Taliban Echoing India's Indus Treaty Suspension to Curb Pakistan's Water Flow

In a move reminiscent of India's recent strategy against Pakistan, Afghanistan's Taliban leadership has directed the swift construction of dams along the Kunar River to curtail water supplies to its eastern neighbour.

The directive was issued by Supreme Leader Mawlawi Hibatullah Akhundzada, as announced by Acting Water Minister Mullah Abdul Latif Mansoor via a post on X.

Mansoor emphasised Afghanistan's sovereign right to oversee its water resources, stating that the project would be spearheaded by local companies without foreign involvement. This accelerated initiative unfolds amid escalating tensions along the 2,600-km Durand Line—the contested border with Pakistan—following Islamabad's allegations that Kabul is harbouring the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, a group Pakistan designates as terrorists.

The Taliban's decision mirrors India's response to the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, where New Delhi halted the 65-year-old Indus Waters Treaty just a day later. That agreement had long governed the equitable distribution of the Indus River and its tributaries between the two nations.

Spanning approximately 500 km, the Kunar River originates in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, within the Chitral district of the Hindu Kush mountains. It courses southward into Afghanistan, traversing Kunar and Nangarhar provinces, before merging with the Kabul River. Augmented by tributaries like the Pech River, the system veers eastward back into Pakistan, ultimately feeding into the Indus near Attock in Punjab province.

As one of Pakistan's major waterways, the Kabul River—formed by this confluence—plays a vital role in irrigation, potable water supply, and hydropower generation, especially in the violence-plagued Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region. Dams erected by Afghanistan on the Kunar before it re-enters Pakistan could severely disrupt these lifelines, exacerbating shortages already intensified by India's restrictions on Indus flows.

Critically, unlike the formalised Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, no bilateral agreement exists for the Kunar-Kabul system, leaving Pakistan without diplomatic leverage to compel restraint from Kabul. This vacuum has heightened concerns over potential escalation into a broader Afghan-Pakistani conflict.

Since assuming power in August 2021, the Taliban has prioritised hydraulic infrastructure to assert control over Afghanistan's waterways, including those extending westward into Central Asia, as a bulwark for national food security. A prime illustration is the contentious Qosh Tepa Canal in northern Afghanistan, a 285-km project poised to irrigate over 550,000 hectares of barren land.

Analysts warn that the canal may siphon up to 21% of the Amu Darya River's volume, posing risks to water-scarce neighbours such as Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.