Chinese Dam Construction In Afghanistan: Implications for Pakistan

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Water and Energy recently announced that a Chinese company has expressed interest in investing in three large dams on the Kunar River with a collective capacity to generate over 2,000 megawatts of electricity. The Kunar River contributes significantly to the Kabul River Basin of Afghanistan, which is one of the most important of the five major river basins of the country. The river also has the distinction of originating in Pakistan – where it is known as the Chitral River – and then flowing back to it after traversing through Afghanistan for around 300 miles and joining the main Kabul River. Thus, Pakistan is both an upper and lower riparian state not only of the Kunar River specifically but also of the Kabul River Basin as a whole.

Owing to it being a shared resource, Pakistan has in the past strongly reacted to any Afghan plans for dam construction on the Kunar River. For instance, when the Taliban government announced the construction of a dam on the river in January, some Pakistani officials termed it as a “hostile act against Pakistan.” Now that a Taliban official has announced the construction of three dams – and that too with investment by a firm from China, a country that is among Pakistan’s strongest security and economic partners – it is not going to go unnoticed in Pakistan. 

Pakistan’s concerns about the Kabul River Basin are not limited to the Kunar River. In the past, it has expressed serious reservations regarding water storage and diversion projects on the main Kabul River as well, which originates from the Sanglakh mountains west of Kabul inside Afghanistan. Pakistan utilizes the water of the Kabul River for power generation and irrigation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan before it drains into the Indus River. Pakistan thus took strong exception to Kabul’s plans of constructing 12 dams primarily on the main Kabul River with foreign assistance. Islamabad voiced concern about the planned construction of Shahtoot Dam in the Chahar Asyab locality of Kabul district, which aims to provide water to Kabul city.

The history of India’s partnership with Kabul for dam construction in Afghanistan further complicates matters for Pakistan. Building on the successful completion of the Salma Dam, also known as the Afghan-India Friendship Dam, on the Harirud River in Herat, India offered Afghanistan assistance with the construction of the Shahtoot Dam in January 2021, months before the Taliban took over. India sent a technical team to assess the status of India-supported projects in Afghanistan as late as June 2022 and remains in contact with the Taliban government for the completion of water projects, including the ones in the Kabul River Basin. For Pakistan, the involvement of India adds a regional conflict dimension to water-sharing between Afghanistan and Pakistan because of the longstanding India-Pakistan rivalry. 

The Taliban government of Afghanistan has nevertheless prioritized water projects because Afghanistan’s limited yet under-utilized water resources are under severe strain from climate change, demographic changes, and the long-term effects of military conflicts and political instability. The Taliban government has continued with the work on the Pashdan Dam on the Harirud River in Herat province with a capacity to store 45 million cubic meters of water, irrigate 13,000 hectares of land, and produce 2 megawatts of electricity. While floods caused considerable damage to the dam infrastructure, the Taliban authorities claim to have completed at least 85 percent of the work and expect its operationalization by the end of the year. 

The Taliban government also resumed construction work on the Qosh Tepa canal project in northern Afghanistan in March 2022 to enhance agricultural productivity in the region. The approximately 175-mile-long canal, scheduled to be completed in 2028, will divert water from the Amu Darya, which is a shared resource with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Taliban government has made some attempts at coordination with the concerned Uzbek officials, but specifics remain unclear. 

While the Taliban government’s efforts at utilizing Afghanistan’s water resources amid climate change and water scarcity are understandable, Pakistan’s fears are comprehensible for more or less the same reasons. The absence of a working framework on water-sharing between Afghanistan and Pakistan complicates the existing dynamics of the relationship, which involves terrorism concerns, refugees, border disputes, trade issues, and bilateral diplomatic baggage. Therefore, any water-related crisis is likely to contribute toward the oscillating dynamic between the two countries.

Afghanistan and Pakistan have in the past endeavored to negotiate water sharing. In 2006, the World Bank attempted to secure a transboundary riparian agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan and in 2014 it facilitated two-day water-sharing talks between the relevant ministries of the two countries in Dubai. Independent of the World Bank facilitation, in August 2013, the Afghan and Pakistani finance ministers even committed to construct a joint power project on the Kunar River with a 1,500 MW power generation and 13 million acre-feet storage capacity. The official commitment was followed by a trilateral meeting between relevant government functionaries of China, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in Kabul in 2015, resulting in a similar proposal. 

While previous efforts have not yielded anything concrete so far, the involvement of a Chinese firm in the construction of dams on the Kunar River could very well be the starting point of a more goal-oriented and benefit-driven collaboration for joint utilization of water and power in the Kabul River Basin. Since water-sharing is a technical subject requiring up-to-date scientific facts, the first step can be collaborative information gathering on climate, hydrology, and management of water resources in the Kabul River Basin as a whole to start conversations about coordinating transborder water-sharing. 

This can be followed up with the establishment of joint Af-Pak institutional mechanisms such as a technical committee for data-gathering on the basin with Chinese assistance or help from other relevant stakeholders to move the focus away from unilateral projects on shared resources toward a common understanding of interests. The first two steps can then be built upon to lead to a water-sharing treaty between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the lines of the Indus Waters Treaty. 

This approach would be in line with expert recommendations to adopt an internationally assisted step-by-step conflict transformation framework, aimed at transforming friction into sustainable cooperation by focusing on shared benefits instead of shared resources.