Ethnic chauvinists have launched a "Pashtunization" project in the south and west of Afghanistan.
Author: Farshid Abedi, "Voice of Afghanistan" (Iran)
After our foreign minister visited Kabul and his meetings with the Taliban's foreign minister and Prime Minister, we witnessed an official statement on the water issue by Maulavi Amir Khan Muttaqi, a graduate of the Mecca Seminary in Zahedan. Maulavi Muttaqi made exactly the same statements after Mehrabian, the 13th government's Minister of Energy, visited Kabul!
This Taliban leader stated in the introduction to his speech: "The Taliban's motto is that they do not interfere with the blessing that God has given and continues to give (water)." This statement contradicts the design of hundreds of dams and water diversion canals that control the annual flood peaks on the rivers shared by Iran and Afghanistan. On the other hand, the main reason for Kabul not providing Iran's share of water in the Helmand River is the Kamalkhan Dam, which, after the completion of the 52 million cubic meter reservoir, flows into the dam and is discharged towards Gudzara.
Iran has repeatedly demanded the improvement of the Kamalkhan Dam. This issue was also raised during the former Iranian energy minister's visit to Kabul. In an official interview, the Taliban's Minister of Water and Energy told him: "We assure the authorities of the Islamic Republic of Iran that we will not allow a single drop of water to be discharged towards Gudzara."
Abdulatif Mansour's statement provoked a reaction from Iranian experts since the Kamalkhan Dam's water diversion system diverts water automatically. If the Afghan rulers are against water diversion, they should fix this system. The demand to fix the above-mentioned dam was put on the agenda of the water commissioners of Iran and Afghanistan last March, but the Taliban side opposed the fixing of this dam! In another part of his speech, the Taliban Foreign Minister, as in the past, mentioned the drought in Afghanistan and attributed the incompetence of his country to the lack or shortage of rainfall. However, after the flow of the Helmand River reached the Kamalkhan Dam with a flow of more than three thousand cubic meters per second and was diverted to Gudzara, satellite images, and visual data from residents show that several billion cubic meters of water were simply dumped into the Gudzara salt marsh. This means that the Taliban are lying without any shame, and our officials and some media outlets repeat what they say without paying attention to the evidence provided.
But it would be nice to know why the Taliban insist on dumping water into the Gudzara salt marsh. The answer to this question should be sought in determining Afghanistan's strategy regarding the water issue. At the same time as the Kamalkhan Dam was completed, the Ministry of Water and Energy of Afghanistan stated, “One of the goals of this project is to restore 49,000 hectares of Gudzara lands and resettle 49,000 Pashtun families in this area.”
Another of Mawlawi Amir Khan Muttaqi’s statements was that “the people of Sistan and Baluchestan are also our brothers and we do not differentiate between the people of Nimroz and Helmand and the people of Sistan and Baluchestan.” This statement was the most honest statement by this religious scholar and Taliban Foreign Minister because, in addition to forcibly displacing the people of Sistan in Iran, the construction of dams on the Helmand and Farah rivers will also displace the people of Nimroz Province in Afghanistan and its neighboring provinces.
Unfortunately, the Taliban have been openly lying about their water policy and with every visit by Iranian officials they repeat these lies and to our surprise, our officials also repeat these words to our domestic media!
The 52 million cubic meter Kamalkhan Dam reservoir has created serious problems for the agricultural system of Nimroz province and many large landowners downstream of the dam have been forced to migrate to Iran. By engineering water resources in the north and west of Afghanistan, the Taliban clearly aim to increase the share of the Pashtun ethnic group in agricultural development and more importantly, to change the ethnic composition of the west and north of the country by displacing large numbers of nomadic Pashtuns, especially from south of the Durand Line.
This policy has deprived landowners of many agricultural lands belonging to other ethnic groups. The environmental impact of the construction of the Bakhshabad Dam on the Farah River and the increase in dust generation will lead to an apocalyptic state in the regions of Sistan, Zahedan, Nimroz, Helmand, and even other southern provinces of Afghanistan. The situation in this area has forced many residents of the areas mentioned above to migrate.
This plot is being carried out to implement the policy of expansion and dispersion of Pashtuns in these provinces of Afghanistan, but even in the short term, except for the mentioned areas, it will bring a terrible disaster to Kandahar province and even parts of Pakistan [up to the port of Karachi]. The leaders of this group and their supporters in Islamabad would do well to know this truth as well: such misuse of water resources will also affect the Taliban caliphate center in Kandahar province and about half of Pakistan.
The Taliban have been blatantly lying about the water problem and our officials are repeating it! Why?