Russian Factory Is Using Underage Workers To Assemble Iranian ‘Suicide’ Drones Destined For Ukraine – Analysis

 August 13, 2023 

By RFE RL

(RFE/RL) — A polytechnic school in Russia’s Tatarstan, a region some 900 kilometers east of Moscow, is using manufacturing facilities that are part of a nearby special economic zone to assemble Iranian attack drones and are increasingly turning to underage students as laborers, many of whom often work in exploitative conditions.

The revelations at Alabuga Polytechnic University raise troubling implications about the lengths that Russian authorities are going to in order to boost the war effort and how the advanced Iranian weaponry — which is increasingly used to bombard Ukrainian cities and has only recently begun to be manufactured inside Russia — could contribute to escalating tensions and rising civilian casualties.

The use of underage students as drone factory workers and the details of the manufacturing facilities were first reported by Russian independent media outlets Protokol and Razvorot, which published a series of investigations in July.

Since then, RFE/RL’s Idel.Realities has spoken with students who describe grueling working conditions and interviewed dozens of parents whose children have been enrolled at Alabuga Polytechnic University — some as young at 15 — who say that their children were forced to work exceedingly long hours, often without proper breaks or meals, and under hostile conditions that have deeply affected their mental health.

“My son enrolled and 2 1/2 months later he called for me to take him away,” Zhanna, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect against reprisals for speaking about the operation, told RFE/RL. “He said to me on the phone, ‘Come and get me or I’ll die,’ so I picked him up immediately.”

Zhanna, who asked that her underage son’s name also not be used, says that she sent him from Nizhniy Novgorod to study at Alabuga Polytechnic University in 2022 because of its reputation as a leading technical institution inside Russia.

The school offered students — often between the ages of 15-18 — an opportunity to get vocational training as part of a dual program that combines a classroom education with practical work experience. Students were also promised an opportunity to work and earn a locally competitive salary of up to 70,000 rubles ($700) a month as part of the work experience program that could further their career growth.

But, instead, those enrolled were encouraged and in some cases pressured into working at the drone facility, where the salaries of the mostly underage laborers are contingent on meeting tough production quotas.

“This is a textbook definition of what constitutes exploitation,” Sergei Podsytnik, an investigative journalist at Protokol who worked on the series of reports, told RFE/RL. “[Students] assemble drones, with the work taking priority over their studies.”

The pressure to fulfill these quotas has allegedly led to strenuous back-to-back days — with some shifts lasting up to 15 hours — with little time for sleep or adequate sustenance. Overtime work is often unpaid, further highlighting potential labor violations. Exhausted students also reported not always meeting their quotas, which led to them not earning the salary initially promised by the school. Many students came from disadvantaged backgrounds and relied on their earnings to cover costs for tuition, room, and board and would send the remainder home.

Other parents, such as Marina, said she decided to take her daughter out of the program when she discovered that she was working in apparent unsafe conditions and that staff from the school had instructed students not to tell their parents about the drone assembly work.

“This was the last straw for me,” Marina, who also asked for her identity to be concealed, told RFE/RL. “This is a dangerous production process that involves dangerous chemicals. They also forbid the kids from telling everything to their parents.”

RFE/RL sent multiple requests for comment to various staff and administrators at Alabuga Polytechnic University but received no replies.

‘Making Iranian Drones In Russia

The complicated and concerning dynamic at Alabuga Polytechnic University stems from growing military cooperation between Iran and Russia that has accelerated since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Iran has said it provided drones to Russia before the start of the war, but not since. However, U.S. intelligence officials have warned for months of continued deliveries and deepening cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, saying the two sides were exploring how to set up a manufacturing plant for Iranian drones inside Russia.

According to The Wall Street Journal, an Iranian delegation visited Yelabuga in Tatarstan on January 5, touring a potential site for such a factory at the Alabuga special economic zone close to Alabuga Polytechnic University. U.S. officials released satellite images in April of the plant being built.

