When Even Bare Essentials Are In Short Supply - The Challenge of Rebuilding Afghanistan's Water Infrastructure

After two decades of wartime destruction and neglect, every facet of Afghanistan's infrastructure is in disarray. Roads need to be cleared of mines and resurfaced. Bridges that were blown up during the fighting need to be rebuilt. Schools are non-existent in many parts of the country. Few public buildings in Kabul have even intermittent electric power, while other parts of the country have long since gone without electricity.

The campaign to reconstruct Afghanistan will have to run the gamut of infrastructures, and extend to every corner of the country. Yet, in the hurly burly of these competing reconstruction priorities, providing safe water and sanitation stand out as fundamental societal needs. A UNICEF report in January 2002 stated that only 35% of the urban and 19% of the rural populations of Afghanistan have access to safe drinking water, and only 23% of the urban and 8% of the rural populations have access to adequate sanitation facilities.

The water crisis caused by years of war and conflict is made yet more serious by the drought that has afflicted Afghanistan for the past three years. While the United Nations Development Program and the British aid agency Oxfam have rehabilitated five of Kabul's nine water reservoirs, a dearth of rainfall has caused water levels to decline to dangerously low levels. This city of two million people needs 80,000 cubic meters of water per day to function with anything approaching normality. Yet, because of a lack of water, infrastructure problems and electricity shortages, the Kabul water system can presently provide only 20,000 cubic meters per day. As a result, 70 percent of Kabul's population is without regular access to running water. Just as serious, none of the water that is pumped through the city water system is purified and potable.

Yet, as desperate as are the circumstances of Afghanistan's capital city, conditions in the Afghan countryside are even worse. The results of wartime destruction of irrigation systems have combined with drought to put the viability of the spring harvest in serious jeopardy. With thousands of Afghan refugees returning from camps in Pakistan to their home villages, the threat of famine and disease outbreaks looms large.

The village of Sorkhdar, near the southeastern city of Heart, for example, has only two functional wells to serve a population of 600 inhabitants. The rest of the village's wells have gone bone dry. People are now getting drinking water from a nearby river, but when the planting season arrives, a raging winter river will have dried up into a thin rivulet of water. Yet, this small stream will have to serve for the needs of this village for drinking water, sanitation and crop irrigation.

There is some hope on the horizon, however. On February 12, 2001, an important step in the task of providing access to potable water for the people of Afghanistan was taken with the arrival of a water filtration system at the Kabul Airport. Donated by International Aid, the water filtration system will provide the only reliable supply of sanitary water to people in the Kabul region. U.S. Army troops stationed at Bagram Airfield also discovered a long-disused well that they rebuilt and refurbished. This well now supplies drinking water, not only to the base, but also to surrounding villages that for years had no access to safe, potable water.

In addition, the European Union, Japan and the United States have joined forces in a multi-billion dollar campaign to rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure that will include repairs to the nation's water supply. U.S. Under Secretary of State Alan Larson said that one of the top priorities will be "quick-hitting projects" that can help inspire hope in the Afghan people for a better and more prosperous future. Since October 2000, USAID has contributed more than $8.3 million to support projects designed to address the water and sanitation needs of the Afghan people.

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