The Presidents of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan met Aug. 4 in the Turkmen capital Ashgabat to discuss water, given that these nations and Afghanistan all use flow from the Amu Darya River (rising in the Himalayas, flowing down to the now-shrunken Aral Sea); Afghanistan is set to increase its draw-off, on or after 2027 when its Qosh Tepa Canal is completed. This flagship project, which itself can irrigate enough land to potentially restore grain self-sufficiency to Afghanistan, was started in Spring 2022 by the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan government, after decades of study and inaction under the U.S. and NATO.
The Ashgabat meeting is an expression of the dialogue approach to the problem of water shortages, and not the conflict approach which is being stirred up by London, EU and Washington circles, whose info-warfare narrative is that the “Taliban Mega-Project will steal scarce water from its neighbors.” The geopoliticians are playing up that Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan–the downriver nations, could lose as much as 15% of the water they currently get from the Amu Darya. The narrative is, blame Afghanistan; fight each other over water.
Instead, in the dialogue approach, a task force has been formed involving Uzbek and Afghan water experts, to work together during the canal construction to take measures to reduce the water losses in the completed project, which otherwise could be over 50%. The Taliban launched construction of the Canal in May 2022, with whatever construction vehicles and labor they could muster, despite the severe hardship of lack of credit and funding.
The Uzbek-Afghan collaboration on the works design started after a meeting two months ago in Kabul between the respective government representatives. Uzbekistan and Afghanistan have by far the largest populations of the entire central Eurasian region, together numbering at 75 million people. Tashkent is trying to innovate with water-saving agriculture methods in Uzbekistan, but the experts report that the implementation is not working, for many reasons.
Tashkent is pushing very hard to realize the Trans-Afghan Railway project, proposed to go from Uzbekistan, across Afghanistan, and into Pakistan, for which the three nations signed the go-ahead agreement in July. Already in operation is the short cross-border rail connection from Termez, Uzbekistan into Heiratan, Afghanistan, through which critical aid is flowing. The hold-up on the Trans-Afghan Railway is funding, as with all the other major connectivity projects in the region, as well as needed water management infrastructure.
Inaugurated in March 2022, the Qush Tepa Canal is about one-third built now. It is 100 meters wide, and projected to be 285 km long, with water sufficient to irrigate 550,000 ha upon completion.
Documentary on the progress Qush Tepa Canal, January 2023, from the Afghanistan government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJmitmg4k_w
