Iranian border guards open fire on Afghan villagers accessing river water

Date: 2015

Parties: Iran, Afghanistan

Violent: Yes

A disagreement over water rights along the Hari Rud River between Afghanistan and Iran lead to at least ten deaths because Iranian border guards opened fire on Afghan villagers who were trying to collect river water. The river provides water for agricultural production in Afghanistan and even supplies the Iranian city of Mashhad, which is Iran’s second largest city.

Today the relationship between the two countries is better but there is still heavy disagreements between the two sides as the Iranian people believe that Afganistan is holding more water than they are sharing. Because of these rumors, there is a non-stop tension along the border. According to internal sources of the Afgan government they are already building a 290 million US$ hydro-power project which would us around 75,000 hectares of land. This would be tragic for Iran as that way Afganistan would have a place to store and produce drinkable water for over 450,000 people and therefore have no reason to have a water treaty with Iran. This would obviously result in a severe water shortage throughout the whole border area in Iran. Throughout the years traders have noticed that there is a good business to be made here. What they do is that these businesses will steal water off of Afganistan's water collector along the border and will sell it to Iranian farmers or even the government. They do these deals because around 80 % of the rural population have been left without access to drinking water. The last time the 1,000-km river completely dried up, in 2000, the second-largest Iranian city of Mashhad suffered severe water shortages and the agricultural in Iran’s border province reported losses of up to $4.3m. As they are afraid that this will happen again their only solution is to beg or to steal water from Afganistan which, if they find out, could end fatal.