Kabul River dams

According to a Business Recorder exclusive, the Afghan government is actively engaged in talks with the international community to build multipurpose dams on the tributaries of the Kabul River with India reportedly playing the lead role in this regard. This has raised major concerns with many a water sector expert urging the government to begin to take serious note of this issue and take appropriate timely mitigating measures to forestall the negative impact on the already scarce water resources of Pakistan.
Experts are referring to the construction of dams by the Indian government including Baglihar and the failure of the Pakistan government to take appropriate legal action on time, resulting in the near completion of the dam which accounted for the arbiter's decision in favour of India.
Kabul River is a 700-km long river with 560-km in Eastern Afghanistan and 140-km in northern Pakistan. It starts in the Sanglakh Range of the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan and joins in the Indus River near Attock in Pakistan. It passes through Kabul, Chaharbagh and Jalalabad in Afghanistan before flowing into Pakistan some 25-km north of the Pak-Afghan border crossing at Torkham. The Kabul River is little more than a trickle for most of the year, but swells in summer due to melting snows in the Hindu Kush range.
Its largest tributary is the Kunar River, which starts out as the Mastuj River, flowing from the Chiantar glacier in Chitral, Pakistan and after flowing south into Afghanistan it is met by the Bashgal River flowing from Nurestan. The Kunar meets the Kabul River near Jalalabad. The Kabul River is impounded by Warsak Dam in Pakistan, which is situated approximately 20-km north-west of Peshawar, has a generating capacity of 243 MW and an active capacity of 31,207,090 m3 (25,300 acre ft).
The world's 261 international river basins, covering 45 percent of earth's land surface (excluding Antarctica), are shared by more than one nation. History provides adequate examples of conflict not only between countries over the sharing of a trans-boundary river but also between states/provinces within a country. The question is whether total rights must accrue to the country/province from where the river originates, or equal rights must be granted to all through which it flows.
The most cited principle is the rule of equitable utilisation, which embodies a theory of restricted sovereignty under which each nation recognises the right of all riparian nations (upper and lower) to use water from a common source and the obligation to manage their uses, so as not to interfere unreasonably with like uses in other riparian nations. This is the basis of not only trans-boundary agreements to which nations adhere even when at war with each other (Indus Water Treaty being a prime example) but also intra-provincial/state agreements on water sharing.
Reports indicate that Indus River System Authority (Irsa) has decided to recommend to the government to begin construction of the Katzara dam as a mitigating measure against the building of multipurpose dams by the Afghan government on the Kabul River. In addition, Irsa is also suggesting that the government begins negotiations with the Afghan government, on the same pattern as the World Bank-brokered Indus Water Treaty, which allows India exclusive rights to eastern rivers while allowing Pakistan the use of western rivers.
It is disheartening that the relevant ministry has yet to take note of the impending crisis subsequent to the construction of dams on the Kabul River reflected by the fact that it has yet to undertake any action in this regard. If the ministry does not have the necessary expertise to engage in formulating mitigating measures then it must urgently outsource it to experts in the private sector. But the time to act is now, otherwise as happened in the case of Baglihar, it would be too late.