Orphan
River
Water management
of the Kabul River
Basin in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
Imprint
Chief editors: Marketa Hulpachova, Alex Macbeth
Consulting editor: Klomjit Chandrapanya
Afghanistan editor: Fareedoone Aryan
Afghanistan contributors: Qarib Rahman Shahab, Storay
Karimi, Zianullah Stanikzia, Zarwali Khoshnood, Haqmal
Masoodzai, Shakib Shams, Khalil Rahman Omaid
All contributors to this report are members of the project
afghanistan-today.org, a platform for news, features and
photography. Orphan River is a publication by MiCT gGmbH.
Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT)
Brunnenstrasse 9, 10119 Berlin, Germany
www.mict-international.org
Pakistan contributors: Wisal Yousafzai, Asad Zia, Hayat Kakar,
Abdul Qayum Afridi, Moeen Mandokhiel, Farid Shinwari
This report has been produced by MiCT, as part of training
on trans-boundary water management in Afghanistan and
Pakistan. The training was conducted by MiCT and funded
by Shared Waters Partnership – a mechanism implemented
through the UNDP Water Governance Facility at Stockholm
International Water Institute (SIWI).
Photography: Aref Karimi, Aftab Ahmad
Copyright © MICT 2015
Pakistan editor: Abdur Razzaq
Design: Gunnar Bauer
Empowered lives.
Resilient nations.
Table of
contents
5
Introduction
6
Water governance in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
8
Traditional water management
9
The Kabul River
10
Unchartered waters
12
Chitral glaciers and frozen conflict
13
Troubled waters: A timeline of
Afghanistan’s regional collaboration
14
The trans-boundary conundrum
14
Precedents for collaboration
16
Recommendations
6
Afghan Water Law
7
Pakistan Water Law
11
Baluchistan’s orphan rivers
15
Iran and the Helmand River
15
Treaty with Tajikistan
Water security
in numbers
Each Afghan household is entitled to 5 cubic
metres of water a day
(AFGHAN WATER LAW)
21 billion cubic metres of water flow
to Pakistan every year
Only 5 billion cubic metres are utilised
in Afghanistan
1.2 billion cubic metres of water are wasted
(NAEEM TOKHI, HEAD OF HYDROLOGY AND
ENGINEERING, AFGHAN MINISTRY OF ENERGY
AND WATER)
32.3 million cubic metres of water are needed
to sustain 5 million people in the city of Kabul
Kabul has a storage capacity of 29.6 million
cubic metres of water
There is a deficit of 2.7 million cubic metres
of water
Kabul’s population has since jumped from
5 to 7 million people
Afghanistan’s total groundwater and surface
water potential is 75 billion cubic metres
of water per year
(JAPAN INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION AGENCY)
4
“Effective management of Afghanistan’s
waters would create
8 million jobs.”
PRESIDENT ASHRAF GHANI
(OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF AFGHANISTAN 2015)
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa can legally use
enough water to irrigate 8.78 MAF (Million
Acre Feet) per year
Between 1.2 and 1.3 MAF are wasted because
of mismanagement
(IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT, PAKISTAN’S KHYBER
PAKHTUNKHWA PROVINCE)
A
t least seven major rivers bend their course
between the sinuous rocks of the Hindu
Kush that divide Afghanistan and Pakistan,
watering plains and sustaining life on both
sides of the border. Yet it is the 480-kilometre
trench Pakistan built between the two countries in 2014, reportedly to stem growing
insurgency, which often grabs all the headlines. In the crosshairs of the War on Terror,
common watercourses are often forgotten.
Regional overview
The area around the 2,600 kilometre border
between Afghanistan and Pakistan has
historically stood outside mainstream political
order. The region is home to at least 30
groups of militants whose attacks on dams,
roads and electricity lines impede the
economic progress of Afghan frontier
provinces. In Pakistan, the 4.5 million residents of the semi-autonomous Federally
Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) are still
governed by a colonial document from 1901,
which prohibits the right to appeal or the right
to found a media organisation.
1 The FAO measures the pressure on
national water resources by calculating
water withdrawal as a percentage
of total renewable water resources
(TRWR). Pakistan’s water pressure
amounts to a staggering 74 percent,
compared with India at 34 percent
and Afghanistan at 31 percent. The
country is expected to become “water
scarce” by 2035.
Afghanistan and Pakistan have no treaty
to jointly administer their trans-boundary
waters. The Kabul River is the most developed
and utilised common water resource and is
a vital hydroelectric artery for both countries’
future. While the river basin is neither
Afghanistan’s largest nor the most voluminous, it sustains the most human lives. Some
23 per cent of the Afghan population, more
than 7 million people of mainly Pashtun
origin, live in the Kabul River Basin.
On the Pakistani side of the basin, the Kabul
River flows through mountainous frontier
communities that lack the infrastructural
5
and water-governance benefits of the interior.
