Pajhwok said Iran complained about the Kamal Khan Dam to be built across the Helmand River. The agency said Iranian officials had complained to the Afghan consulate in Mashhad last month saying Iranian experts concluded Afghanistan was not following the protocol that gives Iran the right to some of the water from the Helmand River.
That was a strange routing. Consulates do not normally deal in such matters. The complaint should have been taken to the Afghan embassy in Tehran or by the Iranian embassy in Kabul to the Foreign Ministry.
At any rate, Pajhwok said both Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry and Power Ministry rejected the Iranian complaint and replied that Afghanistan had a right to build the dam as planned.
The Helmand flows into Iran’s Sistan va Baluchestan province, one of the driest provinces in the country.
Dams have been a source of much argument in the Middle East. Iraq has complained about Iran (and Turkey and Syria) damning up rivers that flow into Iraq and harming Iraqi agriculture. Iran has ignored those complaints.
Pajhwok said the Iranian letter complaining about the dam said Afghanistan was required to provide Iran with 820 million cubic meters of water every year, but had failed to do so.
