THE PAMIR PARADOX: WATER INSECURITY AND HUNGER AT THE SOURCE OF CENTRAL ASIA'S RIVERS

The Pamir Mountains rise seven kilometers above sea level. On the summits which separate Tajikistan from China-Communism Peak (7495m) and the Peak of Revolution (6974m)-as well as the highest points in Afghanistan-Nowshak (7485m) and Tirgaran (6843m)-lie both the source and the solution to many of Central Asia's challenges: snow. After the ice caps are weighed down by winter powder, spring melting fills streams that feed the Vakhsh, Bartang, Kowcheh, and Vakhan tributaries, and eventually the Panj River. Millions of people in the Aral Basin depend on this water.

Hydrologist Marc-Andre Bunzli suggests that air pollution in South and Southeast Asia and global warming are contributing to a "drying of Asia."1 Indeed, in contrast to South Asia, where flooding has become more frequent, drought and high temperatures are increasingly common in the shadow of the Hindu Kush and Pamir ranges of Central Asia. This change in climate has the detrimental effects of reducing rainfall and snow drainage, and of increasing water.2 Much of the Vakhsh and Panj water that does make it into the Aral Basin is either held by the Rogun dam and other unfinished hydroelectric power projects, or diverted by large, inefficient irrigation systems for cotton production.3 On the Afghan side of the Panj, the Kunduz-Khanabad Irrigation System, a project sponsored by the World Bank and the government of India that was never completed, diverts large amounts of water for rice growing at Kunduz.4 Several years of drought induced the erosion of river banks and levees.5 When rains finally returned to the Panj Valley, flooding wiped out large portions of the new crop.6