Pakistan’s level of water stress is more than
twice that of Afghanistan or India, according
to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO).1
In this Pashto-speaking region, kinship
networks and tribal allegiances are a stronger
political force than state institutions. Nomads,
smugglers and Taliban operatives regularly
cross the boundary between Afghanistan and
Pakistan without encountering a border
checkpoint. Natural disasters and government
efforts to crack down on militants have
displaced millions of people on both sides
of the border. (The most recent offensive by
the Pakistani military in June 2014 to drive
out insurgent groups displaced 800,000
people in North and South Waziristan, two
of seven ‘agencies’ in FATA.) Within the Kabul
River Basin, melting glaciers in eastern
Afghanistan give rise to fast-flowing rivers
that, if properly developed, could provide war
and poverty-stricken communities with a key
source of energy and irrigation.
Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan share
a common culture and at least seven rivers,
yet governments in both Kabul and Islamabad
continue to plan their respective Water Sector
Strategy (WSS) unilaterally, without consultation with the basin partner. Both governments’
negligence is devastating to communities
living near the border, where water is already
scarce.
Afghanistan is building dams on the Kunar
and Kabul rivers that will affect its downstream basin-partner, Pakistan: Islamabad,
in turn,is building its own water storage and
hydroelectric projects on the Kabul River
and its tributaries, without the consultation
of Afghanistan.
A decade of animosity between the two
neighbours had broken down any hope
of talks on water until recently. The lack of
common resources makes nascent dialogues
even harder: In most Afghan or Pakistani
maps, the Kabul River and its tributaries
simply disappear when they meet the border.
In many Afghan border provinces, data on
tributaries does not exist.
Pakistan has data on the Kabul River, but
not of tributaries that flow into the autonomous region of FATA. It does not share data
on the Kabul River with any ministries in
Afghanistan. Provincial governments in border
areas do not exchange hydrological data or
meet with their trans-boundary counterparts
to discuss water-related issues, according to
our investigations in Paktia, Khost and Kunar
provinces in Afghanistan and Baluchistan and
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan.
Water
governance
in Afghanistan
and Pakistan
Afghan
Water Law
The legal basis for water management in
Afghanistan is the Water Law, which came
into effect in 2011. Lauded by the international
community as an important step towards
the development of a coherent water management strategy, the Water Law declares
adherence to “all international laws and
regulations regarding domestic and transboundary waters.”
Water distribution, management, development and administration is the responsibility
of the Supreme Council of Land & Water,
regional river basin councils, and the National
Environment Protection Agency (NEPA).
Eight government ministries are involved
in various aspects of water management,
but the Ministry of Energy and Water (MEW)
and the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation
and Livestock (MAIL) have a senior role in
the management and development of large
water resources and the establishing of water
usage norms, respectively.
The Afghan Water Law creates a complicated
structure for handling trans-boundary
water-sharing issues, which requires the
cooperation of four ministries. The management of trans-boundary disputes falls under
the jurisdiction of MEW, but the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs (MFA), the Ministry of Interior
Affairs (MoIA) and the Ministry of Borders,
Nations and Tribal Affairs assists the MEW
in the drafting of treaties, agreements and
memorandums of understanding.
In the Afghan political context, involving
this many stakeholders in any potential
shared-waters agreement with Pakistan
complicates the consensus-building process
on a domestic level. The power-sharing
agreement between President Ashraf Ghani
ADMINISTRATION OF
WATER IN AFGHANISTAN
and Chief Executive Officer Abdullah Abdullah
has further impeded decision making: Due
to deadlock between the two interest groups
represented by Ghani and Abdullah, most
members of the Afghan Cabinet have only
been in office since April 2015. Like most
other ministries, the MEW, now headed by Ali
Ahmad Osmani, lacked new leadership for the
first six months of the Ghani Administration.
Despite these challenges, the amendment
to the Afghan Water Law on Trans-boundary
Water, approved by the Afghan Cabinet in early
October 2015, represents a breakthrough. By
requiring all national stakeholders to present
a unified stance on water-related issues in
international negotiations, the amendment
provides the necessary legal framework for
cross-border discussions on water sharing
and the resolution of bilateral disputes.
PRESIDENT
TECHNICAL COMMITEE
MINISTRY
OF FRONTIERS,
NATIONS &
TRIBAL AFFAIRS
MINISTRY
OF RURAL
REHABILITATION
& DEVELOPMENT
MINISTRY
OF AGRICULTURE,
IRRIGATION &
LIVESTOCK
SUPREME COUNCIL OF LAND & WATER
MINISTRY
OF HEALTH
MINISTRY
OF URBAN
DEVELOPMENT
AFFAIRS
NATIONAL
ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION
AGENCY (NEPA)
MINISTRY OF ENERGY & WATER
34 PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATIONS
DEPUTY MINISTER OF WATER
5 RIVER BASINS
CHIEF OF POLICY
34 SUB-BASINS
LOCAL WATER USERS ASSOCIATIONS
6
MINISTRY
OF FOREIGN
AFFAIRS
(TRANS-BOUNDARY & INTERNATIONAL
AGREEMENTS)
DIRECTOR OF WATER
MANAGEMENT
MONITORING &
SAFETY
Pakistan
Water Law
Water management in Pakistan falls under
the jurisdiction of the Water and Power
Development Authority (WAPDA), a department within the Ministry of Water and Power.
