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.
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The post Kabul Is Running Dry and Solutions Might Come Too Late appeared first on New York Times.
