a house divided, 1933–73maldar refused to sell their herds and their animals roamed freely across
unfenced fields, consuming their own and their neighbours’ crops. So bad
did the situation become that many nomads abandoned their farms or sold
them to speculators and reverted to their former way of life. There was a
better success rate with the resettlement of Turkman and Uzbek refugees
from Bukhara. Many of these refugees, particularly those from Ferghana,
were accomplished agriculturalists and well acquainted with irrigation
techniques. Even so only 15 per cent of the 10,500 acres irrigated by the
Bogra canal ended up in the hands of ordinary farmers. The government
took 2,000 acres for an ‘experimental farm’, mka set up its own model farm
and a further 6,000 acres ended up in the hands of Muhammadzais and
other absentee Durrani landlords, many of whom already owned large
estates in the Helmand and Arghandab.
The Dahla Dam was finally dedicated in late 1952 and the Kajaki Dam
was closed off in the following spring. Their construction was a remarkable
feat of engineering and mka staff did an exceptional job under the most
difficult of circumstances. However, the dams never operated as designed.
Before any water was released, written authorization was needed from
the Minister of Irrigation in Kabul, who in turn had to obtain the Prime
Minister’s signature. On numerous occasions when local officials and mka
engineers recommended water releases, Kabul denied them permission,
which led to overtopping and massive, man-made floods. In the thirteen
years from 1953 to 1966 the Kajaki Dam alone overtopped eleven times,
turning vast areas of fertile lands into shallow lakes, drowning crops and
animals, and flooding settlements. In one particularly bad year, the steel
lock gates at Girishk were completely washed away.
Central government’s reluctance to release the waters was due primarily
to the fact that the Helmand Valley Scheme had exacerbated the long-
standing dispute with Iran over riparian rights in the Helmand delta, the
result of the British demarcation of the Sistan frontier in the late nine-
teenth century. Since then Afghan and Iranian frontier guards had often
clashed and, despite Turkey’s attempt at mediation, the dispute had never
been resolved. Neither mka nor the Afghan government had bothered to
consult Iran before implementing the Helmand Valley scheme and Tehran
strongly objected to the project since it threatened the livelihoods of its own
agriculturalists. When in 1948 the crops on the Iranian side of the Sistan
frontier failed, Tehran blamed Afghanistan for diverting water into the
Bogra system. Tehran also protested at the construction of the Kajaki Dam.
In 1951, with the Helmand project bouncing from one crisis to
another and costs burgeoning, Mahmud Khan asked the u.s. government