Differences over water rights

Tehran repeats contentious claims to Afghan water.

At the Fifth CDC (Community Development Councils) National Consultation Conference held on Nov 1, President Ashraf Ghani said, “Each

Tehran repeats contentious claims to Afghan water.

At the Fifth CDC (Community Development Councils) National Consultation Conference held on Nov 1, President Ashraf Ghani said, “Each drop of water of Afghanistan would be equal to one drop of oil of (a) neighboring country.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, addressing Members of Parliament in Tehran, warned that if the government in Kabul wants cordial relations then it should concede the right of water to Iran.

Afghanistan has vast water sources but it is perennially thirsty because of poor management of water supplies and loss of many cubic metres of the precious resource to neighbouring countries.

The annual water capacity of Afghanistan has been estimated at some 75 billion cubic metres that include 57 billion cubic metres of over ground water from rainwater and snow melt.

President Ghani said the government has planned water conservation and efforts to increase arable land to 120,000 hectares. Afghanistan would satisfy all its water needs before letting it flow across the border, the president said. Experts reckon an estimated 70 billion cubic metres of water goes to neighboring countries, particularly Iran and Pakistan.

Basheer Dodyal, a lecturer at Kabul University, had told a conference on water in Kabul in 2013 that only 30 percent of the country’s immense water resource was being used for instance to generate electricity and for irrigation.

Ghulam Jalilani Arez, another participant at that conference, had reminded the audience that the Afghan government paid huge amounts of money importing electricity.

Sore point

Water is a bone of contention with Iran. Iranian Foreign Minister   Zarif has repeated Tehran’s claim to water from the Hamoon Lake and two rivers, Helmand and Harirud. “I have discussed this issue in my meetings with the former and current presidents, the Afghan chief executive, the Afghan advisor of national security and Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs,’’ he is quoted saying in Iran’s Parliament. He claimed that the Afghan president has promised to review the bilateral agreements on water. Unless the water issues are solved, there can be no agreement with Kabul (on the host of issues that they share including the tens of thousands of illegal migrants in Iran), he warned.

Dr Rangin Spanta, a former foreign minister and National Security Advisor of the previous president, Hamid Karzai, had in 2007 told Parliament that Iran was putting pressure on him regarding water from the 1,130-km Harirud River which flows into Iran from Herat province. Afghan politicians and security personnel have maintained that Tehran does not want to see the completion of an ambitious hydroelectric and irrigation dam project on the river in Chishti Sharif district, a long-delayed infrastructural reconstruction project of the Indian government. The project, which was restarted in 2005 and is scheduled to be completed next year, was renamed Afghan-India friendship dam in July this year. It will produce 42 MW of electricity and water nearly 80,000 hectares of land. The original dam was built in 1976 but was damaged during the war.

Killid interviewed the spokesperson for the Ministry of Water and Energy Abdul Baseer Azimi about the Iranian foreign minister’s assertion in Tehran but he said he could not speak on the issue. Where the ministry was concerned, water relations are based on a 1973 agreement, he said.

In 2013, Killid had interviewed the head of hydrology and energy in the ministry, Sultan Mahmood Mahmoodi who said Iran received not just its share (22 cubic metres per second) from three agreed points but from 30-40 points. In an earlier interview in 2009, he had told Killid that Iran had taken advantage of the 30 years of instability in Afghanistan to establish Chah Nimeh, giant reservoirs of many million cubic metres of water. “Eventually these Chah Nimeh would dry up,” he also said.

Sultan Ahmad Baheen who was spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and later Afghanistan’s ambassador to China said in 2009 that the government had sent a note to Iran on the extra usage of water and establishing Chah Nimeh but Tehran ignored their concern.  “We had clearly told that the Chah Nimehs dug are next to (the) border between the two countries (and) contrary to agreement,” Baheen said.

Agreement over water

The 1973 Helmand River Treaty is the only agreement that Afghanistan has that specifically addresses water allocations, according to Dr Glen Hearns who 2012-14 was transboundary water expert to the Afghan government. The river and the adjoining Sistan area have been a source of dispute for at least two centuries. Following the recommendations made by a fact-finding commission, assisted by US experts, in 1951, the 1973 pact assured Iran of 22 cubic metres per second of water. The treaty specifies where Afghanistan is to deliver water flows to Iran and while stating Iran can make “no claim to the water of the Helmand River in excess of the amounts specified in this treaty”, it acknowledges the importance of continued flow to the Helmand Delta, and lays down that if flow is stopped, the Commissioners – appointed to implement the treaty – must develop plans to minimise the problem.

In 2008, Tehran accused Kabul of blocking water particularly to Zahedan and Zabul but Afghan experts maintained irrigation to the two areas was not part of the 1973 agreement.