Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Kabul Faces Severe Water Crisis
Report says Afghan city and region will need six times more water by 2050, as Oxfam warns of violence over scarce resource
Kabul and its surrounding region are perilously short of water and may not be able to supply a fast-growing, more affluent population, a joint US and Afghan government scientific report has warned.
A girl at a communal water pump in Kabul, Afghanistan. More than half the shallow wells people use will dry up if temperatures continue to rise as predicted. (Photograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP) Rapid population growth and expected temperature rises due to climate change mean the area – which just manages to support 6 million people today – will need six times more water by 2050, the US Geological Survey report says.
More than half the shallow wells people now rely on will dry up if temperatures continue to increase as expected, it warns.
Thousands of wells have been sunk in Kabul in the last decade as the city's population has more than doubled. But the water table has dropped several metres, and many settlements already experience water shortages.
In addition, most of the shared water points and wells are contaminated, leading to illness. According to current United Nations estimates, Kabul's population could reach 9 million by 2050.
The two-year Kabul basin water survey warned that barely exploited deep underground water sources may not be sufficient to provide for all human and farming needs.
Mountain snow, which feeds rivers throughout the basin, is melting earlier each year, leaving less water for use later on, particularly during summer, when it is needed most.
Kabul residents use around 40 litres a day each, far less than most other Asian cities, but demand is expected to soar as communities develop and numbers grow.
The study backs up Oxfam research which shows that competition for water in both rural and urban Afghan communities is increasing, leading to heightened tensions and violence. According to the aid agency, 43% of local conflicts are now over water.
The Oxfam policy officer, Ashley Jackson, said: "Thirty years of war has left sources of water co-opted, stolen and contaminated.
"Oxfam research has found that water is now a major cause of local conflicts. Disputes over these scarce resources lead to violence and even, in some instances, fuel the greater conflict."
Last year, two men were killed after being found trying to steal water from the river Paghman in Kabul province. Families took sides, the row escalated and fights broke out between people armed with knives.
The conflict was only resolved when elders found a new way to channel the river, which provides 20 villages with water.
- Posted in
12 Comments so far
Show AllKabul is growing mainly because the invaders are making the countryside uninhabitable by their intrusion.
40 years ago a vast amount of the water was not potable for a westerner.
I would suggest that its simply where the money is thanks to our occupation. Sort of like Washington DC. It attracts younger folks to jobs furnished by our money and others to the "welfare" provided by the government.
While I don't have a difficult time conceptually understanding how such an arid place could have problems with water supplies, the fact that one of the arms of the sole superpower makes this claim public gives me pause. I hate feeling this way as I want to believe governments are our best hope in protecting ourselves against terrible economic powers that daily participate in the subjugating of the mass of humanity and the destruction of the planet. I wonder how many of you feel this way?
While I am sure the driving of the rural population into urban areas is just another example of what has been going on for a hundred years (the "enclosing of the commons" so it may be corruptly bought and sold), the absolute number of the population is not what bothers me so much as what the carrying capacity of the area (and its watershed) can support, is. As long as humanity does not take into its population calculations such things as carrying capacity, humanity will suffer droughts, famines, and all other manner of foul results. This is, of course, not just true for Afghanistan. Humans avoid truth to our peril everywhere.
"the fact that one of the arms of the sole superpower [the U.S. Geologic Survey] makes this claim public gives me pause..."
You need to quit thinking of the US Government - or any government, as a monolithic entity. Rest assured, the scientists and technicians working in the underfunded USGS and Interior Department have nothing to do with any diabolical scheming of someone in the WH or Pentagon. The US government employs about 1.5 million people - the great majority of which have nothing whatsoever to to do with things the State dept, the legislators or chief executive, or the military does.
Most government workers are out making mines and workplaces safer, water and air cleaner, transportation safer, running the SS, medicare, or medicaid syatems, building highways, bridges, public transportation flood control and water supply projects. They are also taking care of the National Parks, and vast acerage of national forest and BLM lands.
When criticising something the US government does, avoid using the phrase "The Government" and at least name the cabinet department or legislative branch, if not the specific agency.
