Shazia knows what life will be like in a major city that’s run out of water because she’s already living that reality — and it’s unbearable. The 34-year-old lives in the Khair Khana neighbourhood of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul with her three children and her husband, who ekes out a living as a street vendor. They have no running water and can’t afford to buy it from the water tankers that often outnumber cars on the city streets. Every day she and her kids must walk to a local mosque and wait in hour-long lines to fill buckets from a hand pump, before heading back with their heavy loads. Her back aches and she hates having to drag her kids out after school, “but we have no choice,” she said. Kabul is on track to be the first modern city to run out of water, and could do so as soon as 2030, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Prosper Global. But for Shazia, and many other residents across this fast-expanding city, that day is already here. They are on the frontlines of a spiraling urban water crisis that isn’t confined to Kabul. Cities across the world — from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Iran’s capital Tehran — are teetering on the edge of water shortages so severe that residents are bracing for a “day zero,” the point at which taps run dry for large parts of the city. Their crises tend to follow familiar beats: Booming populations colliding with insufficient, underfunded water infrastructure. Beneath it all hums the climate crisis, driving hotter, drier weather and pushing the water cycle off balance. Of all the urban areas facing day zero, Kabul’s situation may be starkest. It’s one of the fastest-growing cities, located in one of the most climate-vulnerable countries. Afghanistan has also suffered from decades of conflict and global aid has all but dried up since the return of Taliban rule in 2021. Kabul is staring down a “human catastrophe,” said Mohd Faizee, a professor at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. “We have only a limited window of time.” Those who want to understand what the future of water looks like in our changing world should look to Kabul. The search for water beneath the ground On the streets of Kabul, water is a huge topic of conversation, said Mirza Jan, who lives in the city’s Taimani neighbourhood. Everyone is affected. When Jan’s family bought their house in 1990, they could pull up water by hand in a bucket from a shallow well. Over the years, he has had to dig the well down farther and farther as it kept drying up. It’s now more than 700 feet deep, an expensive endeavor only possible because of money sent by his two sons who live in the U.S. As groundwater shrinks, those like Jan who can afford the upfront cost keep digging deeper; those who can’t rely on expensive tanker water or hand pumps at mosques. None of these options are sustainable. “It is an invisible catastrophe in the making,” Jan said, “the city will soon run completely out of water.” Kabul should not be water scarce. Sprawled across a wide valley, it is framed by the Hindu Kush Himalaya. The rugged peaks of Afghanistan’s section of this vast mountain range act as water towers. Melting snow and glacial ice feed the Kabul River, which cuts through the city, and recharge aquifers, which form the backbone of the city’s water system, supplying 80 per cent of residents. Just a fifth have access to piped water. Over the past decade, however, groundwater levels have plummeted nearly 100 feet, according to Prosper Global. Water is now being pumped out far faster than it can be replenished, leaving an estimated shortfall of more than 1.55 billion cubic feet a year. Nearly half the city’s boreholes have dried up. “In many neighbourhoods, water has already run out,” Faizee said It’s the result of soaring demand, from homes, greenhouses and businesses. But the human-caused climate crisis also plays a role. The country has endured six consecutive years of drought, with last year one of its most severe. Snowfall reached a 25-year low in Afghanistan at the end of last year, according to UN data, and it’s part of a long-term trend which has seen snow levels fall by nearly 20% between 2014 and 2020. When the rain does fall, Kabul’s hard, impermeable surfaces mean the water doesn’t replenish aquifers, but instead sweeps through the city as flash floods, destroying homes, killing people and rolling away. Kabul’s vanishing groundwater isn’t a crisis, said Najibullah Sadid, a Germany-based water and environment researcher with the Afghanistan Water and Environment Professionals Network. That word implies a short-term shock to the system. He prefers the term “water bankruptcy” because “you’re running out of a resource which is not recoverable anymore.” Unchecked expansion Said Agha and his family live in an apartment in the densely packed Kabul neighbourhood of Karte Naw. He makes decent money working for a company, but the city’s water crisis spares few. His building is home to 14 families but relies on one well that dries up every few months. Most of the time they only have running water for short bursts. Sometimes it’s off for days. Agha is convinced the city’s aquifers will soon run dry and he doesn’t know what to do. His job is tied to Kabul and leaving would be a “calamity,” he said. Kabul is expanding vertically, with multistory buildings stacked on top of existing structures. Instead of one family on a plot of land, there are now dozens and it’s dramatically increasing pressure on already strained water resources, Sadid said. Kabul is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Experts estimate its population has ballooned from less than 1 million in 2001 to 6 million today. People