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Afghanistan's woeful water managementdelights neighborsAny effort by Afghanistan to improve water management could ruffle neighbors, who benefit fromthe country's losing two-thirds of its water due to lack of infrastructure.

By Tom A. Peter, Correspondent / June 15, 2010

For three springs now Zobair Ahrar has watched helplessly as annual flooding washed

away 1,500 square meters of his land about five percent of his property. A former

dam designer turned farmer, Mr. Ahrarestimates it would cost $1 million to build a dam

that could control the floods eroding the land in his and a hundred other villages.

Mr. Ahrar approached the provincial Ministry of

Irrigation for help. Officials told him they were

investing in other places and he needed to fix

the problem himself. Unable to afford the dam,

he and his neighbors will either get outside help

or eventually have to move.

Thirty years of war have leftAfghanistans

irrigation canals clogged and pitted, and

farmers are beginning to feel the weight of

decades of neglect. Aside from erosion,

farmers lack the resources to build the canals

capable of irrigating large swathes of land

and this in a country where agriculture employs

more than three quarters of workers.

In order to develop, Afghanistan must revamp

its water infrastructure, but doing so could

spark tension with neighbors whove come torely on excess water flowing from Afghanistan.

Agriculture is really the economic driver at this stage, saysAllan Kelly, deputy country

director of theAsian Development Bank, which has committed $400 million in grant

money to irrigation in Afghanistan. Improving irrigation is critical to agricultural sector

growth [otherwise] well have the continuation of widespread poverty and declining

irrigation.

Most water flows abroad

HERAT,

AFGHANISTAN

Enlarge

Amina and her brother fill up a water

jug in Faizabad, Afghanistan. An effort

by Afghanistan to improve water

management is under way in areas.

Monique Jaques / Special to the

Christian Science Monitor

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Afghanistan doesnt face a water shortage its unable to get water to where its

needed. The nation loses about two thirds of its water to Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan,

and other neighbors because doesn't harness its rivers. The government estimates that

more than $2 billion is needed to rehabilitate the countrys most important irrigation

systems.

The farmers are poor people. They cannot buy some machines to dig the canals, says

Khalil Entezari, head of irrigation in Herat for the Department of Agriculture. If we dont

solve this problem it will continue to get bigger and bigger and farmers will continue to

leave their land.

One of the biggest attempts to address the problem is under way in Herat Province

along the border with Iran, where India is funding the construction of a $180 million

dam. The project, called the Salma Dam, will regulate river flow during flood season

and reduce the amount of water that flows from the Hari Rud River to Iran and

Turkmenistan from 300 million cubic meters per year to 87 million cubic meters.

For more coverage of Asia, follow Asia editor Carol Huang on Facebook.

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