25/07/2025
The Taliban is building a 285 kilometer long canal across northern Afghanistan, to convert 5,500 square kilometers of desert into farmland, generating 500 million dollars in annual revenue and reducing dependence on food imports from Russia, Kazakhstan, Iran and more.
But the canal will siphon water away from the Amu Darya River, which has no water-sharing agreement since Soviet times and which Uzbekistan and ===Turkmenistan rely on to feed millions downstream, possibly igniting regional conflict and disrupting a region that the US spent over 20 years trying to stabilize.
It could also fuel illegal poppy cultivation, propping up illicit trade and destabilizing factions and is being built by Afghan fighters with basic machinery and minimal engineering oversight, meaning the canal could potentially leak, collapse or fail entirely. So, is this Afghanistan’s revival, or its next crisis?
