An excerpt from Guy Fipps’ journal
Dr. Guy Fipps, a Texas A&M University professor in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering, spent nine months in Afghanistan as senior advisor for Water of the Afghan Reconstruction Group. “There are lots of disadvantages to these structures,” he said, recounting Afghan farmers and their families rebuilding an irrigation water diversion dike.“They wash out two or three times a year and they don’t provide good control of water. It’s a big strain on their subsistence economy to take the time to rebuild the dikes. But they work.”
The following is an excerpt from his journal:
Kunduz is the capital of Kunduz Province in Northern Afghanistan, a regional center surrounded by vast expanses of agricultural land. Every trip out is eye-opening, but in Kunduz, I saw something really extraordinary: the construction of an irrigation diversion dike using methods and materials that have not changed for centuries, maybe for thousands of years….
For thousands of years people have lived along the rivers of what is now Afghanistan and diverted water into hand-dug canals to irrigate their crops. Taking advantage of the mountains and slopes, a single canal can run many miles and provide water to many villages, tens of thousands of people and large irrigated areas.
Afghans construct earthen dikes extending out into the river to divert water. Unfortunately, these dikes frequently wash out when the rivers rise in the spring and early summer as the melting of the mountain snow accelerates. It is the snow that falls in winter that gives water and life to this arid land.
Such was the case of the KZ canal. A weekend rainstorm just three days ago caused the river to rise high enough to completely wash out the existing diversion dike. Now, very little water is flowing into their canal, and approximately 20,000 families cannot irrigate their crops. It’s early in the growing season; plants are short and cannot go more than a week without water. As of today, the local farmers have only five days to get the dike rebuilt before facing the danger of crop failure….
…we’re amazed at the size of the operation, approximately 400 men and adolescents hard at work.
And what an operation it is. The men are divided into several different work crews. One crew digs up large dirt clods, each weighing around 50 pounds…. The Afghans hope that the grass will take root and help hold the dikes together.
A group of men are busy weaving ropes from a thick straw that looks like dried water reeds…. Some of these ropes are used by the men to cradle the dirt clods on their backs. A group of men lift the dirt clods and help secure them on the backs of the workers who then carry them to the river and wade out into the moving water to drop them onto the expanding dike. Layers of clods and straw are built up, and the dike is extended farther into the river.
The work is very hard and demanding; it must be extremely difficult, first carrying a large load of dirt on your back, then wading though the water with the thick underfooting of river bottom silt.
We watch as the dike quickly forms and extends farther into the river. Such a massive and organized operation is amazing and fascinating to watch. Each farmer along the canal contributes labor or money proportionally to the size of his land.
I watch as the straw men make huge rectangular bales of dried reeds held together by the thick ropes of woven straw. Finally, their purpose becomes clear. As the dike is constructed, gaps are left in the dike in order to reduce the pressure and erosion caused by the moving water in the river. It takes 20 men to roll the huge bales into the river and to float them out to the dike to plug these gaps. Dirt clods are then layered on the straw bales to complete the dike….
The dike will wash out a few times a year, taking money and labor away from cultivation and harvesting of crops, further hurting the subsistence agriculture of the region. Three weeks later, I visit the site. The dike is still standing even though the river has already risen a foot since my last visit. The dike is working perfectly and diverts large amounts of water into the KZ canal.