The city of six million people could soon run out water, amid climate change, sanctions and governance failures.

Kabul, a city of over six million people, could become the first modern city to run out of water in the next five years, a new report has warned.

Groundwater levels in the Afghan capital have dropped drastically due to over-extraction and the effects of climate change, according to a report published by nonprofit Mercy Corps.

  • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
    6·
    19 hours ago

    Reading the article, it seems capitalism is the cause rather than imperialism past or present.

    Can you quote the part of the article that made you think so? Edit: Found it, but that’s presented in the article as a secondary cause. Because the main causes cited in the article are climate change, the impact of the war and sanctions, but that aside;

    As we’ve seen these past few years, the Taliban obviously have no idea how to run a country. They would’ve never lasted as long as they have in peacetime; it was the US invasion that sustained them all these years. Without that they’d have either grown into a competent-ish government in time to tackle the current crisis or been overthrown by a more competent faction. They also had real military opposition in the form of the North Afghanistan Alliance, which was coopted and ran into the ground by the West following the invasion, so now the Taliban are governing unopposed during a time of crisis that requires a competent and timely response. The US invasion stole 20 years from Afghanistan where they could’ve otherwise started to get their bearings as a modern state. And also, as the article states, Kabul’s population only got this big as a result of the war making the countryside less safe.

    • cygnus@lemmy.caEnglish
      23·
      19 hours ago

      Clearly the soda company and the rich still have water, so I’d hardly say it’s a “secondary cause”, but anyway, even taking all you’ve said as true, that still doesn’t explain why the west should get involved here. What would we even do? Occupy the soda factory and give free bottles to everyone?

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        6·
        19 hours ago

        that still doesn’t explain why the west should get involved here.

        For humanitarian reasons and because most of the origins of this crisis are Western-caused.

        What would we even do?

        for starters suspend sanctions, at least partially, so international aid, funding and expertise can enter the country. Then fund projects that could help avert the crisis.

        “Several planned initiatives, including projects for artificial groundwater recharge, were suspended following the Taliban takeover,” Mayar pointed out. “Sanctions continue to restrict organisations and donors from funding and implementing essential water-related projects in Afghanistan,” he said.

        Sadid pointed out one example: An Awater supply project -funded by the German Development bank KfW, along with European agencies – could have supplied 44 billion litres (11 billion gallons) of water annually to parts of Kabul from Logar aquifers.

        “But currently this project has been suspended,” he said, even though two-thirds of the initiative was already completed when the government of former President Ashraf Ghani collapsed in 2021.

        …

        “Sanctions restrict Afghanistan’s access to essential resources, technology, and funding needed for water infrastructure development and maintenance,” he said. This, in turn, reduces agricultural productivity, and increases hunger and economic hardship, forcing communities to migrate, he warned.

        In the first place the sanctions on Afghanistan are only going to be counterproductive. The people of Afghanistan need to develop economically before they can have political ambitions; the longer they’re kept in poverty the longer the Taliban will remain in power.