KAMAR KALAGH, Afghanistan: Hajji Wali Jan brought half a dozen plastic containers to the Kamar Kalagh well on a recent Friday – one of the few days of the week for him and those who live on his side of this Afghan village. are allowed to use the water source.
When it was finally his turn, the 66-year-old filled a can, then a second. The tap water jet has become scarce. He started on another container – but the trickle of water tapered off and then stopped before the container was full.
The well was done for the day.
The drought in Afghanistan, the worst in decades, is now entering its second year, exacerbated by climate change. The drought has affected 25 of the country’s 34 provinces, and this year’s wheat harvest is estimated to be 20 percent down from the previous year.
In addition to the fighting, drought has helped drive more than 700,000 people from their homes this year, and the onset of winter will only increase the risk of disaster.
“This cumulative impact of drought on already weakened communities may be another tipping point towards disaster,” the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s office in Afghanistan said in a tweet on Tuesday. “If left unchecked, agriculture could collapse. “
UN experts have accused a La Nina event in late 2020, which can alter weather conditions across the world, to causing less rainfall and snowfall in early 2021 in Afghanistan, and they predict it will continue until 2022.
Afghanistan has long experienced regular droughts. But in a 2019 report, the FAO warned that climate change could make them more frequent and intense. Last year’s drought came after the 2018 drought, which was the worst in Afghanistan at the time in years.
Amid the drought, the Afghan economy collapsed following the Taliban takeover in August, which resulted in the shutdown of international funds to the government and the freezing of billions of the country’s assets held in abroad.
Jobs and livelihoods are gone, leaving families desperate to find ways to find food. The FAO said last month that 18.8 million Afghans are unable to feed themselves every day, and by the end of the year that number will rise to 23 million, or nearly 60 percent of the population. .
Already hit hard by the 2018 drought, small villages like Kamar Kalagh are drying up, unable to extract enough water to survive.
A cluster of mud brick houses in the mountains outside the western town of Herat, Kamar Kalagh is home to around 150 families who lived off their cattle, especially camels and goats, and the wages of the men who worked as Porters at Islam Qala border post with Iran.
Much of this work has also dried up, and now the village’s main income comes from the sale of sand.
Ajab Gul and his two young sons recently dug sand in the river bed and put it in sacks. A full day’s work will earn them the equivalent of about $ 2.
“The grass was growing here,” Gul said, raising his hand to his nose. “When a camel walked through it, you could only see its head. It was 20 years ago.
Now there is no more grass and almost no cattle.
Two years ago, as the village’s main well dried up, residents pooled money to pay for deeper drilling. For a while it worked. But soon he weakens again. The villagers set up a rationing system: half could draw water one day, the other half the next day.
Even rationing is no longer enough. The water from the well is only sufficient for about 10 families a day, said Wali Jan.
When Wali Jan was unable to fill his cans, he sent two of his grandsons to an alternative source. They turned the chore into a game: the older boy, around 9, pushed the wheelbarrow, with his younger brother next to the cans, laughing.
They climbed the hill, back down the other side, across another dry riverbed – about 3 kilometers (2 miles) in all. Tragically walking in used tennis shoes that were too big for his feet, the older boy tripped and the wheelbarrow overturned. Yet they reached a pool of stagnant water in the river bed, its surface covered with green algae. They filled the cans.
Back in the village, their grandfather met them. He unrolled his turban and tied one end of the long sling around a handle on the front of the wheelbarrow to help the boys climb it up the last slope to his family’s house.
The old and the very young are almost the only males left in the village. Most of the working-age men have gone to seek work elsewhere in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan or Turkey.
“You can’t find anyone outside during the day,” said Samar Gul, another man in his sixties. “There are only women and children inside the houses.