THE US bombing raids on Afghanistan could dramatically increase water
shortages in this drought-stricken country.
Military authorities are increasingly talking of introducing a new phase to
the bombing campaign, using 鈥渂unker bombs鈥� to flush out Osama bin Laden, his
al-Qaida group and Taliban fighters from hillside tunnels that riddle the
landscape. These same ancient tunnels are a vital source of water for hundreds
of villages.
And last month an American bombing raid damaged a hydroelectric power station
close to the Kajaki dam, Afghanistan鈥檚 largest. As well as supplying electricity
to the region, the station drives machinery that controls the flow of water
along the Helmand, the country鈥檚 longest river. Concerns are now growing that
the attack, or a repeat strike, may damage an irrigation system fed by the dam鈥檚
reservoir. The system waters the fields that support some half a million
people.
Advertisement
Afghanistan, which is in the third year of an unprecedented drought, relies
on a mixture of ancient and modern water-supply systems. As well as relying on
the Kajaki dam, the south of the country is peppered with hundreds of
water-supply tunnels, often running for tens of kilometres into hillsides to tap
water reserves deep underground.
The tunnels, known in Pashto as karez, are now a target for American
warplanes. Military strategists claim that bin Laden and Taliban troops may now
be hiding out in the karez, many of which are wide enough to
accommodate companies of men. They say the karez made impenetrable
hideouts for the mujahedin during their guerrilla war with Soviet occupiers in
the 1980s.
Most of the karez are identifiable from the air by the access wells
set at regular intervals above them. But a concerted blitz on these
tunnels鈥攑ossibly using the US鈥檚 much-touted 鈥渂unker-buster鈥�
bombs鈥攚ould cause immense harm to rural communities that increasingly rely
on them for water supplies.
Often abandoned in favour of more modern water-supply systems, karez
have become a vital resource as shallower water sources have dried up. Earlier
this year the aid organisation Islamic Relief encouraged locals to renovate 75
karez in the drought-parched Helmand province in southern Afghanistan,
by offering food aid in return for work in the tunnels. Some karez were
also rejuvenated in Kajaki province, close to the dam hit by the US.
The Kajaki dam reservoir is one of the last surviving sources of surface
water. Last year, the country鈥檚 harvest fell by half as a result of the drought,
but the reservoir still irrigates 170 000 hectares of fields in the Helmand
valley. The Taliban claim the dam is now on the verge of collapse and that a
breech in it would drown thousands.
That seems unlikely. The reservoir can hold 1.7 cubic kilometres of water
when full, but the dam is about 80 kilometres upstream of the nearest town,
Gereshk. The floodwater should dissipate across the flat and uninhabited land
that stretches most of the way to the town. But the office of the UN regional
coordinator for Afghanistan has sent representatives to check the extent of the
damage to the dam. They fear that an interrupted water supply could imperil
future harvests in a region already running short of food.
The Kajaki dam was a contentious structure even before the war. Earlier this
year, Iran complained to the UN that the Taliban had reneged on a 1973 treaty to
share waters from the Helmand river, which flows from Afghanistan into Iran. In
March, the Iranians claimed, the Taliban cut the flow of water across the
border, trapping it behind the dam instead.
As a result, the Iranians say, a large wetland area on their side of the
border has completely dried up. The marshland was the main source of irrigation
water in the Iranian province of Sistana.
