Notes from the real Afghan War: Up to 30 percent of Afghanistan’s water is used by Pakistan and Iran

Bottom line: poppy is a less water-intensive crop than other exportable agricultural commodities, and industrial mining is hugely water intensive.

Water & energy sector in critical situation
By Frozan Muradi
April 3, 2012
Pajhwok Afghan News

KABUL - A shortage water reservoirs and sharing of the precious, but depleting, resource with neighbours have created a critical situation for the country’s water and energy sector.

At a ceremony marking International Water Day in Kabul, Water and Energy Minister Mohammad Ismail Khan linked the lack of reservoirs to the continued war and insecurity in the country, where most of agriculture land is rain-fed.

“The climate change and rains have a direct impact on irrigated and rain-fed farms in the country, where droughts and floods are common,” the minister said in a statement read out at the ceremony.

Up to 30 percent of Afghanistan’s water is used by Pakistan and Iran. In his statement, Khan said his ministry planned to construct 22 dams in various provinces for agriculture development.

Addressing participants, Agriculture Minister Mohammad Asif Rahimi called improving the country’s economy and food security his ministry’s top priorities. He said the agriculture sector had improved a lot in recent years.

He said arable land had increased from 2.1 million hectares to 8.1 million hectares, wheat production from 5.1 million tonnes to 2.3 million tonnes, nurseries from 75,000 hectares to 119,000 hectares and grape production from 364,000 tonnes to 615,000 tonnes.

Almond production jumped from 19,000 to 56,000 tonnes and cotton from 20,000 to 45,000 tonnes, with the saffron yield reaching 2,000 kilograms over the past decade, the minister pointed out.

Water scarcity: Saving Jordan and the Dead Sea

Ah, but desalination is expensive....

Jordan’s critical water situation highlighted
March 19, 2012
The Jordan Times

[...]
Highlighting Jordan's critical water situation, [Jordan Minister of Water and Irrigation Mousa Jamani] noted that even with improving water efficiency, reducing water loss and wisely managing every drop of water, the country will still suffer from a water deficit.

A significant increase in population has led to a sharp decrease in per capita water availability in Jordan, which dropped from 3,600 cubic metres in 1946 to 145 cubic metres in 2008.

Water demand will rise to 1,673 million cubic metres (mcm) and the water deficit will surge from the current 457mcm to 659mcm within a decade, as the Kingdom's population is projected to exceed 7.8 million by 2022.

"The only long-term solution for the Kingdom's water scarcity is desalination. Studies for the Red-Dead [Red Sea-Dead Sea] project are nearing completion. Once the results out, the stakeholders will discuss the implementation phases," Jamani said yesterday.

The project is part of international efforts to save the Dead Sea, which has been shrinking at the rate of one metre per year, largely due to the diversion of water from the Jordan River for agricultural and industrial use.

Initial plans for the mega-venture propose pumping one billion cubic metres of water annually from the Red Sea into the rapidly shrinking Dead Sea to stop its depletion.

Meanwhile, Ministry of Water and Irrigation Assistant Secretary General and Spokesperson Adnan Zu’bi called on public, private and civic institutions to collaborate in order to reduce water consumption in Jordan by adopting environment-friendly practices.

"It is important to preserve water resources from depletion and pollution for the current and future generations," added Zu’bi, who is also president of the Jordanian Society for the Conservation of Water.

Jordan is recognised as the fourth water-poorest nation in the world, according to the ministry, which constantly urges households to install water-saving devices that can reduce water consumption by up to 30 per cent.

Where there's a will....

Washington's defense/foreign relations policies as seen from outer space

It's amazing what people can do when they set their minds to it. Take the insoluble problem of U.S. dependency on Pakistan for shipping NATO supplies to Afghanistan. Well, I don't know about "NATO" but by the end of this year about 75 percent of supplies for US troops will be shipped to Afghanistan by other routes, and I've seen one estimate that by December zero supplies will be trucked through Pakistan.

Now just see what can happen when the American public starts screaming and yelling, 'Whaddya mean we have to keep tolerating Pakistan's military plotting murder and mayhem against U.S. forces because we need to ship stuff through Pakistan?'

Another demonstration of how creativity blossoms when the will is there to get smart:

Changing the flow of downrange water
New purifiers eliminating need for bottle shipments
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Matt Millham, Martin Kuz
Stars and Stripes
Published: July 16, 2011

NAPLES, Italy — NATO spends about 50 million euro a year to ship approximately 200 million half-liter bottles of water to NATO bases in Afghanistan, often across long and dangerous supply routes.

