Atlantic Council SOUTH ASIA CENTER ISSUE BRIEF Water Dispute Escalating between Iran and Afghanistan AUGUST 2016 FATEMEH AMAN Iran and Afghanistan have no major territorial disputes, unlike Afghanistan and Pakistan or Pakistan and India. However, a festering disagreement over allocation of water from the Helmand River is threatening their relationship as each side suffers from droughts, climate change, and the lack of proper water management. Both countries have continued to build dams and dig wells without environmental surveys, diverted the flow of water, and planted crops not suitable for the changing climate. Without better management and international help, there are likely to be escalating crises. Improving and clarifying existing agreements is also vital. The United States once played a critical role in mediating water disputes between Iran and Afghanistan. It is in the interest of the United States, which is striving to shore up the Afghan government and the region at large, to help resolve disagreements between Iran and Afghanistan over the Helmand and other shared rivers. The Atlantic Council Future Historical context of Iran Initiative aims to Disputes over water between Iran and Afghanistan date to the 1870s galvanize the international when Afghanistan was under British control. A British officer drew community—led by the United States with its global allies the Iran-Afghan border along the main branch of the Helmand River. and partners—to increase the In 1939, the Iranian government of Reza Shah Pahlavi and Mohammad Joint Comprehensive Plan of Zahir Shah’s Afghanistan government signed a treaty on sharing the Action’s chances for success and river’s waters, but the Afghans failed to ratify it. build on its model for conflict resolution. The Initiative also In 1948, another attempt to resolve the dispute began in Washington. seeks to promote a deeper understanding of Iran to inform Based on an American suggestion, a three-person commission was US policymakers as they selected by Iran and Afghanistan to investigate the issue and recommend formulate new approaches to a settlement. On February 28, 1951, the Helmand River Delta Commission the Islamic Republic. presented its report, recommending that Iran’s share of the Helmand waters amount to twenty-two cubic meters per second. Iran, however, ISSUE BRIEF Water Dispute Escalating between Iran and Afghanistan rejected the report, asking for a larger share.1 A long subsequent study by the US Agency for International period of renegotiation ensued. Asadollah Alam, the Development.4 Shah’s minister of court, wrote in his diaries in 1969 that Afghanistan had offered to provide more water, The 44.2-meter (145 feet) Arghandab Dam, 18 miles if Iran would give Afghanistan improved access to the northeast of Kandahar, was completed in 1952 with a Iranian ports at Chabahar and Bandar Abbas, as well as storage capacity of 388,000 acre-feet of water. A few development assistance.2 months later, in April 1953, the Kajaki Dam, seventy- two miles upstream from Lashkar Gah, was also Four years later, in 1973, Iranian Prime Minister Amir finished. It created the most important water reservoir Abbas Hoveida and Afghan Prime Minister Mohammad in Afghanistan and was built with the objective of Musa Shafiq signed an accord that accepted the flow of providing electricity, water for irrigation, and flood water into Iran at twenty-two cubic meters per second control. with an option for Iran to purchase an additional four cubic meters per second in “normal” water years.3 As with the Arghandab Dam, appropriate soil and topography studies were not conducted, even though In return, Iran agreed to allow the ports of Bandar a 1950 United Nations report had cast doubt on the Abbas and Chabahar to be available to Afghanistan economic soundness of the project and predicted without preconditions. However, this agreement was negative environmental effects in the lower valley, neither ratified nor fully implemented due to the including waterlogging and salinization downstream political developments in both countries including a from the dam.5 1973 coup in Afghanistan, the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that same year, The impact of the Kajaki Dam has been mixed, since and finally the rise of the Taliban in 1995. it increased water flow to Iran during the dry season but reduced the flood waters on which pastoralists Irrigation canals and dams depend for fertilization.6 Nevertheless, it is obvious that without the 1973 agreement, the situation would Successive Afghan governments have sought to bolster have been much more complicated. agriculture by constructing irrigation canals and dams in the Helmand Valley. Germany and Japan each Afghanistan’s water supply is derived from rain and worked to reconstruct ancient canals for Afghanistan melting glaciers. Three out of five of the country’s in the 1930s, but their work ended in the aftermath of major rivers flow into neighboring countries. The their defeat in World War II. The Afghan government Helmand is one of two that flow into Iran; the other brought in the US firm of Morrison-Knudsen in 1946 is the Hari River. Two-thirds