Management of the Kabul river and Afghanistan’s relations with Pakistan

Following a decision earlier this year by the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention to focus on water security as a critical component of conflict prevention, on Thursday, 28 May, EWI’s Preventive Diplomacy Initiatives hosted the third installment of the dialogue series, Alternative Futures for Afghanistan and the Stability of Southwest Asia: Improving Regional Cooperation on Water. Held in Brussels with the support of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the session focused on the challenges to and opportunities for cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the water resources of the Kabul River Basin. One key topic raised was the role of parliamentarians in addressing water cooperation and security issues.

The policy dialogue series will result in an action-oriented policy paper and build towards an international conference on regional cooperation on water in early 2010.

In his opening address, EWI Vice President Ortwin Hennig stressed that participants must work to identify:

• The potential benefits of cooperation for all parties;
• The challenges and hurdles to be overcome in achieving that cooperation; and
• Practical steps to meet those challenges.

The keynote speakers were Dr. Rakhshan Roohi, Principal Scientific Officer of the Pakistan National Agricultural Research Council, and Mr. Seyyedali Hussaini of BANAB Consulting Engineers Company, Afghanistan.

The Benefits of Cooperation

Dr. Roohi spoke on the background of the Indus River system, of which the Kabul River is a part, and detailed its extensive use for irrigation in India and Pakistan. Dr. Roohi’s presentation pointed to the potential for growth that comes from transboundary cooperation on water management, as India and Pakistan’s history has shown. She stressed the importance of the Kabul River system to Afghanistan: 80% of the Afghan population relies on agriculture and 26% of Afghanistan is in the Kabul basin, making the basin crucial to Afghanistan’s development. Seyyedali Hussaini of BANAB Consulting Engineers Company, confirmed this assessment during his presentation. Roohi also told the meeting that the World Bank was prepared to facilitate a bilateral treaty on the Kabul River, but both sides will need the political will to implement it.

A number of participants suggested that cooperation on the non-political, technical aspects of water could be a starting point for an eventual bilateral or regional treaty. They further suggested that the sharing of information and technical capacities would be an exercise in regional trust-building and could serve as a foundation for regional cooperation on other issues as well. The representative from the Science for Peace and Security Section at NATO pointed out that such cooperation has helped in other regions, noting cooperation in the Caucasus on data-sharing, irrigation efficiency, and exploration of new water resources. Such an example could prove valuable in Southwest Asia as well.

Overcoming the Challenges

Participants identified the following challenges to improving regional cooperation on water:

• The expected increase in demand on the Kabul River’s capacity due to increasing population and infrastructure development including dams and irrigation systems;
• The regional political situation, as exemplified by the decades-long border dispute between Afghanistan and Pakistan;
• The lack of essential hydrological data and technological capacity in Afghanistan; and
• The lack of the international community’s focus on water-related issues.

All participants agreed on the need to depoliticize the water issue. One suggested approach was to start at scientific and technical levels, with individual scientists cooperating on empirical and objective matters.

A representative from the European Parliament asked which role parliamentarians could play. If the issue needs to be depoliticized, she asked, then where do parliamentarians fit into the process? Parliamentarians Network member Herman De Croo MP, Minister of State, Belgium, answered that involvement by parliamentarians is the ideal means of depoliticizing the process. Unlike government-appointed officials who must present the purely governmental view, he said, parliamentarians must represent the people, and can serve as an interface between the views of their constituents and the policies of government.

One participant identified water as an issue that could bring people together and stressed the need for education of local populations. Training for rural farmers requires partners who can help local institutions educate people on water conservation, rational water usage, recycling, and precision irrigation techniques, but such support has not been forthcoming. According to their representative, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) is trying to address the water issue, and is looking to initiatives such as the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy for Central Asia, but the international community is not focusing on it.

It was also noted by participants that many universities and institutions have access to accurate scientific data and can serve as a base of knowledge on the water issue. But a representative from Russia’s Permanent Mission to NATO pointed out the global shortage of data-processing capacity and noted that with only a few supercomputers in the world that can predict the weather for seven days with a high degree of accuracy, it would be an over-expectation to predict what will happen with water over the next five to ten years. Water management requires the ability to think and plan for the long term, and that requires stronger global capacity to process available data.

Practical Steps

The participants agreed to the following steps to build a solid core of trust on which the two countries can improve cooperation on water and foster broader cooperation in other policy areas:

• The establishment of a joint multi-disciplinary scientific fact-finding working group to build a mutually agreed hydrological knowledge base on the Kabul River basin;
• The establishment of a bi-lateral Afghanistan-Pakistan water resources commission to review and negotiate hydro-power and agricultural development plans affecting the population of both nations;
• Negotiate a bilateral treaty between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the use and management of the Kabul River water resources;
• Use existing frameworks such as the Economic Cooperation Organization and the  Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan to include cooperative frameworks on water.

Looking Ahead

EWI will host the next session in the series on 25 June. The session will focus on both the Helmand River basin and the Harirud and Murghab rivers, affecting Afghanistan’s relations with Iran and Turkmenistan.