Helmand is the most important river in Afghanistan and an indispensable water resource for southeastern Iran. Recent water depletions in the river, however, have caused environmental issues in the region with further repercussions on long-term hydro-political debates between the countries of Iran and Afghanistan. The primary reasons underlying depletions in the river's water levels remain, however, unclear, and are the main objective of this study.Therefore, this study proposes a hydro-political analysis of the Hemland Basin by analyzing precipitation through Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) data, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) land data for groundwater analysis, and Landsat 5 and 8 Images from 1991 to 2020 to classify vegetation and waterbodies using a Support Vector Machine classifier and identify the prime cause of downstream water depletions. Despite severe droughts, the preliminary findings indicated increases in rainfall, groundwater sources, water bodies, and vegetation in the river upstream, which conveys the inconsequential share of droughts to the overall water shortage as opposed to human interventions and water usage which have also shown to increase in the river upstream. Further findings suggest that the severe downstream water depletions are primarily on account of upstream water consumptions that have triggered environmental degradations and are a threat to human habitations.
The Islamic world is one of the most important regions in the world in terms of geopolitical competition, focusing on the region of Southwest Asia in terms of geo-economic, geo-strategic and geo-culture. Despite the widespread commonalities in the political geography of the Islamic world in structural and functional terms, the interdependence of the region has not been able to move towards convergence, cooperation and interaction. One of the influential variables in the political trends of this region has been the geopolitical policies of the United States of America. The United States has always influenced the political trends of this strategic region based on its goals and interests. The result of researches show that the United States has a significant impact on divergence of Islamic world in terms of geo-culture in promoting the discourse of liberalism, geo-strategy on arms sales and stabilization of military rivalries between world powers, and geo-economics in free market competition and cheap energy resources. The convergence of Islamic world has been against the geopolitical interests of the United States of America.
Consumption patterns in social groups are diversely affected by global and local processes. Using a mixed approach, this study analyses the consumption pattern of three classes of young in Tehran (capital of Iran) including the rich, middle and lower classes. The findings suggest that the self-indulgent lifestyle of rich kids of Tehran is a reproduction of global consumption patterns. The ingress of global patterns and culture into society was also mediated through the rich class, who are inclined to convergence in consumption in the global context. Rich kids act as the reference group for lifestyle among middle- and lower-class youth, who adopt eclectic lifestyles in the local context. Overall, the nature and extent to which rich kids are perceived as a reference group differ between the two classes, with the middle-class youth taking a more realistic, extensive and imitative perspective and the lower class incorporating a more mental, limited, false and damaging mindset.
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