The Taliban’s Canal
Editor’s Note: This article has been adapted from a Center for the National Interest report entitled “Afghanistan’s Qoshtepa Canal and Water Security in Central Asia,” with some edits made for style and clarity. The full publication can be accessed here.
The Qoshtepa Canal, currently under construction in Afghanistan on the Amu Darya River, will dramatically affect the availability of water for irrigation and drinking in one of the world’s most water-scarce regions—Central Asia. In addition to their already existing water challenges, the Amu Darya River basin and Central Asia are experiencing a far more rapid rate of climate change than the global average.
The interim authorities of Afghanistan face major financial, technical, and diplomatic challenges to complete the canal in an efficient, sustainable, and peaceful manner. The region cannot afford for this canal to be as poorly designed and constructed as Soviet canals on the Amu Darya, which, decades after their construction, continue to impinge on regional water security. The Soviet historical legacy also excludes Afghanistan from essential water-sharing agreements.
Six months after regaining control of Afghanistan, in March 2022, the interim authorities of Afghanistan reinitiated the Qoshtepa Canal project on the Amu Darya River, also known as the “Nile of Central Asia.” Initial plans for the canal to be built with Soviet assistance date back to the 1970s. This did not happen. In 2018, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) commissioned a feasibility study for the project, and the Ghani government built the first seven kilometers of the canal before being thrown out of power in August 2021 by the Taliban, a group now referred to in official parlance as the “interim authorities of Afghanistan.”
The canal is by far the largest development project undertaken in the history of Afghanistan, and it is intended to demonstrate—to Afghanistan and the world—the interim authorities’ ability to manage a large infrastructure project that will reduce poverty, increase arable agricultural land, and enhance food security. The planned canal is 287 kilometers long and 8.5 meters deep, with an average width of 100 meters (The canal’s width starts at 152 meters and gradually decreases to sixty-four meters at the end. Thus, the average width can be said to be roughly 100 meters). It is expected to open more than 1.2 million acres of farmland and create about 200,000 new jobs. Construction of the main canal, involving up to 5,000 workers and 4,000 earth movers and trucks, is progressing rapidly and has entered its second phase. Most reports speak of a six-year timetable for canal creation. Still, the overall project, including all the branch, secondary, tertiary, and distributive canals and water regulatory/distributary structures required for actual irrigation, will take significantly longer to complete fully.
In many ways, the Qoshtepa Canal represents for Afghanistan’s de facto authorities a bold new vision for a peaceful, verdant, prosperous, and self-sufficient country. Of course, the Taliban were not the first to explore this project, but they have enthusiastically embraced it. The canal represents part of the Taliban’s political effort to build support from the population. They have launched a major public relations campaign about the canal, which is encapsulated in a twenty-seven-minute video produced in early 2024 after the first phase of the project concluded. The background of the video shows dozens of excavators and trucks, just a fraction of the 3,500 such earth-moving vehicles engaged in the project, digging and moving dirt in fast motion, seemingly to demonstrate that this is a vast and modern infrastructure project for the benefit of the entire country. Breathtaking shots emphasize the majestic vastness of the canal and its transformation of the landscape.
Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid summarized the significance of the canal in an interview with Nikkei Asia in December 2023:
The construction of the Qoshtepa Canal is taking place at a time when Afghanistan is facing numerous economic challenges as the country wakes up from four decades of war, with unemployment rates at their peak...In such times, this project represents a great source of hope for all our countrymen.
The Geographical Context
The Amu Darya River originates from the Hindu Kush and Wakhan regions in the Pamir Highlands of Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Amu Darya basin is one of four significant basins in Afghanistan (the others being the Helmand/Hari-Rud, the Panj, and the Kabul). Its tributary, the Panj, is shared with Tajikistan, and the basin itself is located downstream in the vicinity of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Before the near-disappearance of the Aral Sea over the last sixty years, the Amu Darya waters flowed into the Aral Sea, where the river came to an end. Now, that flow is barely a trickle when it reaches the old Aral Sea territory.
