This paper discusses the hidden conflict between Afghanistan and Iran over water; The issue of resource distribution and use is one of the most intractable problems with neighbors, especially with Iran. Some of these disputes date back a century and have resurfaced since the Afghan government announced the construction of dams and the management of water flowing into Iranian territory.
It seems that the hidden conflict between Afghanistan and neighboring countries over water seemed to float on the surface of relations more clearly than before. The issue of resource distribution and use is one of the most intractable problems with neighbors and especially with Iran. Some of these disputes date back to a century and have reappeared since the Afghan government announced the construction of dams and the management of water flowing into Iranian territory.
After setting the historical background of the conflict between Afghanistan and Iran, this paper discusses the new Afghan government’s policy on water regulation and dam construction.
Background to the water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran
The issue of water sharing between Afghanistan and Iran is one of the most important political, social and environmental issues between the two countries for many years, which has been a source of conflict and conflict for a century and a half. The dispute over the waters of the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan has a long history of discussions and negotiations on the division of water between the two countries. Iran has tried in various ways to prove its right to water and has spared no effort to reach its goal, which was opposed by successive governments in Afghanistan. The Afghan-Iranian conflict focused on the waters of the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, the only one of the Afghan rivers that drains into Iran.
- The Helmand River Problem and Coldsmith Arbitration
The water dispute between Afghanistan and Iran arose in 1882, and when the two parties failed to resolve the problem, they agreed to resort to the Goldsmiths Arbitration Committee (1), which was charged with demarcating the border between the two countries.
On August 19, 1882, the committee began demarcating the border and sharing the waters of the Helmand River between the two countries. After the committee failed in the task, it recommended that “the two parties should not build installations or dams along the Helmand River so as not to reduce the waters downstream,” but the ruling did not It achieves positive results (2) .
- The McMahon Jury, the question of the division of the Helmand waters
Colonel Henry McMahon (3) was appointed , in 1903, to draw a new border between Afghanistan and Iran; This is due to the change that occurred in the course of the Helmand River in 1896, which led to the emergence of many new disputes between the two parties.
McMahon divided the waters in 1905, which added other problems, due to his decision to divide the water between the two parties equally. He demanded that the Afghan side not build dams that would harm the water supply to Iran. McMahon ruled that Tehran had the right to benefit from a third of the Helmand River water in the Kohk region. near the Iranian-Afghan border, but the Afghan side did not accept this ruling, and considered that it “lacks impartiality” with regard to solving the problem between the two countries. McMahon assigned a British officer to oversee the implementation of the ruling on the Helmand River, and this ruling was rejected by the Afghans during the reign of Prince Habibullah Khan (4) .
- Fahrettin Altay Jury
The conflict between Afghanistan and Iran on March 8, 1934 aggravated due to the rejection of Article 10 of the 1921 treaty concluded between the two parties (which provided for Britain to arbitrate border differences); Kabul and Tehran decided to resort to Turkey for arbitration between them, and the latter agreed to that, and sent General Fakhruddin Altay to head an arbitration committee, and the two countries were scheduled to submit their complaints before October 1934 to the committee through Turkey, and Iran appointed Mehdi Farrokh Chairman of the Iranian panel, which consisted of 20 experts in the jury, while the Afghan government appointed the Governor of Herat, Abdul Rahim Khan, to head the Afghan panel (5) .
The members of the committee visited the disputed area, and on November 12, 1934, they went to Kabul, and on the 22nd of the same month – in order to complete the investigations – they returned to the border area.
The members of the commission stayed for three weeks in the Iranian city of Mashhad, and on December 29 for further investigation they went to the Goryan district of Herat Province, and on January 18, 1935, representatives of Afghanistan and Iran met to exchange documents between the two parties (6) .
The delegation inspected the disputed areas from the border point to the south of Siah Koh “Montenegro” and in the same month they visited Herat, then General Altay summoned the two parties to a joint session, and mediation steps began in brief, after which Altay left the committee and returned to his country Turkey without his mediation achieving tangible progress In the water file between Afghanistan and Iran (7) .
The Afghans and the Iranians sat for the fourth time between 1936-1939, and Iran demanded half of the water that flows into the “Kamal Khan Dam” in the state of Nimroz, and stipulated that Afghanistan not build any facilities that lead to water shortages, but the Afghan side did not accept the Iranians’ offer because it needed the approval of Parliament. .