Increasingly, those stationed at forward bases are purifying their own water — reducing cost, risk and the need to dispose of those millions of plastic bottles. Some even say the purified water tastes better.

ISAF spokesman Tim James, who provided the statistics on the cost of moving the water, said much of it is shipped from Pakistan via long and dangerous supply routes that have repeatedly faced insurgent attacks.

“There is a significant effort to increase the amount of water sourced from within Afghanistan,” James said in an email.

According to National Defense Magazine, the Marines are using 25 Lightweight Water Purification Systems. Each can fit in a Humvee and pump out 125 gallons of potable water per hour.

The service has 21 Tactical Water Purification Systems in place as well, according to the article, which can filter up to 1,500 gallons an hour.

Marine units are not mandated to use the systems, but are encouraged to do so, Col. Robert J. Charette Jr., head of the commandant’s expeditionary energy office, told National Defense.

“Every time you have to move large amounts of bottled water, we put our Marines at risk,” he said.

According to National Defense, a Marine Corps team tasked with figuring out the full cost of delivering essential supplies to Afghanistan found that hauling water takes up 51 percent of the logistical burden.
[...]

If you ask, 'It took these geniuses a decade to figure this out?' -- now, now; remember necessity is the mother of invention. As as long as the public wasn't screaming and yelling about the U.S. need to leave Afghanistan and the need to stop relying on what are clearly arch-enemies for assistance, and wasn't having fits about the defense budget, there wasn't much impetus for the creative juices to flow.

You should read the entire report if you really want to tear out your hair. In one part it mentions that the "U.S. Navy is testing the use of unmanned helicopters to deliver water and other supplies." Why they couldn't have done this years ago? Because the Afghan War was the Forgotten War. Remember?

I started this blog in November 2004 but it wasn't until late 2007 that I began focusing a great deal of attention on Afghanistan. This was so for many Americans. The Americans who warned between the years 2002 and 2007 that a very bad situation was building in Afghanistan were largely ignored. The mainstream media largely ignored Afghanistan during those years, and even though there were many reports published in the press about Afghanistan during those years the reports rarely made it to the front page or the nightly TV news shows.

If you ask, 'Then does this mean we have to do everything?' -- the military must have its secrets, but many of the problems that arose in Afghanistan weren't under the control of the military. They were consequences of NATO-country politics, Washington agendas, including trade agendas, lobbying agendas, and so on. Such activities could and should have been monitored more closely by the public.

From the longest view the course of the Afghan War has been a horrific lesson to Americans that we can never again afford to take our eyes off the ball. I'm not saying it's all our fault -- Americans are, after all, paying a government handsomely to do a job so the tax payers don't have to do everything. However, the U.S. federal government has become a vast maze of interests that are often in competition, leading in many cases to situations that are nothing short of chaotic.

For an example of the chaos, wait'll you read my post titled Yes we have no mangos, which I might publish tomorrow. I've been sitting on the essay for several days because I've been a little worried that Americans who read it will show up at Foggy Bottom with pails of tar and feathers.

Please don't get mad at the U.S. Department of State, just understand that it wants to be different things at the same time. It wants to be a big part of the war effort. It wants to oversee the diplomatic corps. It wants to help U.S. corporations do more business overseas. It wants to do development work in foreign countries -- be a sort of mini-World Bank. And it wants to influence U.S. foreign/defense policies in such a way that the policies last through more than one presidential election.

All laudable goals on their own, to be sure. But as you might imagine sometimes these goals conflict when pursued from within one agency and thus, the mango mess and many other messes.

The simple solution -- I didn't say easy, I said simple -- would be to divest State of some of its goals; e.g., allow the U.S. Department of Commerce to take over the full responsibility for being agent for U.S. business expansion outside the USA. Another solution would be to completely remove USAID from State oversight, which it gained over USAID during the Clinton administration.

The sticking point is that State doesn't want to be divested of anything because that would mean an even smaller budget and it's trying to hang onto the size of its present budget and even increase the amount.

But where there's a will there's a way. Higher salaries for foreign service officers and their bosses, for example -- as long as they promise to hew to the basic duties of a foreign office and stop trying to take on the role of about ten different agencies including the war office.

That kind of solution -- getting certain U.S. agencies to confine their goals -- won't make the maze go away. But it will chop it down to a more manageable size, meaning it will be a little easier for Congress, and the U.S. public, to oversee. That will reduce the chaos in Washington. It just takes the will to implement the solution. Not easy, but doable.