‘People Killed the Aral Sea; Now Its Remains are Returning the Favor,’ Khasanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 5 – By their short-sighted exploitation of the water from the rivers that fed the Aral Sea, the peoples of Central Asia as directed by Moscow in Soviet times killed the Aral Sea, Riza Khasanov says. Now, poisonous substances on the former seabed are being spread by the winds and killing prematurely the people of the region.

            In Moscow’s Novaya gazeta, the journalist says that “the Aral dried up in only 40 years. Its tragedy began in the 1960s” and by the early years of this century, only 10 percent of its water and only a quarter of its surface area remained, with ships that once plied its waters now rusting in desert sands (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/11/26/88115-krik-arala).

            The people who live near the former sea are now as a result “at the epicenter of an environmental catastrophe,” with dust storms spreading dangerous mineral salts into the atmosphere and inflicting numerous illnesses and cancers for up to 500 kilometers around, Khazanov continues.

            In 1960, the Aral was the fourth largest lake in the world, with an area of more than 60,000 square kilomters. It produced some 60 tons of fish a year. But then because of Moscow’s push for cotton monoculture, flows from the Syrdarya and Amudarya river systems fell, and the remaining water was divided in two parts in 1989, the Little Aral and the Greater Aral.

            Kazakhstan controls the former and has worked hard to try to save it. Uzbekistan controls the latter and has done less both because the challenge is far greater and because saving the Greater Aral would require a fundamental shift in the economy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Khasanov says.

            Amirkhan Kenshimov, head of the department of water resources at the International Foundation for Saving the Aral, says that other countries need to become involved if the Aral is to be saved and revived. That isn’t impossible, but it will be difficult, because those not immediately affected are less interested in doing anything than those who are.

            Indeed, Kenshimov says, it is long past time that the entire world views the Aral’s fate as directly connected to its own. The drying up of the sea has already had a significant impact on the climate of the region. The number of storms has increased, and consequently, the poisons from the seabed are spreading more widely.

            “The desiccation of large lakes” like the Aral “is changing the planet,” he continues. “In the end, this will lead to its desertification.” Because that is the case, Kenshimov concludes, “the Aral is a problem for the entire world. It must be resolved before it is too late.” Otherwise, millions of people are going to suffer.