Afghanistan and Iran agreed, on February 28, 1951, to form a committee to look into the outstanding issues between the two parties. The members of the committee visited the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan. After studying, the Iranian side handed over its report to the Afghan government, in which it indicated what Tehran needs of water. Two years later, the Afghan government agreed On Iran’s demands, which it retracted after two years on the pretext that the study deprives it of its right to the waters of the Helmand River, and again Washington’s negotiations on sharing the waters of the Helmand River between the two countries, in 1956 (8) failed .
After years of failed Washington negotiations, representatives of Afghanistan and Iran met to discuss sharing the waters of the Helmand River, and on January 25, 1959, the representative of the Afghan government, Muhammad Kabir Ludin, arrived in Iran to deliver the Afghan government’s offer to grant a quantity of water to solve the problem between the two countries. The Iranian side asked for a deadline to consider the Afghan offer.
Most of the disputes centered on the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, which flows into the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchestan and is an important water source for the populations of both Afghanistan and Iran.
After the fall of the Taliban government, representatives of Afghanistan and Iran met nineteen times to consider the water issue between the two parties, but these meetings failed because the Iranian side raised the ceiling of its demands and objections to the water policy of the Afghan government, considering that the Taliban movement pursues the same policy (9) .
The convention that was stillborn!
After more than a century of dispute over the waters of the Helmand River, Afghanistan’s longest river, it stretches 1,150 kilometers from the Hindu Kush Mountains, some 80 kilometers west of Kabul, and then flows southwest through the desert to Ahvaz Sistan and the Helmand Lake region around Zabul near Zabul. The Afghan-Iranian border.
Visits were exchanged between Afghan and Iranian officials and committees were appointed to discuss the mechanism of solving the problem, but all of these attempts failed, and the main reason is that the Afghan side believes that these rivers are all Afghani and that Iran has taken large parts of the Afghan lands and annexed them within its borders (10) .
On December 24, 1972, Musa Shafiq assumed the prime ministership of Afghanistan, a politician who combined academic work with political practice, who was commissioned by the late King, Muhammad Zahir Shah, to form the government.
His initiative regarding solving water problems with Iran came according to his well-known theory of “zero problems with neighbors,” which worried the Soviet Union and those affiliated with the communist movement in Afghanistan, so they quickly got rid of it through a white coup carried out by Muhammad Daoud, cousin of the late King Muhammad Zahir Shah, and is considered one of the The founders of water diplomacy in Afghanistan.
The former parliamentarian, Abdul Ghaffar Farahi, writes in his book “Afghanistan in the Era of Republic and Democracy”: “The Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, asked me to visit him in his office, when I arrived, he asked me about my opinion on the water-sharing agreement with Iran, so I told him: This is a river. internal and the Iranians have no right to it, and Iran should not be given every second twenty-six cubic meters of water, and I told him: No previous prime ministers dared to consider these sensitive issues, why are you insisting on solving this problem?
Tears fell from his eyes, and he added: “This is evidence of Afghanistan’s backwardness. Now I have decided to solve Afghanistan’s problems with its neighbors, and let history rule as it pleases.” ( 11)
Indeed, the former Afghan Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, and his Iranian counterpart, Amir Abbas Howeida, signed the Helmand River water division agreement, later known as the Shafiq-Howeida Agreement, on March 12, 1973. According to the agreement, Iran can benefit from 22 cubic meters in The second, and then gave another 4 cubic meters for goodwill, this amount was less than 10 percent of the total water previously obtained by Iran from Afghanistan (12) .
After the agreement was signed between the two sides in Kabul, everyone believed that the Afghan parliament would not ratify it, but it approved the agreement for two main reasons:
The first: that the Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, persuaded the deputies, and secondly: the term of parliament was about to expire, and the deputies did not object to the government’s decision, so that a number of them could run for the second time and win their seats in parliament (13 )
The exchange of documents between the two parties did not occur due to the coup that overthrew the government of Afghan Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, and the government of Reza Shah Pahlavi in Iran.
