KABUL: First, the water wells and natural springs went dry. Then, the karez and qanats (ancient underground irrigation tunnels) ran out of water, too, forcing thousands of villagers to flee Jaghori, the district worst affected by drought in parched central Afghanistan.
With the region facing one of its “worst droughts in memory,” thousands of people are walking long distances to source drinking water, in addition to dealing with a crippling food crisis and the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic.
They face a dilemma — pack their bags and relocate or remain and risk dying of thirst.
With a population of 560,000, Jaghori, located in the southern fringes of the Hazaristan region, is one of the main districts of the Ghazni province and comprises nine villages.
A majority of the villagers are ethnic Hazaras, working as farmers and daily laborers, who were until recently more worried about another relocation issue — leaving their homes for another region would mean having to pay rent for accommodation, besides facing an increased security risk, unlike in Jaghori, one of the safest places in war-torn Afghanistan.
But because of the threat of drought, a group of educated young villagers is now trying a solution: Building small dams and reservoirs to store rain and snow water for irrigation and drinking purposes.
In February this year, they launched a crowdfunding campaign to collect money from local villagers and Hazaras abroad, contacting them online and through social media channels using limited resources to buy internet access in the impoverished rural district.
After hearing of the campaign, one elderly local couple from the Angortoo village of Jaghori district donated nearly $4,000 — their entire life’s savings — to construct a reservoir.
They were unavailable for comment when contacted by Arab News on Wednesday, but several residents of Jaghori said they had reserved money meant for their Hajj pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia, which was canceled due to the pandemic.
Rooshana, a 24-year-old resident of Tabqoos village, sold her wedding jewelry for the cause.
“All of the springs have dried up here. The only means for survival for many of us is a karez that is 8 km away. We store each drop of water in a bucket which takes hours,” Rooshana, a mother of a baby girl, told Arab News over the phone from Jaghori.
“My wedding jewelry is not as important as the water here. I wanted to pay my share for building one of the dams,” she added.
Rooshana is among many Afghans now contributing toward the cause, drawn by the “transparency” of the project.
“When Afghans living abroad and here saw how transparent the process of building the dams was, they began to contribute,” Taqi Poya, a coordinator for one of the dams, told Arab News.
“Initially, we used shovels and mattocks because we were cash strapped, but later we hired machinery for building the dams,” he added.
So far, the group has collected nearly $170,000 to construct three small reservoirs in Jaghori.
Rooshana’s husband, a daily wage laborer, who works at the “Mother Dam,” said that once ready in a couple of months, the reservoir could store up to 750,000 cubic meters of water for Tabqoos village.
“The construction of Shohada dam, in another village, is already finished. With a height of 20 meters, it has stored some rainwater this spring, and once it fills up in the coming years, it can meet the needs of 60 percent of the village,” Poya told Arab News.
Every drop counts, with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) saying that 13 million people in Afghanistan, or one-third of its 36 million population, are going without adequate food due to the ongoing drought.
“The drought and food crisis is one of the worst suffered in Afghanistan in recent decades, as 13.1 million people are grappling with food shortages according to the latest food insecurity analysis,” the IFRC said in a report released two weeks ago.
It added that this acute food security crisis “compounds social and economic hardships” already faced by millions of people in Afghanistan due to the pandemic and years of conflict.
“We are deeply concerned about worsening and severe water shortages in many areas, depleted food crops and crippled economic activity, such as decimated local markets and basic incomes,” Dr Nilab Mobarez, acting president of the Afghan Red Crescent Society, said in a statement.
All villagers interviewed for this story, along with Khod Dad Orfani, a lawmaker representing the Jaghori district in parliament, said that the central government in Kabul had not contributed toward the construction of the reservoirs “despite repeated pleas” by the villagers.
“People feel frustrated with the government and have no expectations from it. The government does not want the deprivations of people of central areas (Hazara populated region) to end,” Orfani told Arab News.
Rafiq Junbish, a spokesman for the Ministry of Rural Development in Kabul, told Arab News that the government had “allocated $5.4 million for various projects in Jaghori in recent years, including for the building of a dam in drought-stricken areas.”
Villagers, however, said the problem is far greater than the solutions on offer.
“People here are facing enormous challenges due to the severe water shortage, but there’s nothing much they can do. These dams will be effective in the future and will be the best answer for their needs and survival,” Nastratullah Nemati, a coordinator, told Arab News.
