IREN, Iran’s Environmental News Agency, has coverage of a recent international conference on the increasing likelihood of wars over water resources. Running under the headline “Fresh Warnings of Water Wars” the piece quotes a speech from Iranian environmental science professor Esmail Kahram who cited as a possible flashpoint Iran’s dispute with Afghanistan about water rights in the Helmand (aka Hirmand) River:
In our country, for example, Lake Hamoun once had 10 million cubic meters of capacity, but Afghanistan built the first and second Kajaki dams over the Helmand River [which flows from Afghanistan to Iran] and deprived us of this water. This shows how the issue of rivers that flow across borders are one of the problems that could lead to wars over water.
The dispute over this waterway has been simmering for at least a hundred hears (for background check out this piece) But the last few years of low rainfalls and increasing aridity of formerly fertile land seem to have again raised worries in Tehran over the geopolitics of water. It will be interesting to see if the water issue comes up in the upcoming discussions on Afghanistan. In any case, the Helmand dispute will be important to keep an eye on as a gauge of concerns over Iran’s water equation, and thus the cost-benefit of possible Iranian water deals with Arab states.
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