The cousin of the late King Zahir Shah, Muhammad Daoud, was one of the most famous opponents of this agreement. Waheed Majdeh, a former employee of the Afghan Foreign Ministry, writes in his book “Political Relations between Iran and Afghanistan in the Twentieth Century”:
Daoud Khan opposed the agreement between Afghanistan and Iran, and according to government sources, he was inciting a number of politicians and representatives against it. After the coup against the late King, Muhammad Zahir Shah, he said in a press conference in response to a question about the agreement: “Simply, I have no information about the agreement.” (14) .
The communist movement denounced the agreement as a betrayal and called the Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, “the water seller.” The condemnation was not limited to the opposition only, but also the former Prime Minister, Hashem Myundwal, objected to the agreement between Afghanistan and Iran.
Despite the opposition of Daoud Khan and the Communist parties, the Prime Minister, Musa Shafiq, signed the agreement because he was seeking to solve the problem with Iran so that he could devote himself to starting other development projects in southern Afghanistan, but his dream was not fulfilled and his government was overthrown as a result of the coup and was later executed by the Communists.
Although the agreement did not see the light of day due to the overthrow of Musa Shafiq’s government and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, and the lack of security in all parts of Afghanistan, it nevertheless constituted an important step in resolving the conflict between the two countries (15) .
On the Iranian side, we see that a large number of Iranians were not satisfied with the performance of the government of Amir Abbas Howeida in the water division file. Iranian Minister of Court, Asadullah Alam, says in his memoirs: “After the special envoy of the Afghan Prime Minister, Mohammad Daoud Khan, arrived in Tehran to exchange documents with the Iranian Foreign Minister, I stayed up late at night, praised the Afghan envoy and cursed the Iranian state, because he defended Concerning his country’s right to water, he threatened the Iranian side, saying: “We do not accept your help at the expense of water and he left Tehran” (16) .
The Iranian writer, Babili Yazdi, believes that “Prime Minister Musa Shafiq, who signed the water division agreement with Iran, determined with his political wisdom Iran’s right to the waters of the Helmand River, as Iran was benefiting from 70% of the Afghan waters, and when the British came, they were granted The Iranians gave 50%, while Musa Shafiq’s government gave Iran only 26%, and this was considered a “great gain for Afghan diplomacy and a defeat for the Iranians”, as he put it (17) .
The water-partition agreement between Afghanistan and Iran was stillborn, because documents were not exchanged between the two parties due to Daoud Khan’s coup against his cousin, King Muhammad Zahir Shah, and sparked widespread controversy between political parties and opponents in both countries.
The issue between the two countries escalated, especially during the days of former Afghan President, Muhammad Daoud Khan, in the seventies of the last century. In addition, the Afghans believe that Iran has no right to the waters of the Helmand River and oppose sharing it with Iran in accordance with the treaties established by the former British colonizer. With the arrival of the communists to power, on April 27, 1978, the situation between Afghanistan and Iran became more complicated, and the security tension and the previous Soviet invasion led to the suspension of dam-building projects in western and southern Afghanistan.
dam war
In the field of foreign policy, water is a cause of cooperation between states as well as differences and disputes. Hence, water security at the global level is of great importance along with food security, and the water relationship between Afghanistan and its neighbors cast a shadow over diplomatic and strategic relations, and the water file between Afghanistan and Iran is present in all meetings and visits, and according to a source in the Afghan National Security Council, “I do not remember that An Iranian delegation came to Kabul and did not address the water issue” (18) .
Afghanistan has ten different rivers, some of which are shared with neighboring countries (such as the long Helmand River that flows into eastern Iran), and some of them flow exclusively within its borders.
Among the longest of these rivers is the Amu Darya River, which is shared with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and the shortest is the Kunar River, which is shared with Pakistan, noting that there is another river shared between them, the Kabul River.
For centuries, due to its geographical location, most of the waters from the major rivers of Afghanistan flowed northward into Central Asia, eastward into Pakistan, and westward into Iran, without benefiting the Afghans.
Afghanistan has 57 billion cubic meters of average annual rivers, but it consumes less than 30%, and the rest of the water goes to neighboring countries (19) .
