KVIG Informative

Afghanistan is building a 285-kilometer canal on a river that supplies four countries, and no agreement governs how the water is shared. Uzbekistan’s president asked in October for permanent talks.

The Taliban government announced in early 2022 that it would build the Qosh Tepa Canal across Balkh, Jowzjan and Faryab provinces in northern Afghanistan. The canal will run 285 kilometers, about 100 meters wide and 8.5 meters deep. Taliban officials say it will turn more than 500,000 hectares of desert into farmland and improve food security. Uzbekistan’s water resources minister, Shavkat Hamraev, said in 2025 that construction could finish by 2028.

How much water it will take is disputed. Analysts at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote that the canal could draw as much as 10 cubic kilometers a year, about a third of the Amu Darya’s flow. Academic estimates summarized by the Climate Diplomacy initiative converge around 20 percent. Taliban officials say the canal will not significantly lower the river.

No agreement governs the answer. Ana Maria Kvatashidze of the Caspian Policy Center wrote in August that Afghanistan was never included in the basin water organizations Moscow created in 1987 to allocate the Amu Darya and Syr Darya among the Soviet republics. She noted that Afghanistan is recognized as an upstream riparian state under customary international law. She argued that the canal’s greatest threat may be the legal and institutional vacuum it exposes, more than the volume it removes.

Mujeeb-ur-Rahman Omar, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of water and energy, told the Tashkent Water Week forum in April that Afghanistan holds an equal right to the river’s water. Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has warned that the canal could fundamentally change the water balance of Central Asia. On Oct. 9, he called for continuous, structured talks with the Taliban on water management.

Seepage adds to the arithmetic. Carnegie analysts wrote that without concrete-lined walls and reinforced banks, the canal will lose large amounts of water to the sandy soil it crosses. They said it will immediately disrupt the balance of use among Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, which have been the river’s main users. The Aral Sea, drained by Soviet-era cotton irrigation, sits at the Amu Darya’s end.

International law recognizes Afghanistan’s claim to the river. The unsettled question is the schedule. The canal is due in 2028, and the permanent talks Mirziyoyev wants are still only a request.