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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 19, 2024

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While the attention of Americans has been over the debt ceiling issues and other Biden administration failures, almost the entirety of the American media has not addressed the remarkable events pertaining to the Taliban Sunni Muslim terrorist regime against the Ayatollahs’ Shia terrorist regime.

Not only the animosity between the two thuggish entities is sectarian, but the cause, in this case, is over the sharing of the waters of the Helmand River.

For the last 6000 years of recorded history, cultures, and civilizations prospered in the lowlands fed by the waters of rivers that emanated from the highlands and mountains.

Hundreds of millions of human beings survived and were sustained by agriculture, and these waters were used not only for irrigation but also as a source of drinking water.

Starting in the 20th century, the countries that sat astride the sources of waters all over the globe held the power of life or death over the countries of the lowlands because they held the keys to the dams and tributaries.

Wars in the 21st century will most certainly be over the equitable sharing of these waters. Controlling the sources of water pose a serious existential threat to the peoples on the receiving end in the lowlands needed to irrigate their crops and sources of nourishment.

To understand the reasons for the current threats and counter threats of war between the two nations, I shall now share with you, a resume of the background.

The Helmand River is the longest river (1,150 Km) in Afghanistan and the primary watershed for the drainage Sistan Basin.

It rises in the Hindu Kush mountains, about 80 km (50 mi) west of Kabul, passing north of the Unai Pass, and flows west to Uruzgan. It crosses southwest through the desert of Dashti Margo, to the Seistan marshes and the Hamun-i-Helmand lake region in Afghanistan and around Zabol in Iran, near their borders.

Its waters are essential not only for farmers in Afghanistan, but since it feeds into Lake Hamun, it is also important to farmers in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan and Baluchistan provinces.

On January 19, Afghanistan opened the floodgates of the Kamal Khan Dam – which sits astride the Helmand River in Nimroz province. Videos of water gushing out of the dam went viral on social media soon after and triggered jubilant celebrations in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province.

Unfortunately for the Iranians, the gushing waters were being used only to feed the agricultural lands near the dam in Afghanistan.

In the last several years, Iran has suffered from serious drought and, worst of all, from extremely incompetent water management by the corrupt and clueless Ayatollah’s theocratic regime. These have caused the drying out of the wetlands and destroying the rich biodiversity it supports. Thousands of local fishermen have lost their livelihoods and have been migrating out of the region, mostly to the cities.

Hundreds of thousands of agricultural and farm people have had to give up their ancestral lands and migrate to the cities to earn a living, adding to their congestion and negatively impacting food and animal production for the nation as a whole.

Sistan-Baluchestan, a Sunni-dominated province in predominantly Shia Iran, is a restive region, and Tehran is worried that loss of livelihood and other related issues will fuel discontent and militancy.

In 1973, Iran and Afghanistan signed a water-sharing accord on the Helmand River, under which Afghanistan would provide Iran with 22 cubic meters per second of water, with an option to purchase an additional 4 cubic meters per second for “goodwill and brotherly relations.”

Unfortunately, internal political instability and conflicts in both countries during the following years prevented the treaty’s ratification and proper implementation.

A few days ago, the leader of the Taliban of Afghanistan, threatened the Ayatollahs of Iran, of overthrowing them within 24 hours, if they dared provoke them. So threatened the leader of one terrorist state, against that of the other.

Without goodwill on both sides, there will most definitely be conflict.

Image: AP

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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