Russia already possesses an array of unarmed aerial vehicles, or UAVs, which are used mainly for surveillance and artillery spotting, but has turned increasingly to Tehran for attack drones.

After being forced to abandon Ukrainian territory that its troops captured in the early stretches of the war, Moscow shifted to a strategy of relentless air assaults on Ukrainian cities. These attacks often rely on a combination of cruise missiles and self-detonating drones packed with explosives to knock out electricity and running water for the civilian population in Ukraine.

So far, Iran has provided Russia mostly with so-called “suicide” drones, known as the Shahed-136, that contain a modest amount of explosives that can detonate when the drones crash into targets, military experts say.

In acquiring its own domestic assembly line, Russia could dramatically increase its stockpile of the relatively inexpensive but highly destructive weapons systems.

The arrangement also offers substantial economic and political benefits for Iran, which has sought to portray itself as neutral in the Ukraine war. The appearance of Iranian-made drones over Ukrainian cities, however, has triggered threats of new economic sanctions from the West. The United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom have also all issued rules in recent months designed to cut off the flow of drone components to Russia and Iran.

The Washington Post reported in November 2022, citing unnamed U.S. intelligence officials, that the agreement to deliver Iranian drone schematics and materials for manufacture in Russia resulted from Iranian leaders believing that the arrangement would allow Tehran to avert new sanctions.

‘Foreign Recruitment And Patriotic Education

Alabuga Polytechnic University is formally not a college. All of its students are officially enrolled at nearby Yelabuga Polytechnic College, with the Alabuga institution existing on paper as a specialized program for students looking to break into high-tech industries.

Currently, about 1,000 students are studying at Alabuga Polytechnic University, with several hundred of them — most of whom are between the ages of 15 and 17 — involved in assembling the Iranian drones.

In addition to the work on the drones, there are other signs that point to blurred lines in Russia between the education system and the country’s military amid the war in Ukraine.

According to current and former Alabuga Polytechnic University students, team-building and organized extracurricular activities through the school often take on a “patriotic” character that may be designed to expose students to official government narratives of international events or echo talking points from state television.

Organized paintball games have become a mainstay for students, especially first-year arrivals, in which they are encouraged to compete against one another and then play together against more experienced outside players. Teachers and administration officials regularly refer to paintball as being part of a “patriotic” education needed to complement the technical aspect of their studies.

In one instance, a group of new students competed in paintball as Soviet soldiers against outside players who were dressed as troops from Nazi Germany in a capture-the-flag competition meant to simulate the World War II battle of Stalingrad. According to one student, the Nazi flag contained the compass symbol used by the NATO military alliance instead of the swastika used by Nazi Germany.

Other instances of political teachings from staff are more direct. In a recording obtained by RFE/RL from June 16, a senior administrator can be heard telling the teenagers that NATO launched a hybrid war against Russia back in 2011 and that it has slowly become more overt. The man then goes on to tell students that their hard work and exceeding long days at the drone factory are part of a nationwide struggle against the West and that their patriotism will be rewarded.

Several students and parents identified the man in the recording as Timur Shagivaleev, the director-general of the special economic zone where Alabuga Polytechnic University and the drone factory operate.

Shagivaleev did not respond to RFE/RL’s request for comment.

The man in the recording then goes on to tell students not to take holidays and to continue working “even if it’s mom’s birthday,” before ending his speech with, “Long live our great country.”

Multiple current and former students told RFE/RL that students who work in the drone factory are often praised by staff, while those who have refused or asked to be reassigned due to the high workload are often publicly shamed. In some instances — according to recordings heard by RFE/RL — staff even encourage students to bully others who are not deemed “patriotic” enough.

According to Protokol and Razvorot’s investigations, Alabuga Polytechnic University has also turned toward recruiting foreign students to enroll. The majority of them come from African countries, but also from Central Asia and Azerbaijan, where they are promised “world class” salaries as part of the dual-track world experience program.

However, these foreign students are then given low-skill and menial tasks around the campus and the special economic zone, such as janitorial work, and are also paid lower salaries than initially promised.