WAPDA formulates plans for the construction
of large water storage facilities based on data
collected by the Indus River System Authority
(IRSA), a seminal structure set up in 1992
to arbitrate water-sharing disputes among
Pakistan’s four provinces: Sindh, Punjab,
Baluchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
IRSA’s primary role is to implement the 1991
Water Apportionment Accord. The agreement
gives the border province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the right to irrigate 5.28 Million Acre
Feet (MAF) with Indus River Basin water
during the «Harib» season (April-September)
and 3.5 million MAF during the «Rabi» season
(October-March).
ADMINISTRATION OF
WATER IN PAKISTAN
A separate legal structure governs water
management in the Federally Administered
Tribal Areas (FATA), whose rivers fall outside
the jurisdiction of the Indus River Basin
Authority. Instead, they are managed directly
by the federal government via the Ministry
of States, Frontiers and Regions (SAFRON)
and its local branch, the FATA secretariat.
Unlike IRSA member provinces, the FATA
irrigation department does not regularly
provide data to the federal government.
MINISTRY OF WATER & POWER
WATER & POWER DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY (WAPDA)
INDUS RIVER SYSTEM AUTHORITY (IRSA)
SINDH IRRIGATION
DEPARTMENT
PUNJAB IRRIGATION
DEPARTMENT
KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA
IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT
BALUCHISTAN IRRIGATION
DEPARTMENT
DEPARTMENT OF HYDROLOGY
ADMINISTRATION OF
WATER IN FEDERALLY
ADMINISTERED TRIBAL
AREAS (FATA)
MINISTRY OF STATES & FRONTIER REGIONS (SAFRON)
MINISTRY OF STATES & FRONTIER REGIONS (SAFRON)
WAPDA
WAPDA
FATA SECRETARIAT
FATA SECRETARIAT
FEDERAL FLOOD COMMISSION
FEDERAL FLOOD COMMISSION
IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT
IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT
7
Traditional
water management
In their efforts to streamline water management policy on a national level, the governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan
must reckon with the existence of traditional
irrigation networks governed by Islamic
edicts that dovetail with modern conceptions
of equity in water distribution.
In Pakistan, a system of fixed turns, or
warabandi, gives farmers access to irrigation
water on a rotating basis. The total irrigation
time allotted to each farmer is proportional
to the size of the land he owns. An estimated
90 per cent of Afghanistan’s irrigation is still
managed by a parallel system of “community-based mirab schemes, which are independent of broader national or regional
arrangements and limited in their efficiency,”
according to a 2010 report by the EastWest
Institute.
8
Rural communities on both sides of the
border still rely on old systems of underground aqueducts (kareez or qanats). Most
of these systems have been damaged by war,
the unregulated drilling of wells, pollution and
the effects of climate change. As much as 70
per cent of kareez in Afghanistan are obsolete, and 85 per cent of shallow wells have
dried up due to a lower rate of groundwater
recharge, according to MEW estimates. The
degradation of the kareez has displaced rural
populations in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,
with grave security implications in both
countries. “The breakdown in the karez (sic)based social capital is, in fact, creating armies
of young people outside of community
structures. This social disintegration runs
the risk of contributing foot soldiers for
assorted insurgent outfits in the region,”
according to a 2013 United States Institute
of Peace report.
To mitigate rent-seeking behaviour by large
landowners, Pakistan recently pioneered a
new strategy: while the management of large
water sources remained centralized, lawmakers sought to bring a fair degree of responsibility back to the local level through the
formation of water users associations, requiring
farmers to pool all resources needed to
operate irrigation systems.
The current Afghan government also recognizes the integral role traditional water
networks play in the country’s water distribution policy. In a June 2015 meeting of the
Supreme Council of Land and Water, President
Ghani called them the “most efficient distribution system” and stressed preservation and
restoration as priorities. By 2011, the European
Union funded the establishment of 95 water
users associations in Afghanistan.
The Kabul
River
The Kabul River is approximately 700
kilometres long and for 560 kilometres
its trajectory carries it through Afghanistan,
where it constitutes 26 per cent of the total
water sources available in the country. It is
the landlocked nation’s most populated river
basin and supports not only the capital but
several other major urban centres in the east.
More than seven million people live in the
Kabul River Basin: besides drinking water,
its resources are used for sanitation, industry,
agriculture and power generation. Dozens
of large and small hydroelectric dams are
in operation in the river basin both sides of
the border. Pakistan has both upstream and
downstream rights on the watercourse.
The Kabul River rises in the Sanglakh Range
in the Hindu Kush, 72 kilometres west of
Kabul. It flows east through Afghanistan’s
capital Kabul and then the city of Jalalabad,
before crossing the border into Pakistan.