The Qoshtepa Canal project is located in a very strategically important region in three northern provinces of Afghanistan: Balkh Province, where it starts, and Jawzjan and Faryab Provinces, where the Amu Darya River marks the border of Afghanistan with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. These three provinces, whose combined population is 3.33 million (out of the country’s total population of nearly 43 million), are home to significant minority ethnic groups, including Tajiks, Uzbeks, Sunni Hazara, and others. They have presented governance challenges for many different governments in Kabul. In the late 1990s, this was the base of much of the Northern Alliance, which supported the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in bringing down the Taliban government in 2001. Northern Afghanistan, especially the area a bit north of the first intake point of the planned canal route on the very porous Afghan-Tajik border, has served as a haven for Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K) and other transboundary terrorist groups.
The National and Regional Significance
The project has a long history dating back at least to the 1970s. Still, it was paused in 1978, after the Soviet Union supported a coup to overthrow President Mohammad Daoud Khan of the Republic of Afghanistan and before the Soviets fully invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. The Soviet-Afghan War of the 1980s led to the collapse of the country’s governance, which contributed to the degradation of land and water resources. Only half of arable land is now cultivated each year due to water shortages, and 11 percent of the country has no access to water. This current reality is in stark contrast to the Afghanistan of the 1970s when the country was not only food-sufficient but also one of the world’s largest exporters of dried fruits and nuts.
Afghanistan had not been tapping the waters of the Amu Darya significantly from the 1970s onward. But the Soviet Central Asian republics were exploiting scarce water resources in such an unsustainable manner so as to create one of the greatest environmental catastrophes of our time: the drying up of the Aral Sea that once straddled the border between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Soviet Union’s shortsighted policies—that is, the intensive cultivation of cotton that still consumes 92 percent of the extracted water of the Amu Darya, the construction of large-scale irrigation canals in the arid part of Central Asia that began in the 1930s, and a decades-long concealment of the Aral Sea disaster by authorities—turned the world’s fourth largest inland sea into a barren desert and made its full restoration virtually impossible. This is not the kind of experience that anyone would wish to see replicated with the Qoshtepa Canal.
Like earlier canal projects, the Qoshtepa Canal will have a significant impact on the Amu Darya flow. According to the 2019 USAID feasibility study for the project, the Qoshtepa Canal was to irrigate 1.2 million acres of land annually, and up to 13.02 billion cubic meters (bcm) of water would have to be extracted from the Amu Darya. However, only 49 percent of the total land available in the surrounding area is estimated to be arable; hence, the actual annual water extraction would be around 6.37 bcm. But analyzing these numbers, and excluding nonarable lands such as saline and sand dune-dominated lands, it appears that the Qoshtepa Canal might divert 8–17 percent of water from the Amu Darya, which is lower than the earlier and most quoted estimate of 20 percent. There is clearly an urgent need for more research on how the canal could affect the water flow of the Amu Darya in Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Although the canal will potentially reduce poverty and improve food security in Afghanistan, it raises serious concerns for downstream Central Asian neighbors like Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. The canal would divert Amu Darya water away from these states—water they have relied on for decades to grow water-intensive cotton, fruits, vegetables, and grass for livestock. These downstream states already suffer from significant water shortages; for example, there have reportedly been some days when no tap water was available in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (as well as Afghanistan) suffer disproportionately from the effects of climate change that are making Central Asia drier and hotter. Hence, the quest for water security and food security in the region will only get more intense in the near future.
