Afghanistan Peace CampaignThe six million people living in the Afghan capital could be out of water by 2030. The government is scrambling for solutions, but financial reserves are as dry as Kabul’s water basins.
As the sunset enveloped Kabul on a recent summer evening, two neighbors blurted out insults at each other over access to a rapidly vanishing resource: water.
“You come with four canisters and you cut the line,” Aman Karimi hissed at a woman as he snatched a hose from her hands and filled his own buckets from a mosque’s tap. “It’s my turn, and it’s my right.”
Kabul is running dry, withered by scarcer rainfalls and snow melts and drained by unregulated wells. It has become so dry that its six million people could be without water by 2030 — and are now fighting about it.
Its water reserves are emptying nearly twice as quickly as they are getting replenished. The Taliban administration, short of cash, has so far been unable to bring water from nearby dams and rivers to the choking city.
Now, Kabul risks becoming the first modern capital to be depleted of underground water reserves, the nonprofit Mercy Corps warned in a recent report.
“We are increasingly fighting because water is like gold for us,” Mr. Karimi said, as he pushed a wheelbarrow filled with 40 gallons of water that his family of five would use for cooking, washing and drinking. Mr. Karimi, a tailor, said they recently moved into a new home because of skyrocketing housing prices, but the new one doesn’t have running water.
Kabul, surrounded by snowy mountains and crossed by three rivers, had never been known as a dry city. But while its population has grown roughly sixfold over the past 25 years, no decent water management system has been put in place to bring water from other sources or to regulate underground extraction from greenhouses, factories and residential buildings that are mushrooming across the city.
International donors financed multiple dam projects and initiatives to connect Kabul’s homes to a reliable pipe system, budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars. Most never saw the light of the day or were abruptly stopped after 2021, when the Taliban took control and other nations refused to recognize the new government after the U.S. withdrawal.
“Kabul has been struggling with water issues for two decades, but it never was a priority,” said Najibullah Sadid, an expert on water resources. “Now the wells are drying up and it’s an emergency.”
Kabul’s residents have been digging more and more boreholes in courtyards and in basements, puncturing a city drained by unregulated water extraction.
Kabul exists as if on an I.V. drip, with thousands of gallons of water supplied by hundreds of Chinese-made tricycles and Soviet-era trucks crisscrossing the city.
Those who can’t afford to buy water from delivery companies rely on the dwindling wells of mosques or charity from affluent residents. As the sun goes down, the wheelbarrows come out and the meandering streets and steep hills sparkle with large, sunflower-yellow cooking oil canisters turned into water containers.
On a recent morning, Haji Muhammad Zahir rushed downstairs as he heard a recorded message advertising water blasting down his leafy street. Water delivery companies have sprouted up across Kabul, including in affluent neighborhoods like his, where longtime residents now share their streets with former Talib fighters and officials.
A former head of the City Council and a retired mechanical engineer, Mr. Zahir said his well had run dry years ago and the public pipe to his two-story house was spluttering water only every three days. He urged the Taliban to keep Kabul afloat, but he added, “Where is the money for that?”
Both lack funding: foreign donors have turned off the tap and private investments are scarce. “Our projects are big and we can only provide half of the funds,” Matiullah Abid, the spokesman for Afghanistan’s ministry of water and energy, said in an interview.
By the mosque where Mr. Karimi had scolded a neighbor, the line of people waiting for water had slowly thinned.
Among the last ones were Atefeh Kazimi, 26, who filled some canisters in exchange for a few afghanis, the national currency, for the mosque. She then trudged her wheelbarrow 30 minutes home.
There was a mosque closer to her house, but its well had run dry.
Safiullah Padshah and Yaqoob Akbary contributed reporting.
Elian Peltier is an international correspondent for The Times, covering Afghanistan and Pakistan.