The Logar, Panjshir, Kunar, Alingar, Bara
and Swat are all tributaries. At least half
a dozen other rivers and seasonal bodies
of water are grouped in the Kabul River Basin,
including the Shamil/Kaitu, the Kurram and
the Gomal. The Kabul River flows through
approximately 140 kilometres of Pakistan
before joining the Indus at Attock, southeast
of Peshawar.
Chitral
AF
PK
Kabul
Jalalabad
Charsadda
AF
PK
Peshawar
9
Unchartered
waters
Despite the vital role it plays in the livelihood
of millions, there is a dearth of hydrological
data on the river and its basin. The last study
on pollution in the Kabul River was conducted
by the Pakistan Council of Scientific and
Industrial Research and was published in
1999. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Irrigation
Department, which administers the Kabul
River in Pakistan on behalf of the Indus River
System Authority, collects data at different
points on the river every day and shares it
with the IRSA’s national office once a month.
Such data has not been shared with Afghanistan in the last two decades, according to
officials interviewed.
Three decades of conflict have impeded
Afghanistan’s capacity to produce accurate
hydrological data, although more than 100
weather stations have been installed in river
basins around Afghanistan since 2008,
according to Amarkhail Luftullah, an official
with the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water
(MEW). At least 26 of these weather stations
are in operation on the Kabul River. Afghanistan plans to share this data with Pakistan,
according to a source at MEW, who was privy
to recent bilateral meetings between the
two countries.
10
CROSS-BORDER TRIBUTARIES
PAKTIA
AF
In Pakistan, Awal Hassan Dawar, an assistant
director at the Hydropower Department at
FATA secretariat, said the Kurram River had
a potential to irrigate 84,380 acres. Canals have
been built to divert the river, and protection walls
exist to protect cultivated land and houses, according to Dawar.
PK
KURRAM
GHAZNI
PK
AF
PK
SOUTH
WAZIRISTAN
AF
PK
PAKTIKA
KURRAM
Rising in the mountains of the Afghan border
province of Paktia, the Kurram River flows southeast
to cross the border into Pakistan’s Kurram
Agency, the most mountainous region of FATA.
Paktia Province suffers from seasonal droughts
and floods, and lacks the irrigation systems to
exploit its fertile land. About 87 per cent of the
Kurram River’s surface water flows out of Paktia
to Parachinar, the capital of Kurram Agency
and the largest population centre in FATA, says
Engineer Zabiullah Hassanzoi, head of Paktia’s
provincial Department of Agriculture. The planned
construction of Machalgho Dam, a $32 millionproject financed by the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) and located 28 km north of Paktia’s
provincial capital, seeks to meet the energy
and irrigation needs of east Afghan communities,
but funding shortages and Taliban attacks have
dampened progress.
AF
PK
GOMAL
A second important cross-border river in the
region, the Gomal, rises in Ghazni Province in
Afghanistan and traverses Paktika Province before
crossing into Pakistan, where it serves as a major
irrigation source for South Waziristan Agency.
The USAID-funded Gomal Zam irrigation system
is used to cultivate the Gomal Valley in Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa.
FLASHPOINTS
AF
PAKTIA
PK
NORTH
WAZIRISTAN
AF
PK
SHAMIL-KAITU
The mountains of Paktia also house the source
of the Shamil River (called Kaitu in Pakistan),
which meanders through Afghanistan’s Khost
Province and crosses the border into the agency
of North Waziristan, where it converges with the
Kurram River at Spinwam. On the Afghan side,
the Kurram-Shamil Sub-Basin Council lacks
adequate data to assess river flows, which
are prone to seasonal fluctuation. The central
government has provided local authorities with
information about the Afghan Water Law and
international frameworks, but the sub-basin
council lacks the equipment and knowhow to
adequately collect data, says director Mohammad
Nasim Karimi.
In Pakistan, the Khurram Tangi Dam, an $81-million construction project funded by USAID, will
have the hydro-power generation capacity of 83.4
MW. Together, the Gomal Zam and Khurram Tangi
dams are expected to provide flood control and
year-round irrigation to more than 500,000 acres
of cultivable farmland in the province of Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa.
The lack of a trans-boundary agreement has
prevented Afghan and Pakistani institutions from
commissioning large-scale dam construction
on the Kurram, Gomal and Shamil rivers. Despite
its agricultural potential, Paktia Province remains
prone to floods and droughts due to lack of water
management infrastructure. In FATA, farming
communities rely on outdated and underdeveloped irrigation systems. Clashes over the usage
of these channels have occasionally erupted since
the 1940s, “usually between Sunni and Shi’a
communities,” says Mohammad Rehan, a resident.
