Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi on Thursday urged Afghanistan to allow water from the Helmand River to flow into Iran, whose southeast is suffering from an unprecedented drought.
“I warn the leaders of Afghanistan that they must immediately respect the rights of the people of Sistan-Balochistan,” Mr Raisi said during a visit to the border province.
The 1150 km Helmand River rises in central Afghanistan, crossing the border and providing irrigation for large agricultural areas in Sistan-Balochistan.
To resolve their dispute over water allocation, which had caused tension for decades, Tehran and Kabul signed a treaty in 1973 granting Iran the right to use 22 cubic meters of water per second, plus possibly an additional 4 cubic meters. A quota that Iran says is not being met.
Mr Raisi urged Afghanistan to “seriously consider” his warning so as not to “complain afterwards”.
Kabul “must allow our experts” to travel upstream to “evaluate” the Afghan authorities’ claim of current low flow. “If our experts confirm the water shortage, we have nothing to say, but if not, we will not allow our people’s rights to be violated,” he warned.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also visited the region on Thursday, urging the Afghan authorities to “open the floodgates of the Kajadi Dam,” one of Afghanistan’s most important hydroelectric power plants, to let the water flow into Iran.
A dry country, Iran has experienced repeated droughts for years, particularly in the southeast, where Helmand-fed Lake Hamoun has now dried up, while previously it was in the heart of the world’s seventh rainy zone.
In 2021, former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, now ousted by the Taliban, announced that Afghanistan would no longer provide Iran with “extra” water for free, but would instead sell it for oil. On the basis of the treaty, Iran had rejected this proposal.