Water wars: Afghanistan and Iran's deadly border flare-up spotlights scarcity crisis

Iran and Afghanistan are going caput to caput implicit power of the proviso of a important assets that's shrinking by the day: water.

Violence on the borderline betwixt the 2 tumultuous countries flared up successful caller weeks, stoked by a quality implicit the h2o flowing from Afghanistan's Helmand stream into Iran. Tehran says Afghanistan's Taliban authorities is deliberately depriving Iran of capable h2o supplies successful bid to bolster its own; but the Taliban says determination isn't capable h2o anymore to statesman with, acknowledgment to plummeting rainfall and stream levels.

Iranian and Afghan borderline guards clashed connected May 27, exchanging dense gunfire that killed 2 Iranian guards and 1 Taliban worker and wounded respective others. Both sides blasted each different for provoking the fighting, which has thrust the region's h2o issues backmost into the spotlight. 

The concern risks destabilizing an already mediocre and water-deprived portion of Iran, wherever superior protests against the authorities person taken spot successful caller years. 

"The h2o quality with Afghanistan is not thing Iran tin instrumentality lightly," Torbjorn Soltvedt, main Middle East and North Africa expert astatine Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC. "Water resources successful Iran are nether terrible unit and h2o accent has been a trigger of large-scale civilian unrest successful caller years."   

In the summertime of 2021, protests began successful Iran's occidental Khuzestan state implicit h2o shortages and consequent powerfulness outages arsenic hydroelectric powerfulness stations ran retired of supply. Dubbed "the uprising of the thirsty," the demonstrations soon dispersed to respective cities astir Iran including the superior Tehran, and drew a dense authorities crackdown that ended successful some constabulary and civilian casualties. 

Grappling with U.S. sanctions, a severely weakened system and a continuing anti-government protestation movement, Iran is already nether important pressure. "With the authorities inactive struggling to support a lid connected nationwide protests," Soltvedt said, "a h2o information situation successful eastbound Iran would travel astatine a peculiarly atrocious time." 

The 580-mile borderline betwixt Afghanistan and Iran is porous and crawling with crime, predominantly coming from the Afghan broadside into Iran. Afghanistan has been wracked with instability and warfare for decades, and the ruling Taliban authorities derives a important portion of its gross from illicit trades.

"Iran's Afghan borderline has ever been its astir vulnerable," said Kamal Alam, a nonresident elder chap astatine the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center. It's big to "a fig of issues including narcotics smuggling, quality trafficking, and terrorism" — but is simultaneously an all-important root for water, Alam said.  

Water tensions betwixt the 2 countries spell mode back. In the 1950s, Afghanistan built 2 large dams that constricted the travel of h2o from the Helmand stream into Iran. This angered Tehran and threatened relations, yet starring to the signing of a pact successful 1973 that allotted Iran 850 cardinal cubic meters of Helmand h2o yearly. 

But consequent revolutions, invasions, wars and melodramatic authorities changes successful some countries meant the pact was ne'er afloat implemented. 

"Since the 1973 h2o pact betwixt the two, they person travel adjacent to warfare a fig of times owed to assorted Afghan governments utilizing Iran's h2o vulnerability arsenic a leverage connected bilateral issues," Alam said. 

Scientists person agelong warned that clime alteration increases the hazard of wars and exile crises arsenic countries combat implicit the earthy resources they request to live. 

"The disagreements implicit h2o allotments for the Helmand River are hard to flooded due to the fact that neither state has the quality to bring much h2o to the region," said Ryan Bohl, a elder Middle East and North Africa expert astatine Rane. "It's already an highly adust area, but issues similar clime alteration and overfarming are making it worse." 

"In a way," helium said, "it's a classical operator of conflict, a contention for a scarce assets neither broadside tin unrecorded without."

In mid-May, a Taliban property merchandise expressed Afghanistan's enactment for the 1973 treaty, but said: "Since determination has been a drought successful Afghanistan and the portion successful caller years and the h2o level has dropped … provinces of the state are suffering from drought and determination is not capable water. In specified a situation, we see Iran's predominant request for h2o and inappropriate statements successful the media arsenic harmful."

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, successful response, told Afghanistan's leaders to instrumentality his words "very seriously," saying "I pass the rulers of Afghanistan to springiness the rights of the radical successful [the Iranian borderline regions of] Sistan and Baluchistan immediately." A Taliban commandant deed back, saying determination was nary h2o for them to springiness Iran and warning, "Do not onslaught us. We are not afraid."

Tehran past made a connection emphasizing the information that it doesn't admit the Taliban arsenic Afghanistan's ruling body. The back-and-forth lone heightened tensions, and immoderate interest that May's borderline shootout could beryllium a motion of worse to come. 

Rane's Bohl expects the contented to fester arsenic "water scarcity is simply a precise analyzable occupation that requires extended and costly infrastructure investments to overcome, neither of which heavily-sanctioned Iran oregon Afghanistan is successful a presumption to fix," helium said. 

He expects flare-ups betwixt the 2 to continue, arsenic good arsenic continued interruptions to Afghanistan's h2o proviso — atrocious quality for an already desperately impoverished country.

That "could harm Afghanistan's farming output implicit clip and harm its already frail system and worsen nutrient shortages," Bohl said.