Written by Reid Standish based on reporting by RFE/RL’s Idel.RealitiesIdel.Realities is a regional news outlet of RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service.





RFE RL

RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.

Op-Ed: America’s chronic mental constipation is based on one thing


By Paul Wallis

DIGITAL JOURNAL
Published August 12, 2023

Former US president Donald Trump has denied all wrongdoing

. — © GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Anna Moneymaker

The world has had 7 years of its time totally wasted on Trump. Pick a headline, any headline. A go-nowhere rich brat with a string of bankruptcies and at best iffy deals isn’t my idea of a worthwhile topic. I ran out of scatology on the subject of Trump years ago.

…Yet he’s still the subject of some of the most futile and destructive navel-gazing in American history. Not much else gets attention. Never mind the poverty, crime, and the destruction of American society. Let’s talk about Trump to the exclusion of all possible meaningful subjects.

There’s a reason for this. Americans have been romanticizing America for many years in so many ways. It’s a real thing. They mean it. They love the place. The problem is that any amount of bogus kitsch can be attached to hyper-idealized America, too. Hence Trump.

Protestors outside Fox News. – © AFP/File PHILIPPE HUGUEN

In this environment, all enterprising skanks have to do is call themselves patriots. Exploiting American patriotism isn’t exactly unknown. Wave a flag on social media and someone will get on board. People who’ve never said a word on any subject are suddenly fanatics.

There’s no need for deep analysis. Do you really think all this drivel is based on any sort of ideology? Billions of dollars wearing patriotic geriatric diapers have also just coincidentally come prancing through the political system.

This miraculous messianic moronic monetary mess isn’t getting a mention. It’s too profitable. FOX “News” was literally living on it. You’ll never see that subject becoming a topic for coverage.

Tucker Carlson was ousted from Fox News just days after the Rupert Murdoch-owned company paid a whopping $787.5 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion, an election technology firm – Copyright AFP/File Frederic J. Brown

Clearly, it’s all about people getting left out of the American Utopia, not sudden access to gigantic amounts of money. How could there be any systemic corruption involved? How could the total obliteration of American society be relevant to American politics, of all things?

The bottom line here is that the world’s most prosperous and advanced society is wiping itself out on a daily basis. Life expectancy is down. Health is a catastrophic mess nationwide. Education is a joke. “Buy a degree” can’t work. Housing? When?

America is off track. Immigration and homelessness crisis in large metropolises like Los Angeles is the best example. — Image: © AFP

The world’s dumbest and most sycophant-addicted billionaires are helping this process by funding the insanity. That’s not a subject for consideration, either.

America is unrecognizable. The prom kings and queens of the past now look like long-term crackheads and meth nuts and behave accordingly. America is aging badly on this coke binge of a political cash grab.

This is where constipation comes in. Sage commentary infests what’s called media like a bad smell. Nobody talks about the gigantic dunghill in the living room causing the smell. Commentary is now dependent on disasters. Objectivity? What’s that?

It’s a matter of opinion whether Trump actually gets the fact he’s facing serious criminal charges. He’s not acting as if he does get it. He’s now bitching about the “left” causing his legal fees. It’s also a matter of opinion whether America gets the fact it’s facing total dysfunction.

To save America, try self-respect. It costs a lot less.

 

Robert Reich: Donald Trump And Ayn Rand – OpEd

 August 13, 2023  

By Robert Reich

Thanks for joining me as we explore the common good — what it is, where it went, how it can be revived and strengthened.

The idea of “the common good” was once widely understood and accepted in America. After all, the U.S. Constitution was designed for “We the people” seeking to “promote the general welfare” — not for “me the selfish jerk seeking as much wealth and power as possible.” 

What happened? One clue is found in the writings of writer-philosopher Ayn Rand, who argued that the common good was bunk. 

Donald Trump has called Rand his favorite writer and said he identifies with Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead — an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints. (I doubt Trump has ever read Rand, but for the sake of this essay, let’s assume he has.)

