Heterogeneous Diplomacy of Political Relations between Iran and Afghanistan in exploiting the water of Helmand Border River

Abstract

The water challenge in the Middle East has caused governments to face new problems in which they have to consider more control, management, and care regarding their water resources to survive. Due to growing water consumption by upstream countries of the border rivers in exploiting the resources, we will observe an increase in hydro-political disputes among the nations. Helmand is a river that flows into Iran and includes a hydro-political aspect. It has always influenced the relations between the two countries since the border formation. The fluctuation of the Helmand water flow and decrease in the running water towards Sistan (Iran) in the last hundred years has always created problems in relations between Iran and Afghanistan at the National and local levels. In the past years, Afghanistan has consumed a significant part of the water by creating a dam, reducing the amount of water flowing into Iran. On the other side, morphological changes of the river, such as the dispute on specifying the border exactly in the changeable river bed, dispute from the instability of water rights distribution pattern between the two countries, and finally, the dispute from specifying the extent and territory of the border area has led to ecosystem instabilities. In this regard, the strategy to control the ecosystem instabilities is environment diplomacy, and if it is synchronized with defensive diplomacy, it causes stability. With this description, we will examine the Helmand peripheral issues and the course of diplomacy in this field.