of Afghanistan’s water to build irrigation systems and roads in the southern capacity of seventy-five billion cubic meters is surface Helmand-Arghandab valleys. water and the country has the capability to use only 25 to 30 percent of its river water flow. This project was financed with US aid. Half-way through rehabilitating old canals, Morrison-Knudsen The Helmand is the longest river in Afghanistan, suggested that to make the best use of the renovated constituting over 40 percent of Afghanistan’s surface water, a storage dam and reservoir should be built. water. With 95 percent of the Helmand located in In an effort to keep costs down, the work was done Afghanistan, it is a critical source of livelihood for the without first conducting surveys, which turned out to be a “fatal weakness” of the project according to a 4 A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 18, The Helmand Valley Proj- ect in Afghanistan, US Agency for International Development, December 1983, http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/Pnaal028.pdf. 1 Office of the Historian, Bureau of Public Affairs, “Foreign Re- 5 John W. Whitney, “Geology, Water, and Wind in the Lower lations of the United States, 1950, The Near East, South Asia, Helmand Basin, Southern Afghanistan,” Scientific Investigations Africa,” Vol. V, Department of State, https://history.state.gov/ Report 2006–5182, US Geological Survey, US Department of the historicaldocuments/frus1950v05/d824. Interior, 2006, http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2006/5182/pdf/SIR06- 2 Alinaghi Alikhani, ed., The Shah and I (London: I. B. Tauris & Co. 5182_508.pdf. Ltd., 1991). 6 Erika Weinthal, Jessica Troell, and Mikiyasu Nakayama, Water and 3 The Afghan-Iranian Helmand-River Water Treaty, http://interna- Post-Conflict Peacebuilding, 2014 http://environmentalpeace- tionalwaterlaw.org/documents/regionaldocs/1973_Helmand_Riv- building.org/publications/books/water-and-post-conflict-peace- er_Water_Treaty-Afghanistan-Iran.pdf. building/. 2 ATLANTIC COUNCIL ISSUE BRIEF Water Dispute Escalating between Iran and Afghanistan Image credit: Google Maps. country’s southern and southwestern provinces. This more than 5,000 years.8 The Hamouns have a special has made the Helmand a national issue that seems and significant place in ancient Persian literature and in to have become increasingly difficult for any Afghan the Avesta, the religious book of Zoroastrianism. government to resolve. For Iran, Helmand water is also becoming a national issue. In fact, all of Iran’s post-1979 These lakes and wetlands once supported great plant governments have maintained the same basic position and animal diversity in the Sistan Basin. However, on the dispute with Afghanistan over water.7 the combination of drought and water diversion for irrigation, including dykes on the Iran-Afghan The Hamouns border and four reservoirs Iran built in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, have diverted water away from The Hamouns are transboundary wetlands on the Iran- the Hamouns. A serious impact resulted from the Afghan border made up of three lakes: Hamoun-e introduction, in 1983, of an alien species of fish into Helmand, which is entirely in Iran, Hamoun-e Sabari the lake by the Iranian Fisheries Company;9 The fish on the border, and Hamoun-e Puzak, almost entirely devoured almost all of the reeds in the wetlands. inside Afghanistan. The three lakes are linked and fed by water from the Helmand River. 8 John Weier, “From Wetland to Wasteland,” Earth Observatory, Historical evidence indicates the presence of ancient December 13, 2002, http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ civilizations on the shores of the Hamoun lakes for hamoun/. 9 United Nations Development Programme I. R. Iran, “Restoration and Sustainable Use of the Shared Sistan Basin: A Baseline Sit- uation Analysis,” February 2005, http://www.undp.org/content/ 7 Morad Veisi, journalist and former instructor of military and poli- dam/iran/docs/News/2014/March%202014/Towards%20a%20 tics, interview with the author. solution%20for%20Iran’s%20dying%20wetlands/Hamoun%20 ATLANTIC COUNCIL 3 ISSUE BRIEF Water Dispute Escalating between Iran and Afghanistan On the Afghan side, dams and canals for irrigation Water as Leverage schemes in the provinces of Helmand, Nimrooz, and Iran has accused Afghanistan of making the Helmand Kandahar also contributed to lowered lake water river into a political tool.15 Some in Afghanistan, 10 levels. As a result, the Hamoun lakes have nearly where there is already a backlash against Iran over its disappeared, along with the birds and fish on which treatment of Afghan refugees and forced repatriation the local population once depended for its livelihood. of migrants, suggest that Iran is using the issue of The situation was further aggravated when the Taliban Afghan refugees in Iran as a countermeasure to put government of Afghanistan blocked the Kajaki Dam pressure on Afghanistan, and Afghanistan could, and choked off water to Iran from 1998-2001, a period in turn, use water as leverage to pressure Iran for that also included one of the region’s worst droughts.