Afghanistan/Iran: In Parched Afghanistan, Drought Sharpens Water Dispute with Iran

Jul 17, 2018 | Rupam Jain, Reuters
View Original

Severe drought across much of Afghanistan is spurring plans to build new dams to help farmers. It is also aggravating tensions with Iran over supplies from the Helmand - a decades-old dispute that has fed accusations that Tehran is helping the Taliban insurgency. Afghan officials say their country, which has one of the lowest levels of water storage capacity in the world, needs the extra dams to feed its agriculture sector, the mainstay of the $20 billion economy, which has been brutally hit by drought.