KABUL: Afghanistan’s capital could become the first modern city in the world to completely run out of water, experts have cautioned.
According to a report by the NGO Mercy Corps, due to rapid urbanisation and climate change over the past decade, the water levels within Kabul’s aquifers have plunged by up to 30 metres.
It warned that almost half of the city’s boreholes – the primary source of drinking water for the residents of the city have dried out.
It said if current trends persist, Kabul’s aquifers could be completely depleted by 2030, posing an existential threat to the city’s seven million residents.
“There should be a committed effort to document this better and to draw international attention to the need to address the crisis,” said Mercy Corps Afghanistan country director Dayne Curry.
“No water means people leave their communities, so for the international community to not address the water needs of Afghanistan will only result in more migration and more hardship for the Afghan people.”
The report also warned against water contamination in the city’s water resources, adding that up to 80% of Kabul’s groundwater is unsafe for drinking and has high levels of arsenic.
Access to water has become a daily struggle for Kabul residents. Some households spend as much as 30% of their income on water, and over two-thirds are burdened with water-related debt.
According to the report, some private companies are taking advantage of the crisis by drilling new wells and extracting large quantities of public groundwater, which they then sell to Kabul residents at highly inflated prices.
Kabul’s population has surged sevenfold since 2001—from under one million to over seven million—dramatically increasing the demand for water.
The situation has been worsened by decades of weak centralized governance and a lack of effective regulation.
In early 2025, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that its partners had received only $8.4 million of the $264 million needed for planned water and sanitation programs in Afghanistan.
Additionally, $3 billion in international funding for water and sanitation projects has been frozen since the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.
The crisis has been further intensified by the U.S. decision to cut more than 80% of its USAID funding.
“Everything is so aid-dependent,” said Curry. “We can throw millions of dollars at short-term water fixes and say we’ve addressed the need, but that need will continue until there’s better investment for longer-term solutions. And that’s where foreign governments are stopping short at this point due to political dynamics.”
“We don’t have time to sit around waiting for budgets. We are caught in a storm from which there will be no return if we don’t act immediately,” warned Dr Najibullah Sadid, a senior researcher on water resource management and member of the Afghan Water and Environment Professionals Network.