Rex Tillerson, secretary of state under Trump, called Rand’s Atlas Shruggedhis favorite book. Former Trump CIA chief Mike Pompeo cited Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination to be Trump’s secretary of labor, Andrew Puzder said he devoted much of his free time to reading Rand. Paul Ryan, former Republican leader of the House of Representatives, required his staff to read Rand.

Rand fans are also found at some of the high reaches of American business. Uber’s founder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, has described himself as a Rand follower. He applied many of her ideas to Uber’s code of values. Kalanick even used The Fountainhead’s original cover art as his Twitter avatar.

Ronald Reagan professed to being a follower of Rand. His policies — and those of his contemporary conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain — appeared to draw inspiration from her thoughts and writing. 

In order to understand what happened to the common good, we need to examine Ayn Rand and her arguments against it. 

Rand was a Russian émigré to the United States whose father’s business had been confiscated during the Russian Revolution. Her most influential writing occurred in the 1940s and 1950s, in the shadow of European fascism and Soviet communism. 

She was best known for two highly popular novels that are still widely read today — The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) — and for other writings and interviews in which she expounded her views about what she called the “virtue of selfishness.”

“The common good is an undefined and undefinable concept,” she wrote, a “moral blank check for those who attempt to embody it.” 

When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual desires of its members, “it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Rand saw government actions that require people to give their money and resources to other people under the pretext of a “common good” as steps toward tyranny. It was far better, in Rand’s view, to base society on autonomous, self-seeking, and self-absorbed individuals. To her, the only community that any of us has in common are family and friends, maintained voluntarily. 

If we want to be generous, she thought, that’s fine, but no one should have the power to coerce us into generosity. And nothing beyond our circle of voluntary associations merits our trust. 

No institutions or organizations should be able to demand commitments from us. All that can be expected or justified from anyone is selfish behavior, she thought. That behavior is expressed most clearly through the acts of selling what we have to sell and buying what we want to buy in a free market. For her, the common good does not exist.

Rand’s philosophy was updated and formalized in 1974 by Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick in his bestselling book Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Nozick argued that individual rights are the only justifiable foundation for a society. Instead of a common good, he wrote, “there are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives.” 

When Rand and Nozick propounded these ideas, they seemed quaint if not far-fetched. Anyone who lived through the prior half-century had witnessed our interdependence during the Great Depression and World War II. 

After the war, we had pooled our resources to finance all sorts of public goods — schools and universities, a national highway system, and health care for the aged and poor (Medicare and Medicaid). We rebuilt war-torn Europe. We sought to guarantee the civil rights and voting rights of African Americans. We opened doors of opportunity to women. 

Of course there was a common good. We were living it.

But starting in the late 1970s, Rand became the intellectual godmother of modern-day American conservatism, especially its libertarian strand. 

I BELIEVE RAND, NOZICK, AND THEIR MORE MODERN INCARNATIONS are dangerously wrong. Not only does the common good exist, but it is essential for a society to function. 

Without voluntary adherence to a set of common notions about right and wrong, daily life would be insufferable. We would be living in a jungle where only the strongest, cleverest, and most wary could hope to survive. This would not be a society. It wouldn’t even be a civilization, because there would be no civility at its core.

Americans sharply disagree about exactly what we want for America or for the world. But we must agree on basic principles — such as how we deal with our disagreements, the importance of our democratic institutions, our obligations toward the law, and our respect for the truth — if we’re to participate in the same society. 

It’s our agreement to these principles that connects us. 

To take the most basic example, we depend on people’s widespread and voluntary willingness to abide by laws — not just the literal letter of laws but also the spirit and intent behind them. 

Consider what would happen if no one voluntarily obeyed the law without first calculating what they could gain by violating it, as compared with the odds of the violation’s being discovered multiplied by the size of the likely penalty. 

We’d be living in bedlam. 

If everyone behaved like Donald Trump, much of our time and attention would have to be devoted to outwitting or protecting ourselves from other Trumps. We would have to assume everyone else was out to exploit us, if they could. 

