The Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA) based in Lashkar Gah,

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is borde ...

, originally named the Helmand Valley Authority (HVA) until its expansion in 1965,(pdf) The Helmand Valley Project in Afghanistan: A.I.D. Evaluation Special Study No. 18
C Clapp-Wicek & E Baldwin, U.S. Agency for International Development, published December 1983 was established on December 4, 1952, as an agency of the Afghan Government.Report on Development of Helmand Valley, Afghanistan, 1956
Tudor Engineering Company The agency was modelled on the

Tennessee Valley Authority The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...

in the United States, with a remit covering lands in

Farah Province Farah (Dari: , ''Farā'') is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southwestern part of the country next to Iran. It is a spacious and sparsely populated province, divided into eleven districts and contains hundreds of villages. ...

Ghazni Province Ghazni ( Dari: ) is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, located in southeastern Afghanistan. The province contains 19 districts, encompassing over a thousand villages and roughly 1.3 million people, making it the 5th most populous province. Th ...

Helmand Province Helmand (Pashto/Dari: ; ), also known as Hillmand, in ancient times, as Hermand and Hethumand, is one of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan, in the south of the country. It is the largest province by area, covering area. The province contains 13 ...

Herat Province Herat ( Persian: ) is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the north-western part of the country. Together with Badghis, Farah, and Ghor provinces, it makes up the north-western region of Afghanistan. Its primary city a ...

, and

Kandahar Province Kandahār ( ps, ; Kandahār, prs, ; ''Qandahār'') is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan, located in the southern part of the country, sharing a border with Pakistan, to the south. It is surrounded by Helmand in the west, Uruzga ...

. The HAVA is overseen by the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (previously the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation).

History

The HAVA was created to manage the

economic development In the economics study of the public sector, economic and social development is the process by which the economic well-being and quality of life of a nation, region, local community, or an individual are improved according to targeted goals and ...

of the Helmand and Arghandab valleys, primarily through

irrigation Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow crops, landscape plants, and lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,000 years and has been devel ...

and agricultural land development along the

Helmand River The Helmand River (also spelled Helmend, or Helmund, Hirmand; Pashto/ Persian: ; Greek: ' (''Etýmandros''); Latin: ') is the longest river in Afghanistan and the primary watershed for the endorheic Sistan Basin. It emerges in the Sanglak ...

and the

Arghandab River Arghandab is a river in Afghanistan, about in length. It rises in Ghazni Province, west of the city of Ghazni, and flows southwest passing near the city of Kandahar, and then joins the Helmand River below Grishk. In its lower course, it is mu ...

, in a plan which was forecast to be of primary importance to the future economy of Afghanistan. Before the outbreak of conflict in the late 1970s the area irrigated by the HAVA produced a large proportion of Afghanistan's

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit ( caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legum ...

and

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

and was a major source of foreign exchange through

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is a ...

s.Geology, Water, and Wind in the Lower Helmand Basin, Southern Afghanistan
Scientific Investigations Report 2006–5182; John W. Whitney; U.S. Department of the Interior & U.S. Geological Survey; published 2006 The area of agricultural land under irrigation more than halved between 1979 and 2002 to around , although this has since been increased.Making the Most of Afghanistan’s River Basins: Opportunities for Regional Cooperation
Matthew King & Benjamin Sturtewagen, EastWest Institute, published 2010, accessed 2012-05-11 The project received major loans from the

Export–Import Bank of the United States The Export–Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) is the official export credit agency (ECA) of the United States federal government. Operating as a wholly owned federal government corporation, the bank "assists in financing and facilitati ...

and, although around 20% of all Afghan Government expenditure went into funding the HVA and HAVA during the 1950s and into the 1960s, it was generally seen as a US project. It resulted, in the words of historian

Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Colleg ...

in "a piece of America inserted into the Afgan Landscape. ... The new world they are conjuring up out of the desert at the Helmand River's expense is to be an America-in-Asia."

Present day

Today the irrigation system managed by the HAVA is regarded as one of the country's most important capital resources and vital for maintaining and expanding agricultural production in the region. As of March 2012 its director is Haji Khan Agha.

Development

The development of the Helmand Valley was initiated by the Government of Afghanistan in 1946. In addition to irrigation and land development it also included elements of flood control and power supply, improvements to farming practices and equipment, health, education and road connections and the resettlement of some 5,500 nomadic and landless families into the area. It focused around irrigation supplied from the waters of the Arghandab (Dahla) Dam, completed in 1952, and the

Kajaki Dam The Kajaki Dam is one of the two major hydroelectric power dams of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. The dam is located on the Helmand River 100 miles (161 km) north-west of Kandahar and is operated by the Helmand and Arghandab Valle ...

on the River Helmand, completed in 1953, which were both constructed by a local subsidiary of Morrison-Knudsen the builders of the

Hoover Dam Hoover Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Nevada and Arizona. It was constructed between 1931 and 1936 during the Great Depression and was dedicated on S ...