have gravitated there for different reasons. Many returned after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, in the hopes of better opportunities. More recently, there’s been a surge due to the large-scale expulsion of Afghans from neighboring Iran and Pakistan amid increasing regional tensions. People are also migrating to the city from rural regions, in search of jobs and sometimes, ironically, a better water situation. As water runs out, residents pay For the last two years, Asadullah Ahmadi has been spending at least 150 Afghanis (US$2.35) a day, a big chunk of his income, to get enough water for his family of seven. Even then, the water they get is dirty and must be boiled. “It is not sustainable, and I don’t know how long we can afford this,” he said. Running out of water is expensive. Many in Kabul, like Ahmadi, are forced to rely on tanked in water from private companies. Some of these companies are motivated to help people, but others are simply looking for big profits, said Marianna von Zahn, the former Afghanistan director of programs at Prosper Global. They pump groundwater and sell it back to residents at inflated prices. The impacts are most acute for residents already facing high levels of poverty, said a UN official based in Afghanistan. That’s “the most dangerous part” of the situation, they said. Poorer people are spending up to 30 per cent of their total income on water, analysts estimate. The UN considers affordable water costs to be three per cent or less of household income. To add to the dire situation, up to 80 per cent of large parts of the city’s groundwater is contaminated, both by sewage and by naturally occurring substances such as arsenic. It’s “another hidden crisis.” said Jalal Naser Faqiryar, a Netherlands-based water specialist and former director general of Kabul River Basin. Kabul residents have few options. Ahmadi fears he’ll need to abandon his home but “even if I do leave, where can I go in search of water? The whole city is suffering from this problem.” Some may leave Kabul altogether, but water scarcity is common in many parts of Afghanistan. And leaving the country is fraught with difficulty. Neighboring Iran and Pakistan are forcibly returning Afghans, and further afield in Europe, fervent anti-immigration rhetoric makes the situation very challenging. “There’s not really anywhere to go,” the UN official said. Attempts to harness rivers and rain There are plans to help alleviate Kabul’s impending catastrophe by harnessing surface water. The Shahtoot Dam, which would be built on a tributary of the Kabul River, could provide water for more than 2 million people in the city. India agreed to fund it, but the project stalled after the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. The Taliban insists it’s going ahead imminently but construction has yet to begin, and it faces steep opposition from Pakistan, which claims the dam will significantly reduce the water it receives from the Kabul River. Another plan is a 124-mile pipeline that would transport water from the Panjshir River to Kabul, to supply 2 million city residents. But it’s still at the survey and design stage. Even if these projects move ahead, they would take years to construct and would also require treatment plants and a proper network to bring the water into people’s homes. “The Taliban do not have the capacity to deal with a problem this big, and they know it,” Faizee said. Kabul’s water situation is “heading toward a serious crisis,” said Matiullah Abid, the spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Energy and Water. He said the ministry is acting, including by constructing dams and thousands of wells in the city to recharge groundwater, controlling commercial water use and completing the Shah wa Arous Dam in 2024, designed to supply 20,000 households. There are many ongoing efforts to tackle the water problem but “these measures require time and resources,” Abid added. People ‘continue to suffer silently’ The Taliban, itself, is an added complication in Kabul’s water story. It is not recognized as a legitimate government by most of the international community due to its human rights abuses, including stripping away the rights of women and girls. As a result, international aid has plummeted, even as Kabul and other parts Afghanistan edge toward water disaster. The world is “watching the crisis unfold” instead of preventing it now, Faizee said. “Later, it will pay for the emergency response, such as water trucking, disease outbreaks and displacement.” For now, people will “continue to suffer silently,” said Susanne Schmeier, professor of water cooperation, law, and diplomacy at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in the Netherlands. Kabul shows what a day zero looks like. It’s not every single tap suddenly running dry, it’s a slow-moving catastrophe that sees residents forced into ever-harder decisions. Do they sink money into expensive, deeper wells that will inevitably run dry, or rely on private water tankers that push them further into poverty? Do they make arduous, daily journeys to hand pumps, taking kids away from schoolwork and play, while also risking their physical health and safety? Or, do they move away from the city and their jobs, and risk finding themselves in an equally bad water situation? What’s happening offers a snapshot of what may be coming for many other cities, as climate change meets urban water systems built for a very different world. For Kabul residents, it’s trauma on top of trauma. “Years ago, we were running away from bombs and rockets in Kabul,” said city resident Said Agha. “Now we may have to flee because of a lack of water.” By Laura Paddison, CNN and Masoud Popalzai