Every interaction would need to be carefully hedged. Penalties would need to rise and police enforcement to increase, in order to prevent the Trumps among us from calculating they might have more to gain by violating the law and risking the penalty than by abiding by it. And because laws can’t possibly predict and prevent every potential wrong, laws would have to become ever more detailed and exacting in order to prevent the Trumps from circumventing them.

Even then we’d be in trouble. We couldn’t rely on legislators to block or close legal loopholes, because Trump lobbyists would bribe legislators to keep them open, and Trump legislators would be open to taking such bribes. Even if we managed to close the loopholes, we couldn’t rely on police to enforce the laws, because Trumps would bribe the police not to, and Trump police would also accept the bribes. 

Without a shared sense of responsibility to the common good, we would have to assume that everybody — including legislators, judges, regulators, and police — was acting selfishly, making and enforcing laws for their own benefit. 

The followers of Ayn Rand who glorify the “free market” and denigrate “government” are fooling themselves if they think the “free market” gets them off this Trump hook. 

The market is itself a human creation — a set of laws and rules that define what can be owned and traded and how. Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market. Government officials — legislators, administrators, regulators, judges, and heads of state — must decide on and enforce such laws and rules in order for a market to exist. Without norms for the common good, officials have no way to make these decisions other than their own selfish interests.

HOPEFULLY, government officials base these sorts of decisions on their notions about the common good. But if Trumps were making and enforcing such rules, the rules would be based on whatever it took for these Trump officials to gain personal wealth and power. The “free market” would be a sham, and most people would lose out in it. (As we will see in the pages to come, something close to this has in fact occurred.)

Truth itself is a common good. Through history, one of the first things tyrants do is attack independent truth-tellers — philosophers (Plato), scientists (Galileo), and the free and independent press — thereby confusing the public and substituting their own “facts.” 

Without a shared truth, democratic deliberation is hobbled. As poet and philosopher Václav Havel put it, “If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living in truth.”

Yet in a world populated by people like Trump, we could not trust anyone to be truthful if they could do better for themselves by lying. We couldn’t count on any claim by sellers of any product or service. Internet-based “reputational ratings” would be of little value, because Trump raters would be easily bribed. 

Journalists would shade their reports for their own selfish advantage, taking bribes from advertisers or currying favor with politicians. Teachers would offer lessons to satisfy wealthy or powerful patrons. Historians would alter history if by doing so they gained wealth or power. Scientists would doctor evidence for similar selfish motives. The truth would degenerate into a cacophony of competing factual claims.

We couldn’t trust doctors or pharmacists to give us the right medications. We couldn’t trust bankers and accountants not to fleece us, restaurants not to poison us, lawyers not to hoodwink us. Professional ethics would be meaningless. 

The common good is especially imperiled when a president of the United States alleges that an election was stolen from him, with no evidence that it was. Such baseless claims erode trust. They fuel conspiracy theories. They can lead to violence.

MOST BASICALLY, THE COMMON GOOD DEPENDS ON PEOPLE TRUSTING that most others in society will also adhere to the common good, rather than lie or otherwise take advantage of them. In this way, civic trust is self-enforcing and self-perpetuating. 

Polls tell us that a majority of today’s Americans worry that the nation is losing its national identity. The core of that identity has never been “we’re better than anyone else” nationalism. Nor has it been the whiteness of our skin or the uniformity of our ethnicity. 

Our core identity — the most precious legacy we have been given by the generations who came before us — is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common. If we are losing our national identity, it is not because we are becoming blacker or browner or speak in more languages than we once did. It is because we are losing our sense of common good.

THE GENIUS OF A SYSTEM BASED ON POLITICAL EQUALITY is that it doesn’t require us to agree on every issue, but only to agree to be bound by decisions that emerge from the system. 

Some of us may want to prohibit abortions because we believe life begins at conception; others of us believe women should have the right to determine what happens to their bodies; some of us want stricter environmental protections; others, more lenient. We are free to take any particular position on these and any other issues. But as political equals, we are bound to accept the outcomes even if we dislike them. This requires enough social trust for us to regard the views and interests of those with whom we disagree as equally worthy of consideration to our own. 