Contrary to the policy of former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who avoided causing trouble with its western neighbor (Iran) because he did not want to occupy himself and his government with Iran while he was in great disagreement with the Pakistani government over the Pakistani intelligence’s support for the Taliban and accusing it of destabilizing Afghanistan Since 2004 (20) ; When the former Afghan president, Muhammad Ashraf Ghani, came to power in 2014, the tension escalated between Iran and Afghanistan over dam construction projects that the latter intends to build in the west and south of the country, especially in three states, namely: Herat, Farah and Nimruz, which are located on the border strip with Iran.
The former Afghan President, Ashraf Ghani, launched the “water for asylum” policy, explaining in a statement that Afghanistan will not ask anyone to help refugees, as neighboring countries also need Afghanistan’s cooperation in the water file (21) .
Afghanistan believes that it can control Iran’s policies and decisions regarding Afghanistan through the water file, to control the purchase of oil and the refugee file in Iran, by building dams on the river courses that originate from its territory, but – according to studies conducted by the Ministry of Water and Irrigation – it needs about 11 One billion dollars to implement the water projects it aspires to build dams.
The former Afghan president planned to build 49 dams across Afghanistan to regulate rivers, manage water, and draw up the water strategy for his country .
Iran has taken advantage of the tense situation of Afghanistan for five decades and has built more than thirty dams within its territory on rivers flowing into Iran, and with the help of Japanese experts, it has drilled wells in Sistan and Baluchestan, which preserve one billion cubic meters of Afghan water without consulting with the Afghan side, and laying pipelines with a length of 192 kilometers to the city of Zahedan, and the Afghan government says it opposes all agreements between the two countries.
The development projects carried out by Afghanistan exacerbated the conflict over the waters of the Helmand River; Iran fears that the flow of water will be further prevented with the construction of dams inside Afghan territory in order to strengthen the agricultural sector in Afghanistan. The Kamal Khan Dam in Nimroz and Kajki Dam in Helmand Province is an example of such projects. Iran is concerned that this dam will prevent the flow of water to Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan Province.
An official in the Ministry of Electricity and Water says: “After the Taliban movement came to power, on August 15, Iran, as usual, asked the new government to start negotiations on the division of water and consider the Musa Shafiq-Howaida agreement, and it believes that it is not getting the amount it needs, but it is not Accept that drought has affected the amount of water in Afghanistan and that the current government says it is adhering to the Shafiq-Howeida Agreement on the sharing of water between Afghanistan and Iran” (23) .
Advisers and decision makers in Iran believe that water scarcity in the region could cause tension between Iran and its neighbors in the near future, and that Tehran prefers to resolve water disputes with its neighbors through diplomacy rather than military confrontation. At a national conference on water diplomacy in Tehran, General Rahim Safavi called for “open talks on water management” with Iraq, Afghanistan, Turkey and other countries sharing water resources with Iran. He noted that Iran shares water resources with 12 neighboring countries, and emphasized that with the worsening of Water problems in the region, there will be more cooperation or confrontation between Iran and its neighbors in the future (24) .
This is not the first time that a senior Iranian official has warned that declining water availability and changes in the climate may strain Iran’s relations with its neighbors.
Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani accused regional countries, especially Turkey and Afghanistan, of exacerbating environmental problems in Iran and the wider region by building major dams without prior consultation with the Islamic Republic. Salma and other dams in northern and southern Afghanistan – affect the provinces of Khorasan, Sistan and Baluchistan” (25) .
All Iranian governments are demanding a new agreement on the sharing of water between Afghanistan and Afghanistan. In the latest reaction after the drought that hit both Afghanistan and Iran, the Iranian Vice President, Mohammad Mokhber, instructed both the Foreign Minister and the Iranian First Vice President for International Affairs and Regional Cooperation to seriously pursue with the Afghan government led by the Taliban movement in Afghanistan Release of Iran’s share of the waters of the Helmand River shared between the two countries (26) .
The new Afghan government denies the allegations of the Iranian Vice President about the non-implementation of the water-sharing agreement between the two countries and justifies that Afghanistan suffers from drought like its neighbor Iran and that the Afghan government is committed to all the agreements reached with Iran in 1972 (27) .
According to former Afghan officials and sources in the Taliban movement, Tehran is accused of obstructing the process of building dams in southern and western Afghanistan; Former Afghan Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami says: “Iran is seeking to prevent the construction of the Bakhshabad Dam, and the Taliban’s attack, in 2017, on several checkpoints in Farah province to prevent the Afghan government from continuing to build the Kamal Khan Dam, and that the clashes came within the framework of the war water” (28) .
