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Afghanistan’s Taliban says it is committed to Iran’s water rights

February 14, 2022 at 3:25 pm

An Iranian girl walks across the Zayandeh Rud river in Isfahan, which now runs dry due to water extraction before it reaches the city on 11 April 2018. [ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images]

Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban have said they are committed to the water agreement with neighbouring Iran amid shortages and protests in the country.

In a statement issued on Friday by the Islamic Emirate’s Ministry of Water and Energy, Kabul will adhere to the 1973 agreement over the Helmand River water rights, whereby Iran must receive 820 million cubic metres of water from the river.

Late last month, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh expressed concerns by Tehran over the implementation of the agreement.

“Unfortunately, despite the fact that the governing body of Afghanistan has announced that this right is definite and they have opened the dam, the water has not arrived. It is important to us how committed the governing body is to international and bilateral law,” he told the Tehran Times.

READ: Iran races against time to revive vanishing wetlands

Yesterday an Iranian energy ministry official accused the Taliban of not releasing enough water from the Kamal Khan Dam on the Helmand River, as a bulk of it was draining into an inland basin close to the border instead of Iran’s Hamun Lake. However, Press TV reported that Afghan authorities have since informed Iran’s Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian in a phone call that they will soon rectify the problem.

While relations between Iran and the Taliban are amicable, water scarcity amid droughts and poor agricultural water management could affect ties and has caused between 25 to 30 per cent of the population to leave the border region over the past two decades. Late last month Iranian farmers protested and blocked Afghan trucks from entering Iran at the Milak border crossing in the south eastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan over worsening water issues.

Last year, both countries signed an agreement over water rights, ending almost 50 years of disputes. Faced with its own water crisis, Iran has itself been accused by Iraq of reducing the flow of water into the Tigris and Euphrates rivers causing severe water shortages.