Afghanistan has seen decades of war and turmoil that have wrought destruction and death across its lands.
Grinding civil wars have destroyed vital infrastructure and impoverished the country.
But now an ambitious new civil engineering project could transform the fortunes of this mountainous nation, bringing food security to its people.
Like the rest of Central Asia, Afghanistan struggles with food scarcity and rising temperatures due to climate change.
Moreover, droughts that used to occur once a decade now happen every two years.
To alleviate this problem, authorities have decided to build a 177 mile long irrigation canal.
Known as the Qosh Tepa Canal, it aims to divert 20 percent of the water from the Amu Darya River across the desert.
This will help convert 55,000 hectares of desert into wheat-producing farmland and increase Afghanistan’s total arable land by a third.
The canal will begin in the province of Balkh, cross the province of Jawzjan and then that of Faryab – all of which lie in the north of the country.
The irrigation channel will be 100 metres wide, eight metres deep and is expected to cost roughly $684million (£538m).
Given Afghanistan is under Western sanctions, many have queried where the money to build the canal will come from.
Tajik political scientist Parviz Mullojanov says the Taliban have money, and plenty of it.
“Firstly, the annual state budget, which under the previous Afghan government had stood at $5.5billion (£4.3bn), is now in the hands of the Taliban.
“The budget is now smaller, but part of the cost of building the canal comes from there.
“Secondly, the Taliban also have a shadow budget, which according to various estimates amounts to $1.6billion (£1.3bn).”
Plans to build the canal were initially approved in the 1970s under the rule of the Soviet Union.