Ayn Rand had it completely wrong. Moral choices logically involve duties to others, not just calculations about what’s best for ourselves. 

When members of a society ask, “What is the right or decent thing to do?” they necessarily draw upon understandings of these mutual obligations. Our contemporary culture of self-promotion, iPhones, selfies, and personal branding churns out cynics and narcissists, to be sure. But our loyalties and attachments define who we are.

***

Thanks for joining me on this journey.

These weekly essays are based on chapters from my book THE COMMON GOOD, in which I apply the framework of the book to recent events and to the upcoming election. (Should you wish to read the book, here’s a link). This article was published at Robert Reich’s Substack.


Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

Ayn Rand in 1943. Photo Credit: Wikipedia Commons

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for AYN RAND 

Water Conflicts Loom In Central Asia – Analysis

 

View of Qosh Tepa, an irrigation canal, which will direct the water from the Amu Darya river to Afghanistan's arid northern region. Photo Credit: © Afghanistan's Deputy Minister of Economic Development

 August 13, 2023 

By IWPR

By Marat Mamadshoev

An irrigation canal under construction in Afghanistan aims to transform its agricultural landscape, providing water to the millions of its citizens hit by regular droughts. Once completed, the Qosh Tepa conduit will stretch for 285 kilometres and help irrigate the country’s arid northern provinces.

Neighbouring Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, however, are extremely concerned about the impact on their own water supplies. The canal will direct resources from the Amu Darya river and reduce the supply for the two countries, which have been siphoning water from the source since the Soviet era. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan may lose up to 15 per cent of the current supply once the waterway is completed in 2028. 

During a visit to Kabul in April, an Uzbek government delegation expressed concern about the plan to divert water to Afghanistan’s northern regions. Taleban officials responded that Kabul had as much right to access the water as its neighbours and that the three countries did not have formal agreements on its use.

The project, with a cost tag estimated at 684 million dollars, had been in the works for several years before the Taleban seized power, with the groundwork and feasibility studies initiated under Afghanistan’s former government with support from the USAID development agency . 

“It is a development project for Afghanistan that should have been implemented years ago. It is understandable that the Central Asian countries will be affected by this, but Afghanistan has the right to use the water of the Amu Darya River for its development,” Najibullah Sadid, a water and environmental expert at Germany’s University of Stuttgart, told IWPR, adding that successive wars had put the project on hold. 

While affirming that states had the right to use transnational rivers, Nekruz Kadyrov, a professor of international law at the National University of Tajikistan, noted that this applied to those both up and down river. 

“The issue of transnational river water distribution is regulated based on interstate agreements,” he told IWPR. “For example, Tajikistan cannot violate Uzbekistan’s rights in this matter. Moreover, Afghanistan cannot ignore the rights of countries downstream. If Afghanistan or Tajikistan only considers their own interests, what will happen to the interests of Uzbeks and Kazaks?”

When they took power in August 2021, the Taleban continued the work started by the previous government; at that time, seven kilometres of the canal had been built. The construction surged ahead under their government and satellite images reveal that approximately 100 kilometres of the canal were built between March 2022 and May 2023. 

AFGHANISTAN’S THIRST 

Water resources are critical for Afghanistan as the country is grappling with an unparalleled humanitarian crisis: according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), nearly 17 million people, or 40 per cent of population, face severe food insecurity. With 80 per cent of the populace reliant on agriculture for sustenance, the impact of climate change profoundly influences crop growth periods and yields, exacerbating the peril of food shortages.

Amidst Afghanistan’s desert terrain, an abundant reserve of water resources lies untapped. Over 80 per cent of the country’s water originates in the Hindu Kush mountains, which offer a continuous flow to major rivers throughout the year as the snow melts during summer.

Yet poor supply infrastructure poses colossal challenges in guaranteeing uninterrupted access to water. Afghanistan’s history of conflict and occupation has hindered the development of extensive hydraulic structures and canals.

