Afghanistan’s Qoshtepa Canal and Water Security in Central Asia

The Center for the National Interest is pleased to present its latest report, Afghanistan’s Qoshtepa Canal and Water Security in Central Asia. Authored by Senior Fellow Andrew Kuchins and his colleagues, this report provides a comprehensive assessment of the Taliban’s ambitious canal project and its implications for regional stability, environmental sustainability, and U.S. foreign policy. As part of our Central Asia Connectivity Project, this publication offers critical insights and actionable recommendations for addressing the challenges and opportunities posed by this development project. We invite you to explore the full report at the link below.

Notwithstanding America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan following a long, costly, and largely unsuccessful intervention there, the United States continues to have national interests at stake in the country. Those interests require continued attention, argue Center for the National Interest Senior Fellow Andrew Kuchins and his coauthors, and possibly even limited forms of engagement with Afghanistan’s Taliban, who rule in Kabul following America’s abandonment of its two-decade effort to remake Afghan politics, economics, and society. Intense geopolitical competition across Central Asia raises the potential costs should the United States wholly turn from Afghanistan and its neighborhood.

In this context, Afghanistan’s massive Qoshtepa Canal project poses both challenges and opportunities.To stimulate agricultural production and economic development in northern Afghanistan—and to leave their literal mark on it, with an irrigation system visible from space—the Taliban authorities are pursuing a decades-dormant dream in excavating the extensive canal network. Yet they are doing so in a manner that might both fuel conflict with states downstream along the strained Amu Darya River and contribute to further environmental degradation across a region already scarred by the Soviet Union’s highly destructive irrigation mega-projects.

Kuchins et al. thus assert that U.S. effort to facilitate technical assistance to the Qoshtepa Canal project, and to encourage regional diplomacy, could provide an opportunity for the incoming Trump administration to strengthen America’s influence in Central Asia, to reduce the risks of destabilizing conflict, and to mitigate the impacts of a poorly constructed canal, including excessive water loss and soil salinization. Their report provides a valuable and timely assessment of the Qoshtepa Canal project and presents significant recommendations for U.S. policy.