Recently, there were reports about deadly clashes between Iranian border guards and the Afghan soldiers in the border area encompassing the Zabul district of Sistan and Baluchestan province on the Iranian side and the Keng district of Nimruz province in Afghanistan. The issue over which tensions between the two neighbours ran high is how to divide the waters of the Helmand River, which the two nations must share. Iran charged the Taliban government in Afghanistan with stopping up the flow of the Helmand River and storing extra water in the Kamal Khan Dam and other reservoirs. Iran also complained that the Afghans have recently built new dams that are storing water that would otherwise have flowed to Iran.
This border clash is a small omen of bigger conflicts to come. The scenario is similar to conflicts over water in other regions of the world. Many social scientists foresee water wars as a result. Tensions between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia over the latter’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and Blue Nile River resources haven’t been resolved in years, with both Egypt and Ethiopia threatening a military response at various points. Last year, Russian troops destroyed a Dnieper River dam that diverted water away from Crimea and into Ukraine.
Hundreds of conflicts are taking place over water in the modern era. As per the UN Statistical Division’s data pertaining to 2019, reports that the number of water conflicts by different regions globally as of April 2022 runs up to more than 1100 conflicts. The frequency of water-related conflicts has grown in the past two decades. In the Middle East there are growing disputes during severe droughts over access to water. Similar ethnic and community confrontations are taking place in sub-Saharan Africa. It’s the uneven access to fresh water around the world that makes it a strategic priority during conflict.
Social, economic, and political challenges associated with freshwater resources pose a variety of severe risks to communities around the world, from water-related diseases, to crop failures, to ecological destruction, to actual violence, the risks and incidences of water-related conflicts in recent years, are on the rise, and the factors driving such violence appear to be worsening. Increasing tensions over water resources point to the emergence of a new dimension to the global geopolitics, adding to the regional and neighbourly rivalries.
Drought and climate change have exacerbated the tensions over water sharing. Now indeed the time seems to be apt to work cohesively to find a collective solution to the global demand and supply and sharing of water resources, besides taking a conscious, serious and determined approach to care more for our environment instead of just hollow talks, which seem to have become the trend of most global environmental agencies and plans. If indeed we do not act even now, then it may be too late when the real wars due to scarce water resources start erupting across the globe.
