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Half of Kabul’s Wells Are Dry as City Faces Acute Water Crisis

Households spend up to 30% of their incomes on unsafe water under a freeze in foreign aid.

An Afghan boy fills his potable water tanker from a pump on the outskirts of Kabul on April 27, 2025.
An Afghan girl stands next canisters as she waits to fill them up with water in Kabul, Afghanistan, November 13, 2021.
An Afghan boy sits atop a potable water tanker on a hillside in Kabul on April 27, 2025.
Neighbors gather to fill their drums with drinking water in Azara neighborhood in Kabul on June 14, 2023.

Overview

  • Nearly half of the city’s boreholes have gone dry, threatening water access for roughly six million residents.
  • Kabul now extracts 44 million cubic meters more groundwater annually than is naturally replenished, driving aquifer levels down by up to 30 meters.
  • Up to 80% of remaining groundwater is contaminated by sewage, arsenic and salinity, causing widespread gastrointestinal illness.
  • Many families dedicate as much as 30% of their household income to water and over two-thirds have incurred debt to secure supplies.
  • UN-Habitat and NGOs warn that at the current rate Kabul could exhaust its groundwater by 2030 and are calling for large-scale infrastructure investment despite frozen USAID funding.