Regional political tensions have also impeded
water-sector development in the Khost Province
of Afghanistan, whose farmers mostly rely on
traditional irrigation systems or modern channels
that are over 50 years old. Feasibility studies for
dams and canals were completed between 1987
and 1992, according to Kurram-Shamil Sub River
Basin Council Director Mohammad Nasim Karimi,
but never realised due to an intervention by
Pakistan-affiliated interest groups during the
Afghan Civil War.
Although cross-border interactions between
Afghan and Pakistani provinces have been limited,
both sides stand to benefit from improved mutual
ties. Effective water management has the
potential to transform Paktia, whose fertile soil
makes the province ideal for corn, rice and potato
cultivation, into a regional breadbasket. Meanwhile, border provinces in Pakistan stand to gain
clout in cross-border energy security discussions.
During the government of Pervez Musharraf,
Pakistan initiated a cross-border dialogue to
export power generated by planned dams in FATA
to energy-deprived communities in Afghanistan.
A 2005 meeting between the governors of Khost
and Khyber Pakthtunkhwa set a precedent for
provincial-level dialogue on regional energy and
water security.
Shared customs, language and heritage make
trans-boundary cooperation between local
11
governments tangible. Tribal elders knowledgeable about traditional water sharing systems
support informal cross-border collaboration
among rural communities. Kurram Agency elder
Umar Khan says communities in Paktia and
Kurram Agency already communicate regarding
water-security issues. He emphasizes the need
for a treaty between Islamabad and Kabul “to have
peaceful relations on both sides of the border.”
BALUCHISTAN’S ORPHAN RIVERS
Several trans-boundary tributaries of the Kabul
River form a delta in the Pakistani province of
Baluchistan, where they meet other tributaries
from the Eastern Helmand Basin. Most of these
rivers are seasonal bodies of water that nevertheless sustain hundreds of thousands of people
both sides of the mountainous border for several
months every year, often alleviating deadly
droughts. The Pishin Lora and its tributaries
the Gori, the Tash Robat, the Kadanai, the Khaisar
and the Kurdana all flow to or from the arid
Afghan provinces of Kandahar, Zabul and Paktika
and the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.
Baluchistan also shares the Kand, Kundar,
Jujroi Killi, Turwa, Tirkha, and Abdul Wahab rivers
with bordering Afghan provinces.
Despite such a wealth of shared waters, an official
with Baluchistan’s irrigation department, Khalid
Iqbal, says no data is collected on the dozen
seasonal rivers and therefore none can be shared
with Afghan counterparts across the border.
“There is no mechanism or department to control
the flow of water from Afghanistan,” says Iqbal,
adding that the government has no official
facilities to store water for drought prevention.
NGOs and community water associations are
the only visible management structures in the
absence of state capacity. “Large amounts of
water are wasted due to the unavailability of dam
storage facilities,” says Mumtaz Haider, of the
International Union for the Conservation of
Nature’s office in Baluchistan. Naqibullah Kakar,
a social worker in the district of Pishin, namesake
of the Pishin Lora that flows through it, says
community-level storage strategies can yield
extremely productive harvests in the fertile region.
Small dams built by the community with donor
support collect seasonal rainwaters and store
seasonal waters from the Pishin Lora, allowing
farmers to grow staple crops year-round.
AF
Quetta
PK
BALUCHISTAN
AF
PK
Chitral glaciers
and frozen
conflict
PK
Chitral
AF
PK
In late July 2015, Glacial Lake Outburst
Floods (GLOF) washed away villages, access
roads and infrastructure in Chitral, killing
at least 36 people. The floods destroyed more
than 700 homes, 43 roads and 70 bridges
in July 2015, according to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Disaster Management
Authority report.
On 15-19 July 2015, Glacial Lake Outburst
Floods (GLOF) hit the district of Chitral in northwestern Pakistan, causing widespread panic
and destruction.
36 people killed
653 houses destroyed
27 roads and 93 bridges damaged
$13 million: estimated total damages
Thousands of people were displaced and
the total damages caused were estimated
to be 1.4 billion rupees ($13 million). In Chitral
and surrounding areas, the floods disrupted
over 300,000 people’s access to drinking
water and basic services, according to the
District Administration Chitral District Disaster
Management Unit (DDMU).
SOURCE: DISTRICT DISASTER MANAGEMENT
UNIT (DDMU), CHITRAL. PROVINCIAL DISASTER
MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY (PDMA), KHYBER
PAKHTUNKHWA.
12
The Chitral River originates from glaciers
in northwestern Pakistan, 16,000 feet above
sea level. The river flows for nearly 500
kilometres through the mountainous Chitral
Valley, where it is joined by 35 or so tributaries, before crossing the border at Arandu and
flowing into the Kunar River in Afghanistan.
An Early Flood Warning System (EFWS) and
protective walls have not yet been established
in Chitral Valley, which lies at the feet of over
3,000 glaciers threatened by climate change.
The only safeguard protecting residents from
seasonal flash floods are “human resources”
from the Wildlife Department who observe
the glaciers. All data in Chitral is collected and
stored manually, “as the department does not
have a computerised data collection system,”
says Akhtar Rasheed, executive engineer at
the irrigation department in Chitral.