This is a nuance I've picked up in the last 5 or 6 years. Very important point. Not just gov'ts, but nations, too, are actually bundles of factions that are co-operating, or competing, or in outright war with one another (hence such phenomena as revolution & civil war). These factions don't disappear with the conclusion of a war. American factions for,or, against the revolution & civil war are still active. Factions responsible for the world wars are still active. The "good guys" & "bad guys" are still around & active.History is a living, on-going detective story. This is what I've concluded.
To hell with water wars in Afghanistan, what about the shortage of clean, fresh water here at home?!!
I really don't think the author of this article intended to imply any connection of the water shortage with the US military intervention. What is happening to the climate and water supply in Afghanistan will happen to most of central and south Asia in coming years.
During the great Permian extinction, it is believed that high altitude continental interior areas became completely uninhabitable for all life form except hardy bacteria and fungi.
Just thought I'd toss this into the mix.
A recent report said the Himalayan glacial melt was unprecedented and accelerating, and that areas reliant on the glacial melt were facing catastrophic water shortages.
I believe all Afghanistan is such an area.
Another "recent" report said Afghanistan is chock-full of a trillion dollars of valuable minerals (since upped to three)
Obviously, Afghanistan's future is in it's mineral wealth.
Isn't mining a water-intensive industry?
What a surprise.
Nearly a decade ago the American corporate imperialists bombed and invaded and occupied Afghanistan. And despite all of the "aid" and technology we should have provided during the occupation the Afghans now have trouble with water supplies. Part of their water problems are related to global warming but war-related damage is also a big factor.
We bombed not only "Taliban" targets but many other sites including ancient water transport systems. And some of that bombing involved depleted uranium weapons leaving radioactive materials to pollute water supplies. Drop a DU weapon near a river or stream or irrigation system and DU is transported. It also leaches into ground water. Independent testing has found Afghans with alarming levels of radioactive material in their urine.
Some critics of DU say part of the war plans are to depopulate certain regions through disease and damage to the human genome over time.
We also deliberately destroyed much of the water infrastructure of Iraq beginning after Desert Storm in an attempt to destabilize their country. Depleted uranium weapons were used in a variety of attacks and remain in the ecosystem. DU is radioactive for billions of years and will continue to bleed into water supplies and affect civilians wherever it has been used.
American war crimes will affect the innocent forever.
The story of the Afghan Girl, Sharbat Gula, tells of her rising before sunrise and then she prays. She fetches water from the stream. She scratches out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice some walnut trees,a stream that spills down the mountain , except in times of drought, but no school, clinic, roads,or running water. This was in the mid 90's. I wonder how life is for Sharbat Gula today if she is still alive. If she had a hard time getting water then what will it be like now? It is inexcusable for the U.S. to have used depleted uranium which contaminated the water supply in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was documented that the U.S.deliberately contaminated the water supply in Iraq and the people have not had sufficient clean water since the first gulf war and still do not have it. Don't tell me the water supply in Afghanistan has not been adversely affected by the U.S. war.
genie:
Very honest empathy in your depiction of the Afghan girl.
Thanks. I am not proud to be an American.
One article of many online:
Depleted Uranium, Another Gift
From The Imperialists
By Pauline Paulinson
16 November, 2006
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-paulinson161106.htm
Excerpt:
"With now over 10 trillion doses of DU in Iraq and Afghanistan, it comes as no surprise that widespread field studies in Afghanistan point to the existence of a large scale public health disaster. UMRC is the first independent research organization to find DU in the bodies of US, UK and Canadian Gulf War I veterans and following ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’, they found DU in the water, soils and atmosphere of Iraq as well as in Iraqi civilians. In May/02, the UMRC examined hundreds of people with acute symptoms characteristic of radiation poisoning along with chronic symptoms of internal uranium contamination including deformity in newborns. Two additional scientific study teams were sent to Afghanistan in June/02 and Oct/02. The teams found that in both Jalalabad and Kabul, DU was causing high levels of illness with tests showing radiation concentrations 400% to 2000% above normal; amounts not recorded in civilian studies before. Without exception, at every bombsite investigated, people are ill."