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, significant leeway with which to develop the water resources of the basin, resulting in the construction of the massive Karakum canal, from which Turkmenistan draws the majority of its water resources. It also led to the intensification of irrigation projects near the mouth of the river, where it once contributed about two-thirds of the runoff flowing into the Aral Sea.
Both of these developments have meant that almost all of the water flowing into Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is used before it reaches the Aral Sea, resulting in the aridification crisis now plaguing the region. Even without Afghanistan being party to the water-sharing agreements of the region, the water resources have been largely used up.
The stated dimensions of the irrigation canal that workers started digging last spring are enough to understand why the downstream countries have concerns. With a length of 285 kilometers and a width of some 100 meters, experts believe it could draw a significant portion of the Amu Darya’s flow while irrigating 550,000 hectares of land.
An Afghan civil servant with knowledge of the project told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service that work on the second of three stages of the project that began in the spring of 2022 is expected to begin in the coming months, with more than 100 kilometers already dug and visible from space.
The plan to irrigate land in northern Afghanistan is not new. Farid Azim, an official at the National Development Company overseeing its construction, pointed out last year that Afghanistan’s first president, Mohammad Daud Khan, had a similar vision in the 1970s.
The project was most recently pursued by the U.S.-backed administration of President Ashraf Ghani -- which the Taliban overthrew less than two years ago. A press release issued by the United States Agency for International Development from 2018 marking the launch of a Washington-funded feasibility study for Qosh Tepa described a 200 kilometer-long canal serving a “cultivated catchment area of 500,000 hectares.”
“Developing Afghanistan’s agriculture sector provides great potential for employment and economic growth,” then-U.S. Ambassador John R. Bass said in the release.
But the project was not a pressing concern for neighbors, primarily because political infighting and chronic instability in northern Afghanistan had made it impractical.
Finally, Intellinews weighs in:
In making diplomatic approaches to Afghanistan—a country totally dependent on foreign aid, with local food output greatly inadequate for feeding the population—Central Asian officials will need to call for more attention to the aridification crisis that has long troubled the Amu Darya basin.
Experts are also concerned that the extraction of more water from the river will mean the restoration of aquatic ecosystems in the Aral Sea region will become impossible, with the critically endangered false shovelnose sturgeon, also called the Amu Darya sturgeon, likely to die out completely and other fish species imperilled.
The operation of the canal could lead to widespread salinisation of agricultural land both in Afghanistan and across the region due to the disruption of the drainage of groundwater into the Amu Darya, according to experts spoken to by The Third Pole. Similar difficulties have been observed around the Karakum Canal in Turkmenistan.
As bilateral and multilateral attempts to negotiate with the Taliban on the Qosh Tepa canal pick up, it seems that all the Amu Darya basin countries should be ready to revise their water resource development plans and step up water conservation efforts such as by introducing water-saving technologies like drip irrigation.