Former Afghan Interior Minister Hayatullah Hayat and Afghan media accuse Tehran of helping the Taliban obstruct construction of water dams and ensure the free flow of Afghan waters to Iran: “The Iranian Revolutionary Guards have provided the Taliban with advanced weapons to disable some of the nation’s dams so that Tehran can get a larger share. of water from the Helmand River” (29) .
There is another dispute between Afghanistan and Iran over the “Harrirud” river, which is about 1,100 kilometers long in Afghanistan. The Harirud River passes through Afghanistan and Iran and finally flows into the desert of your villages in Turkmenistan. The Harrud Basin covers an area of 112,200 km², 35% in Afghanistan, 44% in Iran, and 21% in Turkmenistan.
Iran wants to restrict its water exports to neighboring countries, while criticizing Afghanistan for building hydroelectric dams that reduce the free flow of the Helmand River to Iran’s water-starved eastern provinces.
It should be noted that Iran has previously resorted to constructing water infrastructures from Afghanistan without the latter’s approval, and has worked to obstruct several water projects in Afghanistan. Its government agencies, especially the Afghan Ministry of Water, aim to obtain information on its water resources projects, which is the same accusation that India made against Iran, and it was related to Tehran’s attempt to obstruct the construction of the Afghan-Indian friendship dam “Salma”, which India managed to open, in 2016, in the province of Afghan Herat, as part of a series of Afghan reconstruction projects” (30) .
Because of Iran’s opposition, previous Afghan governments were unable to obtain grants from the World Bank and other donors to build dams in Afghanistan, the latter resorted to building dams from its own budget and awarding contracts to private foreign companies. “Dam construction projects in Afghanistan need at least eleven billion dollars.” American and the Afghan government cannot provide this amount of money, so it prefers to work with foreign companies, and indeed a Turkish company is working in the second part of the Kajki Dam in Helmand Province” (31) .
a summary
Iran’s problems with Afghanistan are summarized in managing their shared water resources in the Afghan dams that Kabul inaugurated on several rivers whose tributaries reach Iran, and the most important of these rivers is the Helmand River, which originates in the mountains of Afghanistan and flows into Lake Hamun shared with Iran.
Afghanistan’s insistence on building several dams on its shared rivers with Iran arouses the latter’s discontent. Afghanistan has recently resorted to the use of Turkish expertise in this regard. Iran considers that these dams prevent benefiting from the rivers coming to it from the Afghan interior and Tehran has tried through pressure papers inside Afghanistan to pressure the government to reverse the decision to build such dams, the last of which was the “Kamal Khan” dam in the state of Nimroz near the Iranian border. Which was opened in March 2021, at a cost of $78 million to build, and took 4 years to build, which was full of tension and attraction between the two countries over its impact on Iran’s share of water.
The Afghan rivers, especially the Helmand River, play a major geopolitical role in the relations between the two countries. Afghanistan can use water as a political and economic tool in its relations with Iran and its neighbors, especially since 95% of the water flows within Afghan territory.
About the author
Hamidullah Muhammad Shah
Afghan researcher and Al-Jazeera correspondent in Afghanistan.REFERENCE
- Goldsmith: A former British officer, born in May 1818 in Italy. He studied Hindi, Persian, Turkish and Arabic. He served in the British Army during its occupation of the Indian subcontinent. In 1871, he served as the British commissioner to demarcate the Baluch frontier with Persia and the following year he was given the more difficult task of arranging and demarcating the Sistan border between Afghanistan and Iran. He was deposed by England, returned to his country, and devoted himself to preparing his monumental report on Eastern Persia.
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- Henry McMahon (November 1862-December 29, 1949): British Army officer, twice Chief Commissioner of Balochistan, whose father was an officer in the East India Company.
McMahon was appointed as a first lieutenant in the Indian Staff Corps in the 1880s. Speaking Persian, Pashto and Hindi, he was commissioned to draw the border between Afghanistan and Iran in 1903.
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- Researcher interview with a source in the Ministry of Electricity and Water, April 22, 2022.
- Researcher interview with a source in the Ministry of Finance, April 15, 2022.
