Draught in Afghanistan

One hears a lot about the insurgency, Taliban, opium and increasing violence in Afghanistan (see articles) but not the desperate need for water. Eight years of drought has meant that the main projects people are asking for involve water. One large provincial centre one and half hours drive from Kabul has 12 parts. Only two of these get water twice a week. The rest of the population gets water from a dirty canal. In other areas with wells the stop gap measure is digging wells deeper as the water table decreases. If villages realized that the next village digging a deeper well was actually reducing their water there would be fighting. Fortunately they do not. There is no coordinated plan for water management in Afghanistan. Organizations get proposals for water supply and make canals from rivers, pipes from springs or dig more and deeper wells which solves the problem locally in the short term.

Below are short reports of a trip to assess potential water projects in Parwan Province a couple of hours from Kabul. I have just cut and pasted it. IOM is International Organization for Migration, ATI is Afghan Transitional Initiative which is part of IOM and I am the programme officer for, RRD is the rural rehabilitation government department.

On 7th July 04 IOM/ATI team went to Parwan to assess potential new projects. After bouncing over dirt roads for some time the team arrived at khlazayee village. The community leaders quickly surrounded us desperate for assistance. While neighboring villages have wells and hand pumps this Pashtun one doesn’t. One man said, ‘Our women have to go to other villages and ask to use their water. This makes us loose pride.’ For relatively little money ATI/IOM could not only supply much needed water but restore some dignity to this village. Later the same day we reached another village with water problems. This time too much and in the wrong place. They wanted a restraining wall but to get to the site consisted of a two-kilometer walk involving a few river crossings (see photos). On arrival they explained that while they used to get some annual flooding this had been exacerbated by a restraining wall built by a local commander to divert the river and protect one of his villages from flooding. The community representatives asked ATI/IOM to build another wall to protect their arable land and showed fields covered in silt from the last flood. It was evident that there was some conflict between the two villages and that another wall while preventing extensive damage to arable land might increase this conflict. ATI/IOM asked the RRD representative to come up with some definite plans for the wall and diversion of the stream. The village elders were asked to arrange a meeting with representatives of the other village, the commander, RRD, and a representative of the governor to discuss the plans and if all agreed and signed a letter stating this ATI/IOM would look at the possibility of the project. (See photos).