Vclashes erupted at the Iran-Afghanistan border on Saturday amid a dispute over water rights. According to the Taliban ruling in Kabul, two people were killed. The Iranian authorities only confirmed the incident without giving any information about the victims. According to the Iranian news agency Mehr, an Iranian border guard was killed.
Both sides accused each other of having fired the first shots. “One person was killed on each side,” the spokesman for the Taliban Interior Ministry tweeted. The situation in the southwestern province of Nimros is now under control. “The Islamic Emirate does not want a war with its neighbor,” said the spokesman used the Taliban government’s name for Afghanistan.
There have been repeated incidents at the borders of neighboring countries since the Islamists took power in the summer of 2021. In the past, both sides usually spoke of misunderstandings; There is no fundamental dispute about the course of the 921-kilometer border.
Recently, however, a dispute broke out over the water of the border river Helmand. Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi threatened the Taliban government and urged Kabul to honor a decades-old pact on water use that guarantees Iran a minimum annual water supply. The river, which is more than 1,000 kilometers long, is being dammed on the Afghan side in the Helmand province of the same name to generate electricity and irrigate agriculture.
The Taliban said drought and climate change are making it impossible for authorities to allow adequate water to flow to the neighboring country. Just days later, Iran’s IRNA news agency released satellite photos and contradicted the group. For years, researchers have been warning of an increase in droughts in the region, which is particularly hard hit by the consequences of climate change.
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