Rasheed says the provincial Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has set aside 8 billion
rupees ($75.7 million) for flood protection in
the disaster-prone border province, of which
he estimates 1.2 billion ($11.3 million) will
be spent by June 2016 in Chitral on “protective
walls” and removing silt carried downstream
by the floods. The irrigation department official
says EFWS, which is installed in 30 different
areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, would not
work in Chitral because of the “intensity of
the floods.”
An official at the Meteorological Department
of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa suggested the
installation of sophisticated technology
to permanently monitor the temperature
of melting glaciers.
Floods ignore
borders
The floods in Chitral also claimed lives and
deracinated communities across the border
in Kunar and downstream in Nangarhar
Province, especially in Kama District. The lack
of a water treaty, a water-sharing mechanism
or a platform for collaboration between
Afghanistan and Pakistan means authorities
in Chitral and in Kunar have no way to work
together towards a joint flood-damage
prevention strategy.
Afghan officials recently participated in the
International GLOF Conference titled ‘Learning
and Way Forward’ on October 14-15, 2015
in Islamabad, Pakistan. The conference was
convened and hosted by the Ministry of
Climate Change and UNDP-Pakistan under
the Pakistan GLOF Project. Dr. Mohammad
Wasim Iqbal, advisor to the Afghan Ministry
of Energy and Water, represented Afghanistan.
Troubled
waters:
A timeline of
Afghanistan’s
regional
collaboration
1873
The Frontier Agreement between
British-administered Afghanistan
and Russia
1921
Agreement between British Empire
and Afghan government on navigation rights on the Kabul River
1933-34
1946
Treaty between the government of
the USSR and the Royal Government
of Afghanistan concerning the regime
of the Soviet Afghan state-frontier
1973
Helmand River Treaty signed with
Iran. One of only two existing water-sharing agreements Afghanistan
has with any of its neighbours
Afghanistan sent a delegation to
Tashkent in Uzbekistan to negotiate
a water treaty with the former Soviet
republic. Disagreements over water
allocation on the Amu Darya led to
a collapse of the discussions
1992
Almaty Agreement on Aral Sea Basin
excludes Afghanistan from co-management
2000
Iran and Turkmenistan sign bilateral
agreement on dam construction
on Hari Rud, without consulting with
Kabul, a stakeholder in the basin
2003
Pakistan Flood Commission leads
nine-man technical team to Kabul
13
2005
A Pakistani delegation from WAPDA
visited Khost for discussions with the
provincial government regarding the
restoration of a hydro-electri plant
on the Shamil/Kaitu River
2006
World Bank intervention fails to
secure a trans-boundary riparian
agreement between Afghanistan
and Pakistan
2009
Afghanistan only obtains observer
status in the International Fund for
Saving the Aral Sea, despite being
the second largest contributor in
terms of water and having the third
largest population density of all eight
countries in the Aral Sea Basin
2009
Islamabad Declaration mentions
regional collaboration as key for
peace but no concrete steps towards
a draft treaty have yet been taken
2010
Afghanistan and Tajikistan sign
Afghan Tajik Bilateral Water Cooperation Agreement
2013
Afghan and Pakistani finance
ministers discuss joint-power project
on Kabul River
2014
The Afghanistan-Pakistan Joint
Chamber of Commerce (APJCC)
pledge to explore a joint power-sharing agreement on the Kabul River.
No follow-up meetings have yet
taken place
The Frontier Agreement between
Afghanistan and the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics
1958
1977
SOURCES: EASTWEST INSTITUTE, WORLD BANK,
AFGHANISTAN TODAY, AFGHAN MINISTRY OF ENERGY
AND WATER, GLOBAL WATER PARTNERSHIP, KHOST
GOVERNMENT ARCHIVES, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA
IRRIGATION DEPARTMENT, CHITRAL DISTRICT
OFFICIALS.
Afghan government and state government in Chitral sign an agreement
on timber navigation rights on the
Kunar River
to negotiate a water sharing agreement. Talks collapse because the
Pakistani delegation accused Kabul
of not supplying sufficient data
2014
Representatives from the Afghan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water
meet with their Pakistani counterparts in Dubai for two days of
discussions on management
of shared waters, together with
The World Bank
1.2015
Afghan, Pakistani and Indian water
stakeholders, experts and engineers
meet at a regional climate change
conference in Dubai organized by
Global Water Partnership
10.2.2015
Trilateral meeting between government representatives of China,
Afghanistan and Pakistan announce
a proposed 1500 megawatt capacity
joint-power sharing project somewhere near the border between the
two countries
14.-15.