. It resulted in one of the world's major desert irrigation schemes,1970 Farm Economic Survey: Helmand and Arghandab Valleys of Afghanistan
G.P. Owens, USAID/Universityu of Wyoming Contract Team, published 1971-12-15 with water supplied through the Boghra, Shamalan, and Darweshan canals.

Government involvement

The US Government was officially involved in the project from 1949 until the Soviet invasion in 1979 and between 1949 and 1971 the US financed eight dams on the Helmand River. From 1960 the

Agency for International Development The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 b ...

and its predecessor, the Technical Cooperation Agency, spent $80 million assisting with 25 projects and the HAVA became a showcase for the US foreign aid programme. The earliest initiatives to build a modern irrigation system in the region began in 1935, with financial support from the

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

ese Government though until

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. The

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Government had also provided assistance.

Areas irrigated by the HAVA

, the areas of

Nad Ali Nad Ali or Nad-e Ali is a district in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Marja is an unincorporated agricultural district in Nad Ali. The area is irrigated by the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA).Marja, Shamalon, Darweshan, Khanishin, Seraj, Girishk, Sanguin-Kajakai,

Musa Qala ; "Fortress of Moses") is a town and the district centre of Musa Qala District in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. It is located at and at an altitude of 1,043 m in the valley of Musa Qala River in the central western part of the district. Its pop ...

and Nowzad are all irrigated by the HAVA, as are the areas of Maiwand, Dund-Daman, Arghandab and

Panjwayi Panjwayi ( ps, پنجوايي; also spelled Panjwaye, Panjwaii, Panjway, Panjawyi, Panjwa'i, or Panjwai) is a district in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan. It is located about west of Kandahar. The district borders Helmand Province to the southwes ...

Problems

While the development of the Helmand valley resulted in considerable gains in agricultural production and raised average farm incomes tenfold, there have also been problems. In particular, by 1975 over-irrigation and poor drainage had led to waterlogging and salination, seriously damaging the soil in some places. Work to mitigate this was interrupted by the Soviet invasion. Following the overthrow of the Najibullah Government in 1992 and aided by the irrigation, the Helmand valley region has become a major area for the cultivation of the

opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum'', commonly known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, is a species of flowering plant in the family Papaveraceae. It is the species of plant from which both opium and poppy seeds are derived and is also a valuable ornam ...

, a crop which had been largely suppressed by the HAVA in the 1950s. Irrigation of the area has also significantly reduced the water flowing from the

into

Lake Hamun Lake Hāmūn ( fa, دریاچه هامون, ''Daryācheh-ye Hāmūn''; ps, هامون ډنډ), or the Hamoun Oasis, is a seasonal lake and wetlands in the endorheic Sīstān Basin in the Sistan region on the Afghanistan–Iran border. In Iran, ...

and this, together with drought, has been cited as a key reason for the severe damage to the ecology of the lake region, much of which has degenerated since 1999 from a wetland of international importance into

salt flats Salt flats, Salt flat, Salt Flats, or Salt Flat may refer to: Geology *Salt pan (geology), a flat expanse of ground covered with salt and other minerals *Dry lake, an ephemeral lakebed that consists of fine-grained sediments infused with alkali salt ...

2000s

In 2005 it was reported that, following a USAID-funded project to build six reservoirs in Lashkar Gah, the HAVA would manage the provision of fresh water connections to the city's residents and the collection of the associated fees to keep the system maintained. The city had been without fresh water for the previous 30 years due to the contamination of the Helmand River. During the

Helmand province campaign The Helmand province campaign was a series of military operations conducted by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) forces against Taliban insurgents and other local groups in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan. Their objective ...

, the ''Operation Tethys'' initiative by the British Royal Engineers 170 (Infrastructure Support) Group led to repairs being carried out to the HAVA's irrigation systems between 2010 and 2012 at 30 sites. During 2011 it was reported that work was being started on a Helmand River Basin Study and Master Plan (HRBMP) to rebuild the capacity of the HAVA with funding from the British

Department for International Development , type = Department , logo = DfID.svg , logo_width = 180px , logo_caption = , picture = File:Admiralty Screen (411824276).jpg , picture_width = 180px , picture_caption = Department for International Development (London office) (far right ...

.Stabilisation Case Study: Infrastructure in Helmand, Afghanistan (Experiences from Helmand 2008-2010)

References

External links

* {{Afghanistan topics Helmand River drainage basin Irrigation in Afghanistan Water management authorities Water supply and sanitation in Afghanistan Helmand River Farah Province Ghazni Province Helmand Province Herat Province Kandahar Province Economy of Afghanistan Government of Afghanistan Government agencies established in 1952 1952 establishments in Afghanistan