For Afghanistan and the downstream states, the concern is that the Qoshtepa Canal, which is unlined like earlier Soviet canals in Central Asia, could result in disastrous soil salinization and alkalinization, as well as increased sedimentation of the river water. The earlier canals caused large-scale soil salinization as the groundwater levels exfiltrated to the surface through saline soil. The water pushed the salt to the surface and became salinized itself. Salinization in the region has significantly reduced the benefits of water for irrigation and drinking and is ongoing; despite efforts to reduce soil salinization in Central Asia, a study shows that it increased by about 7 percent from 1990 to 2018. In Afghanistan, salinization and alkalinization could turn fertile agricultural land or rangeland into saline land where vegetation can hardly grow due to salt accumulation on the surface. A related risk is that during dry periods, accumulated fine salt particles can be blown by wind to other regions, further harming agricultural productivity in the region. The technical challenges to building an efficient canal are many and large.
Conclusions and Recommendations
While the incoming Trump administration faces many foreign policy and national security challenges across multiple regions, a failure to engage in Afghanistan and Central Asia on water security increases the likelihood of regional instability, conflict, governance failures, and global terrorist groups using the territory to undermine broader U.S. interests. Given the rapid acceleration of glaciers melting across Central Asia, this may be the last chance to prevent ongoing environmental, economic, social, and regional security challenges from reaching genuinely catastrophic proportions. It is crucial for regional prosperity and security that the Qoshtepa Canal be constructed in a far more modern and efficient manner than it is now. In addition, Afghanistan and its key downstream neighbors, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, need to reach a multilateral water-sharing agreement. To this end, the following recommendations are in order:
1) The United States should use the opportunity presented by this critical project to engage the interim authorities of Afghanistan. This is essential to ensure the construction of a well-engineered canal that maximizes efficient water use in Afghanistan. If the United States supports the project in principle, or at least does not seek to block it, there is a higher likelihood that the multilateral development banks—like the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Asian Development Bank—will support the project financially, technically, and diplomatically.
2) The United States should work with multilateral development institutions to ensure that they or other responsible actors provide the interim authorities of Afghanistan technical assistance, including consultancy services, not only for the construction of the canal itself but also for the construction of the much broader irrigation system that it will support. Afghanistan lacks enough technically trained personnel to handle the complex construction of the canal and establish a modern national water management system.
3) The United States should convene its allies and partners to support diplomacy around regional water-sharing, including Afghanistan. At a minimum, the parties to such an agreement should include Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. There are numerous such transboundary agreements adjudicating water sharing in many river basins around the world, and their experience can help frame this new agreement.
4) Washington should also work with its allies, partners, and multilateral institutions to provide downstream states, specifically Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with additional investment and technical assistance to improve their own irrigation systems using Amu Darya waters. International assistance is now supporting their transition to move away from raising mostly very water-intensive crops, but far more resources and effort are required. This assistance must also address regional water pricing, which is critical to promote less water use per capita. The promise of significantly increased financial and technical support also provides incentives for Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to reach a water-sharing agreement with Afghanistan.
Some may reasonably question why Afghanistan, as an upstream state, would desire to sign water-sharing agreements with downstream neighbors that could constrain its use of water. It is also reasonable to question why the Taliban—or Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, for that matter—would be willing to trust foreigners’ assistance, which would necessarily be of long duration—that is, for at least a decade. Corruption will also present a huge challenge for any donor institutions seeking to implement plans for a project of this scale. Fortunately, multilateral development banks have extensive experience working in very difficult governance structures. Conditionality and transparency will be critical at every step.
Afghans have rightly earned a reputation for being fiercely independent amidst a group of neighboring states that have at different times sought to constrain, if not eliminate, Afghan sovereignty. It would be foolhardy indeed not to acknowledge that the steps proposed above face tremendous headwinds. It is also necessary to keep in mind the domestic political context in Afghanistan and the canal’s implementation as an independent project of the Afghan state under the rule of the Taliban. Nevertheless, there are domestic officials known to the authors of this report who recognize the technical difficulties of going it alone. In our view, leaders in Kabul and Central Asia will ultimately act in a pragmatic fashion in the face of a genuinely growing crisis in their midst. Afghanistan has never indicated it is against such assistance with the canal.
