Afghanistan's capital is in the grip of a water crisis

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The woman was furious. Standing in the muddy lane sloping up the hill in one of the Afghan capital’s poorer neighborhoods, she pulled her headscarf aside to reveal thick grey-white hair.

“You see this hair? Even I with my white hair, I have to carry water,” said Marofa, 52, a resident of Kabul’s Deh Mazang neighborhood who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. “These containers are heavy. We have no strength left in our backs, no strength left in our legs.”

A mosque down the hill has its own well that provides free water, but it is undrinkable — yellow and brackish — and has to be carried. Potable water is trucked into the neighborhood on three-wheeled motorcycles and sold. For many, the price is too steep.

“We have no money for food. How can we get water?” said Wali Mohammad, 90, another local resident who didn’t hide his rage.

Both said that a few months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in 2021, the new authorities cut pipes some residents had laid to siphon water from a communal well to their homes.

“They cut off our water. They are powerful and they don’t even give us a reason why,” Mohammad said.

But another resident, 32-year-old Najibullah Rahimi, said the pipes to people’s homes made the well’s water level drop, leaving those living higher up the hill with no water at all. “So the government came and cut the pipes.”

Kabul’s dwindling water resources

Nestled in a high-altitude valley of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul is rapidly running out of water. Its population relies mostly on groundwater extracted from wells. But the groundwater has been receding at an alarming rate, and some wells have to be dug as deep as 150 meters (nearly 500 feet) to reach it.

An April 2025 report by the aid group Mercy Corps said the level of Kabul's aquifers had plunged by 25-30 meters (about 80-100 feet) over the past decade. Aquifers hold massive amounts of water deep under land surfaces. Water in them collects slowly over years as precipitation seeps in. Too much extraction from aquifers, or changes to the climate bringing less water, leads to depletion.

“Without large-scale changes to Kabul’s water management dynamics, the city faces an unprecedented humanitarian disaster within the coming decade, and likely much sooner,” it said.

Climate change, mostly caused by the burning of gasoline, oil and coal, has played its part. Repeated droughts have reduced snowfall, whose gradual melting can replenish groundwater. Instead, Kabul sees more sudden, heavy rainfall that leads to flooding but not enough of it reaches the aquifer.

A long developing crisis

The changing climate has only compounded what has long been a growing crisis, said Najibullah Sadid, a Germany-based water resources and environment expert with the Afghanistan Water and Environment Professionals Network.

“Even without climate change Kabul would have seen this crisis, with the enormous, unprecedented increase in population and urbanization,” Sadid said.

The city has more than doubled in size over the past two decades. Kabul saw a major influx of Afghans returning from neighboring countries after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. It is seeing another now, since Pakistan and Iran began expelling Afghans in 2023. From a population of around 2.5 million in 2001, Kabul now holds an estimated 6 million people.

In some parts, shallow aquifers have already run dry, Sadid said. And recent rains have little effect as Kabul is now so built up there is little unpaved, natural ground where water can penetrate.

“Even if it is raining every day, it will not impact groundwater levels anymore, because there is no place to impact the groundwater,” Sadid explained.

Mismanagement of water resources has compounded the problem, he said, singling out beverage companies and greenhouses that use large amounts of groundwater.

Water management efforts

Authorities are acutely aware of the problem.

“The water situation in Kabul city is in a critical state,” said Ministry of Water and Energy spokesman Qari Matiullah Abid. “The main reasons are that the population has increased significantly, rainfall has decreased and consumption has increased.”

He said the government is taking action. It imposed restrictions on groundwater extraction by beverage companies, farmers and other commercial users. Water meters have been installed and quotas imposed on businesses such as car washes and large buildings, and those exceeding their limit are told to move out of Kabul.

To help replenish groundwater, check dams – small, temporary structures across waterways – have been constructed in Kabul’s 14 districts, and thousands of absorption wells that help manage stormwater have been dug, Abid said.

He also pointed to the completion of Kabul’s Shah wa Arous Dam, inaugurated in 2024 and designed to hold 10 million cubic meters (353 million cubic feet) of water, and the removal of millions of tons of sediment from the Qargha Dam, increasing the reservoir’s capacity.

But those are not enough.

Potential solutions are still out of reach

Two major projects which could significantly alleviate the crisis have been delayed.

One is a roughly 200-kilometer (124-mile) pipeline from the Panjshir River north of Kabul, and the other is a planned dam and reservoir known as the Shah Toot Dam about 30 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of the city. Together, they could provide water for around 4 million people, according to the Mercy Corps report.

“A combination of both would be a sustainable solution for the future,” said Sadid. Although constructing the dam would take several years, the pipeline could be completed relatively fast, he said.

Shafiullah Zahid, Kabul Zone Director in Afghanistan’s Urban Water Supply and Sewage state corporation, said the Panjshir pipeline’s roughly $130 million budget has been approved. The original survey, completed under the previous government, “has been completely revised, and now another review is needed,” he said. Once that is completed, “practical work can begin.”

The Shah Toot Dam, announced months before the Taliban takeover, was to have been a joint Afghan-Indian project. It too has run into funding delays. If construction begins, it would take six to seven years to complete, Zahid said.

But Sadid said Afghanistan’s governments, both current and previous, prioritized other infrastructure over critical water projects.

“Numerous roads are being built, flyovers are being built with a lot of money. But there is no priority for water projects,” he said. “They are just doing the projects which are eye-catching and not the projects which are fundamental to the people’s health and people’s fundamental rights. Water is essential. Water is more important than roads.”

Abdul Qahar Afghan in Kabul contributed

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