Kabul is on the brink of disaster. A recent report by the Mercy Corps paints a stark picture: the Afghan capital could be the first modern city to run completely out of water within the next five years.
Mercy Corps’ website defines it as a “global humanitarian organisation” that is working to help people in crisis build “secure, just and prosperous communities”.
What’s new here
The city’s underground water levels have dropped by up to 30 metres over the past decade, forcing people to dig deeper and deeper into the ground.
Kabul now extracts 44 million cubic metres more water each year than nature can replace. If this continues, the aquifers that supply most of the city’s water could run dry by 2030, forcing the displacement of three million people.
Almost half of all boreholes in Kabul are already dry. More than 120,000 borewells have been dug without regulation, and many factories and greenhouses continue to pump groundwater without any check on the limits.
Residents now dig deeper than ever, with some wells going as far as 300 metres underground — that’s almost the length of the Eiffel Tower.
Over half the households surveyed said they had to re-drill their borewells at least once in five years, and some up to five times.
The water that’s still available is often unsafe. Up to 80 percent of the city’s groundwater is polluted with sewage and chemicals like arsenic and nitrates.
In many parts of Kabul, raw waste from toilets and factories flows directly into the ground or into open canals, further polluting the water supply. Locals often report water that smells bad, tastes strange or causes illness.
Why is it significant
Today, only 20 percent of homes in Kabul are connected to water pipelines.
Kabul was the epicentre of US-led coalition forces, which invaded Afghanistan for two decades. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent on trying to defeat the Taliban, who are now in government.
The report is a testament to the corruption which plagued Western-backed governments in Kabul.
A $40 million World Bank project in 2006 had aimed to connect half the city to piped water by 2010, but the goal was never met.
Most people now rely on borewells or buy water from private vendors. Some families are spending up to 30 percent of their income just on water.
In Khair Khana district, the cost of water has even surpassed that of food for many households. Water tankers charge up to $5 per cubic metre, which is 12 times more than the historic price.
The crisis is not only environmental, it’s humanitarian, economic and political. The lack of water has already forced the closure of some schools and health clinics.
Crops are failing due to rising salinity and lower groundwater levels. Wheat prices have jumped by 40 percent since 2021, and as many as 500,000 agricultural jobs are at risk.
Many families are falling into debt just to buy water.
Brief backgrounder
Kabul depends almost entirely on melting snow from the Hindu Kush mountains to meet its water needs. But the climate crisis has reduced snowfall by nearly 20 percent since 2014, and shorter winters mean less snow buildup.
In the winter of 2023-24, the country received only about half of its normal rainfall.
The last drought, which lasted from 2021 to 2024, affected over 11 million people.
Government oversight is weak. Rules around well drilling are unclear and rarely enforced.
Some drilling companies operate without any permits at all, while others said it’s easy to get approvals quickly if one has government connections.
Meanwhile, much of the city’s water infrastructure is either broken or incomplete. A major water treatment plant in Baghrami, built with US support, never operated at full capacity.
However, a smaller project in Surobi District, completed in 2024, now provides clean water to over 1,200 households, showing that low-cost, community-level solutions can work.
But that’s not all of it.
The roots of Kabul’s water crisis go beyond droughts and geography; they also lie in decades of poor planning and mismanaged international aid.
Experts say the international presence in Afghanistan after 2001 brought in billions of dollars, yet little of it went into long-term water infrastructure. Much of the aid funded temporary or fragmented efforts that ignored the complex needs of Kabul’s water systems.
Furthermore, a 2020 report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that around $19 billion — nearly a third of all reconstruction aid — had been lost to fraud, waste or abuse further underlining the failures of past development strategies.
What happens next
Larger projects stand stalled. The long-delayed Shahtoot Dam could supply water to two million residents but still lacks funding and faces political hurdles with neighbouring Pakistan.
A proposed pipeline from the Panjshir River could reduce the city’s reliance on groundwater, but it awaits government approval and investment.
International aid cuts have made the situation worse. Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, nearly $3 billion in water and sanitation (WASH) funding has been frozen.
More than 50 humanitarian organisations have had to reduce or halt operations in the country. A key coordination platform called ReportHub was suspended due to a lack of funds.
Without urgent action, Kabul is heading for “unprecedented humanitarian disaster”, the report by Mercy Corps warns.