In fact, there is already a promising development on the international cooperation front. On October 29, 2024, TOLO news published an article summarizing an interview with Ismatullah Irgashev, Uzbekistan’s Special Representative for Afghanistan, who revealed the two countries had established a bilateral joint commission on issues around the Qoshtepa Canal. He noted that two meetings had already taken place, and a third is expected early in the New Year. Irgashev also said,
It’s important to note that Afghanistan and the Afghan people have the right to make use of the Amu Darya’s waters as a primary matter. In this regard, there are no concerns or challenges. The key issue is how much water should be drawn from the Amu Darya. Here, the interests of all countries using the Amu Darya’s water resources must be taken into account, and a third issue is that the water level in the Amu Darya varies each year. This means that in one year, the water level may rise, while in another, it may decrease.
These bilateral talks mark a promising diplomatic step, but it will be imperative for them to be multilateralized soon to discuss a regional water-sharing agreement. These talks will be lengthy, complicated, and controversial, but they are essential.
It is also reasonable to have doubts about the other half of the equation—the willingness of Washington to support a project that could help the Taliban economically and, thus, politically. Whether Washington likes it or not, however, the Taliban are the de facto authorities in Afghanistan, and there is little likelihood of this changing in the foreseeable future. To their credit, they have actually begun to carry out the largest development project in the history of Afghanistan, one that could potentially bring great benefits to millions of people. Very different Afghan governments over the past fifty years have supported some form of the Qoshtepa Canal project. This is hardly a capricious endeavor pursued by some delusional dictator on a whim. Water security is now the greatest challenge for regional governments across Central Asia, and it does not take great imagination to see the downside risks for regional security and even global security if growing water security challenges for the region are not addressed comprehensively and with U.S. support.
These recommendations for the incoming Trump administration constitute a piece of a broader regional development strategy with global implications. Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors border three of Washington’s most challenging global actors: China, Russia, and Iran. There is no question that Central Asian states seek broader and more diversified U.S. engagement in the region to hedge against the overweening influence of Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran. Supporting the construction of the Qoshtepa Canal, a regional water-sharing agreement, and more sustainable water-use practices should be an integral piece of Washington’s strategy to contain the increased influence of China, Russia, and Iran with Afghanistan and its Central Asian neighbors and promote prosperity and peace in the region.
Andrew Kuchins is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and an Adjunct Professor at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies. He previously served as president of the American University of Central Asia and held senior positions at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Elvira Aidarkhanova is a Research Associate at the Center for the National Interest. She has contributed to various research initiatives in international relations and held communications roles in Kazakhstan’s private and public sectors and think tanks in the United States. She holds a Master of Arts in Human Science and an MBA and is currently a PhD candidate in International Relations.
Najibullah Sadid is a senior researcher on water resources, environment, and climate change based in Germany. He has a master’s degree and a PhD in water resource management from the Institute for Modelling Hydraulic and Environmental Systems (IWS), University of Stuttgart. He has worked as a researcher for the University of Stuttgart from 2013 to 2019 and for the Federal Waterways Engineering and Research Institute from 2019 to 2023. He is currently an advisor for climate change and flood protection to the State Office for Environment in the Federal State Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.
Zekria Barakzai is a former top Afghan diplomat (Consul General of Afghanistan in Istanbul, Turkey) and has more than 30 years of experience working with the private sector, international organizations, NGOs, and the government of Afghanistan. He received his MA in International Relations from Moscow State University for International Relations (MGIMO). Currently, he is a PhD researcher in international affairs at Altinbas University Istanbul, Turkey. He is an experienced professional in the fields of diplomacy, international affairs, elections, human rights, and good governance. His current research focus is on Afghan and Central Asian transboundary water issues and water diplomacy. Besides English, he is fluent in Dari, Pashto, Russian, Arabic, Urdu, and Turkish languages.
Image: Waheedullah Jahesh / Shutterstock.com.