Some worry that the canal could inadvertently bolster the opium trade. Afghanistan is the world’s largest poppy producer. Despite the Taleban’s proclamation of a poppy cultivation ban, surging opium prices have fueled a thriving illegal trade. 

The quality of the construction is a key concern. Satellite imagery suggests that building methods are rudimentary, with no real reinforcement or lining for the canal’s bottom and banks.

That poses the risk of significant water losses due to seepage into the dry, sandy soil, which would exacerbate already pressing issues of salinisation and waterlogging in irrigated lands. Indeed, according to Sadid, recent developments indicate erosion in parts of the canal’s diversion dam.

THE POLITICS OF WATER

The Amu Darya river provides 80 per cent of all accessible water resources in the region. Some assessments suggest that in the span of five or six years, upon the canal’s completion and operation, the average amount of water flowing along the river into Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan will fall to 50 per cent of its overall capacity. Others, like Sadid, set the estimate at about 15 per cent.

In Uzbekistan, this would mean a dearth of vital water resources to irrigate its cotton plantations, the primary agricultural crop accounting for approximately 17 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). Overall, agriculture is central to the livelihoods of nearly 40 per cent of the population. 

According to the Uzbekistan Statistical Committee, the nation’s annual water consumption stands at an average of 51 billion cubic metres, with agriculture alone accounting for about 90 per cent, mostly for watering cotton fields. The cultivation of cotton has already contributed to the region’s largest environmental calamity, the desiccation of the Aral Sea.

The problem is equally acute in Turkmenistan, where the Amu Darya feeds into the Karakum Canal, enabling irrigation and navigation along its 1,300km length and sustaining approximately 1.25 million hectares of irrigated land. Agriculture consumes 91 per cent of all the country’s water resources.

Fluctuations in the river level are already causing problems. In June 2023, for instance, farmers in Turkmenistan’s northeastern region of Lebap Velayat struggled to irrigate their cotton fields because of insufficient water reaching the area. This presents a problem for the government, which promises farmers irrigation water, fertilisers, seeds, and agricultural machinery in return for providing specific crop quantities at predetermined prices. 

With climate change exacerbating water scarcity, any reductions in supply could damage both countries’ agriculture and food security.

THE NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS

The absence of robust legal mechanisms governing water processes in the region, which affects water intake and river management, complicates the situation. 

Afghanistan is not party to the 1992 Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Waters (1992), which serves as a cornerstone of transboundary river and lake management. Nor is it part of the 1992 Almaty Agreement, which governs river use, while an earlier 1946 agreement with the USSR is no longer valid.

There is certainly room for negotiation, as Afghanistan depends on its neighbours for other vital resources. For example, Uzbekistan provides Afghanistan with electricity, while Turkmenistan supplies it with gas. 

But climate change is likely to add pressure and governments need to look beyond international agreements and adopt sustainable farming techniques, such as crop diversification, and sustainable irrigation methods, such as drip irrigation systems and the reuse of collector and drainage water. 

Sadid noted that, due to the rapid melting of the glaciers in the Pamirs, the water in the Amu Darya River will increase until 2050. However, this means it will then start shrinking, exacerbating disputes over water. 

Upgrading the irrigation systems in the wider region is key. 

“For example, Uzbekistan and other countries in the region should work on improving irrigation technology and enhancing it,” Sadid continued. “If we do not upgrade the irrigation system, undoubtedly, there will be more conflicts and disputes over water in the region.”

About the author: Marat Mamadshoev is IWPR Tajikistan’s Chief Editor

Source: This publication was published by IWPR and prepared under the “Amplify, Verify, Engage (AVE) Project”implemented with the financial support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Norway.



IWPR

The Institute for War & Peace Reporting is headquartered in London with coordinating offices in Washington, DC and The Hague, IWPR works in over 30 countries worldwide. It is registered as a charity in the UK, as an organisation with tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) in the United States, and as a charitable foundation in The Netherlands. The articles are originally produced by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.