Because the solar rises over Kabul’s parched mountains, a household’s day by day battle to search out water – and to make it final – is about to start.
The sound of water tankers rumbling by Raheela’s neighborhood within the Afghan capital prompts the 42-year-old mom of 4 to hurry out to the road to fill her household’s battered buckets and jerrycans. The household’s provide is all the time working low, she says, and each liter is pricey, stretching nerves and their budgets to breaking level.
“We don’t have entry to (ingesting) water in any respect,” Raheela, who goes by one title, advised CNN. “Water scarcity is a big downside affecting our day by day life.”
Kabul is inching towards disaster. It might quickly turn out to be the primary fashionable capital on the planet to run utterly dry in keeping with a current report by Mercy Corps, a non-government group that warns the disaster might result in financial collapse.
Inhabitants progress, the local weather disaster, and relentless over-extraction have depleted groundwater ranges, consultants say, and practically half the town’s boreholes have already gone dry.
Raheela’s household should pay for each drop of water, and watch how they use it rigorously, sacrificing meals and different necessities simply to drink and bathe.
“We’re deeply involved,” she stated. “We hope for extra rain, but when issues worsen, I don’t understand how we’ll survive,” she advised CNN.
It’s an emergency that “is not only a water situation,” warned Marianna Von Zahn, Mercy Corps’ Afghanistan director of packages. “It’s a well being disaster, an financial disaster, and a humanitarian emergency multi functional.”
An Afghan boy fills his potable water tanker from a pump on the outskirts of Kabul on April 27, 2025. – Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Photographs
A potent combine
Simply three a long time in the past, Kabul’s inhabitants was lower than 2 million, however the toppling of the Taliban in 2001 led to an inflow of migrants, lured by the promise of elevated safety and financial risk.
As its inhabitants grew, so did the demand for water.
Kabul depends virtually solely on groundwater, replenished by snow and glacier soften from the close by Hindu Kush mountains. However years of mismanagement and over-extraction have induced these ranges to drop by as much as 30 meters during the last decade, in keeping with Mercy Corps.
Kabul now extracts 44 million cubic meters extra groundwater annually than nature can replenish, Mercy Corps stated, a staggering imbalance that’s steadily draining the town’s reserves and its residents’ funds.
Some households, like Ahmad Yasin’s, have dug deeper wells, looking for extra water to fill their buckets.
Yasin, 28, lives in a joint household of 10 within the metropolis’s north. For months, he has queued alongside together with his brother for hours daily on the close by mosque, which has entry to a giant nicely, to deliver full buckets residence for his youngsters, mother and father, nieces, and nephews.
“That was holding us again from our work and was affecting our revenue,” he stated. In order that they saved for six months, sacrificing meals, to give you 40,000 Afghanis ($550) to dig a nicely of their yard.
Yasin and his brother dug 120 meters earlier than they may discover any water – and whereas this water is free to make use of for all their primary wants, they will’t drink it. “It’s not protected,” he stated.
“Since we spent all our cash on the nicely, we can’t afford to purchase a water filter or purified water. Therefore, we boil the nicely water for prolonged durations of time, let it cool after which drink it.”
As much as 80% of Kabul’s groundwater is contaminated, in keeping with Mercy Corps, a consequence of widespread pit latrine use and industrial waste air pollution.
Diarrhea and vomiting are “issues folks expertise on a regular basis within the metropolis,” stated Sayed Hamed, 36, who lives together with his spouse, three youngsters and two aged mother and father within the northwestern Taimani district.
“We frequently get sick because of contaminated water both by ingesting in another person’s home, in a restaurant, and even by brushing our tooth with the nicely water,” the federal government employee stated.
The disaster is additional compounded by Kabul’s vulnerability to local weather change.
“We’re getting increasingly rain, however much less and fewer snow,” stated Najibullah Sadid, a water useful resource administration researcher and member of the Afghan Water and Atmosphere Professionals Community. “That’s impacting a metropolis which has much less infrastructure to control the flash floods… Snow was serving to us, however now we now have much less, and that’s harming us by way of groundwater recharge.”
If present developments proceed, UNICEF predicts Kabul might run out of groundwater by 2030.
Neighbors collect to fill their drums with ingesting water in Azara neighborhood in Kabul on June 14, 2023. – Rodrigo Abd/AP
When water runs dry, many flip to tankers
These with out the means to dig lots of of meters for water are on the mercy of personal firms or should depend on donations.
Rustam Khan Taraki spends as a lot as 30% of his revenue on water, principally shopping for from licensed tanker sellers.
However for households who can’t afford to spend this a lot, the one choice is to stroll typically lengthy distances to mosques, which may present water.
Daybreak sees Hamed, the federal government employee, lining up for hours at a close-by nicely to fill two buckets for his household. Throughout the day, two of his youngsters – 13 and 9 years outdated – line up for a refill, typically skipping faculty to hold heavy buckets up their steep hill within the scorching solar.
The disaster is taking a toll on the kids’s future, stated Von Zahn from Mercy Corps. “The hours that youngsters needs to be spending in class, they’re now principally spending on fetching water for his or her households.” she stated.
“These dangerous coping methods additional deepen the cycle of poverty and vulnerability for ladies and kids.”
Ladies shoulder a lot of this disaster — pressured to stroll for hours throughout Kabul simply to fetch what little water they will, risking their security below the Taliban’s oppressive rule which prohibits them from going outdoors and not using a mahram, or male guardian.
“It’s not straightforward for a lady to exit, particularly below the present circumstances the place girls have to have male firm from her household to have the ability to exit,” a 22-year-old Kabul resident, who didn’t wish to disclose her title for security causes, advised CNN.
“There are quite a few difficulties for each girl or woman to exit alone to get water. They might be harassed or bothered on the way in which,” she stated.
CNN has contacted the Taliban for a response.
An Afghan boy sits atop a potable water tanker on a hillside in Kabul on April 27, 2025. – Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Photographs
A dire future
Past the local weather disaster, inhabitants progress and mismanagement, Kabul’s water disaster is compounded by deep political turmoil.
The Taliban seized management of the nation in August 2021 following the chaotic withdrawal of US-led forces after practically 20 years of battle, tipping the nation to the brink of financial collapse as growth and safety help to the nation froze.
Since then, humanitarian support – aimed toward funding pressing wants by non-profit organizations and bypassing authorities management – stuffed a few of the hole. However US President Donald Trump’s choice earlier this 12 months to halt overseas support has additional set again the nation with crippling penalties.
The freeze in US Company for Worldwide Improvement (USAID) funds is “one of many greatest impacts,” stated Von Zahn from Mercy Corps. By early 2025, solely about $8 million of the $264 million required for water and sanitation had been delivered.
“So what we’re seeing is a harmful combine: collapsing native methods, frozen funding, and rising regional friction — all whereas abnormal Afghans face a worsening disaster daily,” she stated.
That leaves the way forward for many dwelling in Kabul in limbo.
Years in the past, when Raheela and her household moved to their present neighborhood, the lease was cheaper, the mosque had water and life was manageable, she stated.
Now, she doesn’t understand how for much longer they will survive within the metropolis.
“We received’t have another selection however to be displaced once more,” she stated, “The place will we go from right here? I don’t know.”
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