Afghanistan’s Taliban government is leveraging its control of upstream rivers to exert political influence over Pakistan and Iran, according to Fatemeh Aman of The National Interest. By announcing dam projects on the Kunar and Helmand rivers, the Taliban signals power without necessarily completing construction, exploiting a lack of treaties, reliable data, and enforcement mechanisms. In the east, Kunar River dams could impact Pakistan’s irrigation and hydropower, while in the west, Helmand River management affects Iran’s Hamun wetlands. Inefficient agriculture and decades of underdeveloped water infrastructure amplify regional vulnerability. Upstream control gives the Taliban strategic leverage, turning Afghanistan’s rivers into instruments of political and environmental influence over its neighbors. Aman writes:
The Taliban is flexing its hydrological muscles to build leverage against its neighbors.
Afghanistan is often described as landlocked, but in hydrological terms, it is upstream of two major states. Its rivers descend toward Pakistan in the east and Iran in the west, feeding the Kunar-Kabul-Indus and Helmand-Hamun basins. Geography has made Afghanistan a gatekeeper of water—a form of leverage that the Taliban now understands more clearly than any previous government. While the regime lacks international recognition or a viable economy, it controls the headwaters that two stronger neighbors cannot replace.
In 2025, Taliban officials announced plans to construct new dams along the Kunar River, which originates in Pakistan’s Hindu Kush as the Chitral River, crosses into Afghanistan, and then returns to Pakistan to join the Indus. In late October, The Economic Times reported that the Taliban intends to build these structures “as soon as possible,” using Afghan firms and national funds. The project’s technical prospects are uncertain, Afghanistan’s finances are constrained, and few foreign contractors will work under Taliban supervision, but the political signal matters more than the engineering. […]
For Pakistan, the challenge is structural. Much of its irrigated agriculture in the northwest depends on inflow from Afghanistan’s tributaries. Reduced discharge from the Kunar or Kabul rivers would lower productivity in Peshawar and Charsadda, where hydropower projects at Warsak and Mohmand already operate below capacity due to sedimentation and seasonal variability. At the political level, water shortages risk inflaming tensions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province that remains the heartland of opposition parties and militancy. In this sense, Afghanistan’s water management has domestic political consequences for Pakistan that extend far beyond the Indus basin.
To the west, a different but equally complex confrontation is unfolding. The Helmand River, Afghanistan’s largest, rises in the central highlands and ends in Iran’s Hamun wetlands in Sistan-Baluchistan province. The 1973 Helmand Water Treaty guarantees Iran 22 cubic meters per second of flow in “normal years” and allows it to purchase an additional 4 m³/sec when water is abundant. The agreement lacks an enforcement mechanism and relies on joint monitoring and data-sharing systems that have not functioned for decades.
Iran accuses Afghanistan of withholding Helmand River water through control of the Kajaki and Kamal Khan dams. Afghan officials respond that Iran already receives its due share in normal years and that shortages in Sistan result from domestic mismanagement, over-pumping, inefficient irrigation, and water-intensive crops. […]
Afghanistan’s geography remains its most reliable form of leverage. For a government lacking recognition and resources, the control of rivers serves as a substitute for conventional power. Each announcement of a dam, each argument over flow, reasserts the Taliban’s relevance. The rivers that flow from its mountains sustain two neighbors but answer to neither. This is Afghanistan’s enduring advantage.
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