11.2015
Dr. Mohammad Wasim Iqbal, advisor
to the Afghan Ministry of Energy and
Water, participated in the International
GLOF Conference titled “Learning and
Way Forward”, from 14 to 15 October,
2015 held in Islamabad, Pakistan. The
Conference was convened and hosted
by the Ministry of Climate Change and
UNDP-Pakistan under the Pakistan
GLOF Project
The transboundary
conundrum
A decade of efforts by third-party stakeholders
to bring Afghan and Pakistani governments
to the negotiating table to draft a water treaty
has been marred by acts and rumours of
sabotage and cross-border incursions.
In the 2000s, Afghanistan created a nascent
Water Sector Strategy (WSS) with the support
of the international community. The Kabul
River Basin Council was established inside
the Ministry of Energy and Water, its parent
agency. This growth in capacity improved
distribution and sanitation, enabling the
restoration and establishment of key national
power and storage assets in Afghanistan.
However, it failed to facilitate any exchange
of data or collaboration with Pakistan on
shared waters.
Afghanistan has held discussions about
shared waters with Iran and signed a treaty
with Tajikistan in 2010 for shared management of the Amu Darya River. Former Afghan
President Hamid Karzai’s administration also
held discussions with other Central Asian
states on common waters.
Precedents for
collaboration
Afghanistan’s recent parallel agreements
and discussions with neighbouring states are
worth noting because the absence of a treaty
with Pakistan is often attributed to Afghanistan’s lack of internal capacity. The failure
to collaborate in the last decade can equally
be seen as a collateral effect of bad relations
between the two countries.
“At the sidelines of the March 2009 meeting
of the Economic Cooperation Organisation,
Afghan, Iranian, and Tajik leaders agreed to
speed up implementation of projects on the
water-energy nexus. Joint commitments of
a similar nature were not made between
Afghanistan and Pakistan,” note the authors
of the 2010 EastWest Institute report Making
the Most of Afghanistan’s Rivers Basins.
Despite declarations made by both Afghan
and Pakistani leaders at the Islamabad
Conference of 2009 to strengthen relations,
collaboration has not materialised in the water
sector. Engineers on both sides of the Af-Pak
border confirm they do not share any hydrological data with their riparian partner, nor are
there any joint flood-protection strategies or
joint dam feasibility studies.
In 2013, the finance ministers of both countries announced a potential precedent for
collaboration. Following a trilateral meeting
in Kabul in February 2015, China announced
it would fund the 1500-megawatt joint power
project on the Kabul River. Progress has been
slow, however. Despite multiple attempts,
a meeting between Afghan and Pakistani
engineers failed to materialise in 2015,
according to a former manager at Warsak
Dam, Amin Khalil —one of the engineers
who was due to participate in the meeting.
2 When the Taliban authorities cut
off the Helmand’s flow following a
drought in 2001, the Iranian province
of Sistan-Baluchistan faced disaster,
and the Iranian government allegedly
responded by entering Afghanistan
and building a series of canals and
diversions to restore access.
The change of governments in both Islamabad
and Kabul in the last three years has renewed
hopes that improved collaboration can be
14
achieved. Afghanistan’s President Ashraf
Ghani and Pakistan’s Prime-Minister Nawaz
Sharif have already signed bilateral agreements on trade and security. In June this year,
Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s second-most important politician,
speaking at the Water for Life Conference in
Tajikistan said: “Trans-boundary water sharing
with Afghanistan’s neighbours should be done
in accordance with international laws and
norms so that both countries may benefit.”
The Chief Executive expressed a vision for
Afghanistan to become a key water storage
country in the region.
Recent breakthroughs
In late 2014, the World Bank invited representatives of the Afghan water and foreign affairs
ministries to Dubai to discuss shared waters
with their Pakistani counterparts, according
to Sultani Mahmood Mahmoodi, an engineer
with MEW. According to Mahmoodi, Afghanistan has since submitted its proposals for
sharing water with Pakistan to the World
Bank. A follow-up meeting has not yet been
set. Mahmoodi says that the key issues
discussed were the construction of two dams
on the Kabul River, the Shaal Dam and the
Saagay Dam, as well procedures for exchanging data. Initial allocations of water were also
discussed, according to Mahmoodi.
stance in discussions with cross-border
counterpart agencies. The clearer negotiating
stance shows a new desire on Afghanistan’s
side to pursue a treaty. Pakistani Foreign
Office officials have told the World Bank they
are also ready to pursue the discussions
on water with their neighbour, according
to Mahmoodi.
Pakistan and Afghanistan also began collaborating on flood prevention. A representative
of the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water,
Dr. Wasim Iqbal, participated in a conference
on strategies to combat Glacial Lake Outburst
Floods (GLOF) in Pakistan hosted by the
Ministry of Climate Change and the United
Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
in October 2015. More than 3000 glacial lakes
have been mapped as part of the four-year
project, 36 of which have been declared
“potentially hazardous and on the verge
of outburst anytime.”
