Kabul River water: Dialogue calls for following international law

PESHAWAR: Speakers at a dialogue here on Friday called Pakistan and Afghanistan to follow the international laws on utilising the water of Kabul River.

The Centre for Research & Security Studies (CRSS) organised the dialogue titled “Pakistan-Afghanistan TransBoundary Water Relationship Exploring Opportunities for Cooperation”.

Senior journalist Shams Momand conducted the dialogue.

Besides former Inspector General of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police and ex-secretary home and tribal affairs, Dr Syed Akhtar Ali Shah, senior journalists including Mehmood Jan Babar, Zahir Shah Sherazi and team leader CRSS Mustafa Malik shared their views on the subject with the participants.

Syed Akhtar Ali said Kabul River was very crucial for the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He said 25 million people in the two countries were directly dependent on the Kabul River that started from Chitral and flowed through Afghanistan before entering Pakistan again.

He said the previous Afghan government with financial support of other countries had planned building Shatoot Dam in Kabul River basin for multiple purposes but it never materialised due to a host of reasons.

They had allocated Rs236 billion funds for the dam that was supposed to irrigate 4,000 hectares of land.

In Pakistan, Akhtar Ali Shah said, the river water was being used for irrigating 85 per cent of land in Charsadda, 80 percent in Peshawar (that now reduced up to 47.50 per cent) while 75.80 percent of land was irrigated in Nowshera.

Pakistan has built only one dam, Warsak Dam, on Kabul River that generates 250 megawatts of power.

According to Akhtar Ali Shah, the two neighbouring countries desperately needed the water for different purposes, saying they could utilise the Kabul River water by following the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational uses of International Watercourses 1997.

He said since both the countries didn’t have enough resources to build a big dam on Kabul River, therefore any donor agency willing to pay for its construction would first need to address the concerns of the two neighbours. Another participant, Dr Azeem said it would help prevent flooding in Pakistan if a dam was built in Kabul River basin in Kunar, Afghanistan.

A senior journalist Mehmood Jan Babar said the media of the two countries had never worked on public interest issues.

He termed it a “sponsored and foreign-funded media” that existed before the Taliban takeover, saying it was designed and used by the vested interest elements and it had nothing to do with Afghanistan and the problems faced by its people.

Mehmood Jan said the media in Afghanistan was more resourceful than Pakistan but it vanished with the fall of the country at the hands of Taliban.

According to him, the Afghan media in the previous regime was used for creating hostility between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mehmood Jan said since the Taliban were not media friendly, therefore, the majority of people in the Afghan media had fled the war-torn country.

He said neither the media nor the public in Afghanistan was ever given an opportunity to express their views about the public interest matters such as water.