Reuters
[Photo Credit: Reuters]
Eight-year-old Noorullah and his twin, Sanaullah, spend their days hauling yellow jerrycans on a wheelbarrow through Kabul’s dusty alleys instead of going to school – an ordeal for one family that reflects Afghanistan’s deepening water crisis.
Once supplied with water from their own well, the family of 13 has had to queue at communal taps or pool money for costly water tankers since their supply dried up four years ago.
With climate change increasing the frequency of droughts and erratic rainfall in Afghanistan, aid agencies say Kabul is among the most water-stressed cities in Asia, with shortages fuelling disease, malnutrition and school dropouts.
The Afghanistan Analysts Network, an independent Kabul-based research group, in a report this month warned the city’s groundwater could run out by 2030, with other Afghan cities also running dry. The crisis is deepening inequality, as poor families spend up to 30% of their income on tanker water while the wealthy dig ever-deeper private wells.
The twin boys queue with dozens of children at a communal tap, where shoving and shouting often flare into fights as the heat builds.
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