In October 2015 the Afghan president approved the Extended Policy on Trans-boundary Waters, which the Supreme Council of
Land and Water had been drafting for the
last year. The amendment to the 2011 Afghan
Water Law means all Afghan ministries
mandated to negotiate trans-boundary
riparian agreements must now have a unified
15
IRAN AND THE HELMAND RIVER
TREATY WITH TAJIKISTAN
For decades, Afghanistan’s only trans-boundary
water sharing agreement was a 1973 bilateral
treaty with Iran on the 1,300 km Helmand River,
which rises in the Hindu Kush some 40 km west
of Kabul.
The 1973 treaty is predated by the 1950 establishment of the Helmand River Delta Commission,
which aimed to provide a scientific basis for a
water-sharing agreement between the two states.
Under the 1973 treaty, Afghanistan agreed to
allocate 26 cubic metres of water per second
to Iran, its downstream neighbour. However,
subsequent political turbulence in both countries
jeopardized the validity of the agreement. The
Afghan Parliament never ratified the treaty and
both sides have reported violations2.
The fall of the Taliban regime in 2002 led to the
normalization of Afghan-Iranian relations. Iran is
a major regional contributor to Afghan development, pledging to date a total of $660 million in
reconstruction funds. Current negotiations have
been held behind closed doors, but Afghan President
Ghani initiated talks on “water-related issues”
during his official visit to Iran this April, says Kabul
University professor Naeem Fahim, a water
management expert who accompanied Ghani.
For Afghanistan, the crux of the dispute is the
presence of illegally installed water pumps on
the Iranian side of the Helmand, says Sultan
Mahmood Mahmoodi, a MEW engineer.
Iran’s looming domestic water crisis does,
however, provide a window for bilateral negotiations. In a 26 October 2015 address to MPs in
Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Affairs Minister Javad Zarif
mentioned a “comprehensive agreement inked
between Iran and Afghanistan with President
[Hassan] Rouhani during the presidency of Hamid
Karzai,” which “includes a provision dealing with a
long-running dispute with Afghanistan over Iran’s
water rights.” Iran and Afghanistan were scheduled to hold bilateral talks in November 2015, but
those discussions were postponed.
The Amu Darya rises in the Pamir Mountains
in Afghanistan and ends in the Aral Sea. One of
its largest tributaries, the Panj, forms much of the
border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan.
Afghanistan and Tajikistan signed a number of
agreements related to water during the Soviet Era
but only normalised water-sharing relations with
an updated treaty in 2010. The Afghan Tajik
Bilateral Water Cooperation Agreement launched
an era of exchange of hydrological data and joint
hydrology explorations. The treaty also initiated
a process of regional collaboration between the
Afghan province of Badakhshan and Tajikistan’s
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Province to
install water-delivery pipelines along the Panj
and Amu to transmit water to Afghan fields.
Joint flood prevention fortifications have also been
installed along the river both sides of the border.
In 1992 Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan signed the Almaty
Agreement. The treaty created the Interstate
Commission for Water Coordination of Central
Asia (ICWC), which outlined water allocations,
joint management solutions and conflict management strategies for countries in the Aral Sea
Basin. Despite being the second largest contributor in terms of water and having the third largest
population density of any country in the basin,
Afghanistan is not a stakeholder in the broader
decision-making process in the Aral Sea Basin.
Recommendations
a
3 “…US assistance should encompass
comprehensive activities, such as
strengthening river basin dialogues
and establishing community water
management projects on shared
watersheds,” according to a special
report to the US Committee on Foreign
Relations in 2011.
16
Strengthen data and civil society
networks, including:
1
Create a “shared repository
of knowledge” as defined by the
EastWest Institute: a common,
transparently compiled database
of water-related reports, studies,
maps and data
2
Establish cross-border networks
of Water Users Associations to share
data and create grassroots-level
consensus
3
Create platforms for engineers
and other civil society stakeholders
related to water to meet regularly
4
Set up streamlined and sustainable
methods to exchange data at district,
provincial and national level
b
c
Fund infrastructural projects that
encourage regional collaboration
instead of unilateral development
without consulting neighbours.
USAID, as well as other major
governmental donor agencies, has
often funded major water projects
in shared basin areas in Afghanistan
and Pakistan, without sufficiently
pushing for cross-border dialogue
as a major prerequisite.3
Explore the Indus River Treaty as
a potential template for an Afghanistan-Pakistan treaty. “The water
treaty of 1960 between India and
Pakistan is a good example for
us to follow and solve our own transboundary problems with Pakistan.
The agreement could help both
countries to establish fair water
quotas and avoid any unnecessary
tensions in the future,” says Dr. Ahmad
Khalid Hatam, a professor of International Law at Kabul University.
d
e
Initiate province-to-province transboundary discussions on joint
flood-prevention strategies, e.g.
Chitral/Kunar. Follow the example
of the Khost and Khyber Pakhtunhkhwa governments who met in 2005
to discuss joint power projects.
Ensure the initial collaboration
between Afghanistan and Pakistan
on GLOF joint protection strategies
continues.
Strengthen academic water-security
sector: establish water-security
modules in Afghan universities and
higher education institutes. Consider
creating networks and partnerships
with existing universities.
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