KABUL: Every week, Bibi Jan scrapes together some of her husband’s meagre daily wage to buy precious water from rickshaw-drawn tankers that supply residents of Afghanistan’s increasingly parched capital.
Kabul faces a looming water crisis, driven by unruly and rapid urbanization, mismanagement over years of conflict, and climate change, meaning people like Bibi Jan are sometimes forced to choose between food and water.
“When my children have only tea for a few days, they say, ‘You bought water and nothing for us’,” the 45-year-old housewife told AFP, describing reusing her supplies for bathing, dishes and laundry.
Experts have long sounded the alarm over Kabul’s water problems, which are worsening even as many international players have backed off big infrastructure projects and slashed funding to Afghanistan since the Taliban government took power in 2021.
“There could be no ground water in Kabul by 2030” without urgent action, the UN children’s agency UNICEF warned last year.
Other experts are more cautious, citing limited consistent and reliable data, but say the situation is clearly deteriorating.
A 2030 cliff is a “worst-case scenario,” said water resources management expert Assem Mayar.
But even if slated development projects are completed in a few years, it “doesn’t mean the situation would become better than now,” Mayar said.
“As time goes on, the problems are only increasing,” he added, as population growth outstrips urban planning and climate change drives below-average precipitation.
The Taliban authorities have launched projects ranging from recycling water to building hundreds of small dams across the country, but larger interventions remain hampered by financing and technical capacity.
They remain unrecognized by any country since they ousted the Western-backed government and imposed their severe interpretation of Islamic law, with restrictions on women a major sticking point.
They have repeatedly called for non-governmental groups to reboot stalled projects on water and climate change, as Afghanistan faces “some of the harshest effects” in the region, according to the United Nations.
The water and energy ministry wants to divert water from the Panjshir river to the capital, but needs $300 million to $400 million. A dam project near Kabul would ease pressures but was delayed after the Taliban takeover.
For now, Kabul’s primary drinking water source is groundwater, as much as 80 percent of which is contaminated, according to a May report by Mercy Corps.
It is tapped by more than 100,000 unregulated wells across the city that are regularly deepened or run dry, the NGO said.
Groundwater can be recharged, but more is drawn each year than is replenished in Kabul, with an estimated annual 76-million-cubic-meter (20-billion-gallon) deficit, experts say.
“It’s a very serious problem... Water is decreasing day by day in the city,” said Shafiullah Zahidi, who heads central Kabul operations for the state-owned water company UWASS.
Water systems designed decades ago serve just 20 percent of the city’s population, which has exploded to around six million over the past 20 years, said Zahidi.
At one of Kabul’s 15 pumping stations, maintenance manager Mohammad Ehsan said the seven-year-old well is already producing less water. Two others nearby sit dry.
“The places with shallower water levels are dried out now,” said 53-year-old Ehsan, who has worked in water management for two decades, as he stood over an old well.
It once produced water from a depth of 70 meters (230 feet), but a newer well had to be bored more than twice as deep to reach groundwater.
At one of the two large stations in the city, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) recently procured four new pumps where only one had been functioning.
“If that pump collapsed for any reason, that means stopping the service for 25,000 beneficiary households,” which now have uninterrupted water, said Baraa Afeh, ICRC’s deputy water and habitat coordinator.
Everyone in Kabul “should have 24-hour service,” said Zahidi, from the state water company.
But in reality, Bibi Jan and many other Kabulis are forced to lug water in heavy jugs from wells or buy it from tankers.
These suppliers charge at least twice as much as the state-owned utility, with potable water even more pricy in a country where 85 percent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
Bibi Jan said she has to police her family’s water use carefully.
“I tell them, ‘I’m not a miser but use less water.’ Because if the water runs out then what would we do?”
‘Serious problem’: Afghan capital losing race against water shortages
https://arab.news/brk2a
‘Serious problem’: Afghan capital losing race against water shortages
- The Taliban authorities have launched projects ranging from recycling water to building hundreds of small dams across the country, but larger interventions remain hampered by financing and technical capacity
With Iran war exit elusive, Trump aides vie to affect outcome
- Aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East
- In taking America to war, US President Donald Trump offered little explanation
WASHINGTON: A complex tug-of-war inside the White House is driving US President Donald Trump’s shifting public statements on the course of the Iran war, as aides debate when and how to declare victory even as the conflict spreads across the Middle East.
Some officials and advisers are warning Trump that surging gasoline prices could exact a political cost from the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, while some hawks are pressing the president to maintain the offensive against the Islamic Republic, according to interviews with a Trump adviser and others close to the deliberations.
Their observations to Reuters offer a previously unreported glimpse inside White House decision-making as it adjusts its approach to the biggest US military operation since the 2003 Iraq war.
Shifting messages, various internal viewpoints
The behind-the-scenes maneuvering underscores the high stakes Trump, who returned to office last year promising to avoid “stupid” military interventions, faces nearly two weeks after plunging the nation into a war that has rattled global financial markets and disrupted the international oil trade.
The jockeying for Trump’s ear is a feature of his presidency, but this time the consequences are a matter of war and peace in one of the world’s most volatile and economically critical regions.
Shifting from the sweeping goals he framed in launching the war on February 28, Trump in recent days has emphasized that he views the conflict as a limited campaign whose objectives have mostly been met.
But the message remains unclear to many, including the energy markets, which have lurched in both directions in response to Trump’s statements.
He told a campaign-style rally in Kentucky on Wednesday that “we won” the war, then abruptly pivoted: “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”
Economic advisers and officials, including from the Treasury Department and the National Economic Council, have warned Trump that an oil shock and rising gasoline prices could quickly erode domestic support for the war, said the adviser and two others close to the deliberations, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions.
Political advisers, including Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and deputy chief James Blair, are making similar arguments, focusing on the political fallout from higher gas prices and urging Trump to define victory narrowly and signal the operation is limited and nearly finished, the sources said.
Pushing in the other direction are hawkish voices urging Trump to sustain military pressure on Iran, including Republican lawmakers such as US Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton, and media commentators such as Mark Levin, according to people familiar with the matter.
They argue the US must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and respond forcefully to attacks on American troops and shipping.
A third force comes from Trump’s populist base and figures such as strategist Steve Bannon and right-wing television personality Tucker Carlson, who have been pressing him and his top aides to avoid getting dragged into another prolonged Middle East conflict.
“He is allowing the hawks to believe the campaign continues, wants markets to believe the war might end soon and his base to believe escalation will be limited,” the Trump adviser said.
Asked for comment, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement: “This story is based on gossip and speculation from anonymous sources who aren’t even in the room for any discussions with President Trump.
“The President is known for being a good listener and seeking the opinions of many people, but ultimately everyone knows he’s the final decision maker and his own best messenger,” she said. “The President’s entire team is focused on ensuring the objectives of Operation Epic Fury are fully achieved.”
Other people named for their roles in the deliberations did not immediately respond to Reuters’ questions.
Looking for an exit
In taking America to war, Trump offered little explanation, and the administration’s stated war aims have ranged from thwarting an imminent attack by Iran to crippling its nuclear program to replacing its government.
As he seeks an exit from an unpopular conflict, Trump is trying to juggle competing narratives that some critics say have complicated an already difficult situation, with Iran defiant despite the devastating US-Israeli air assault.
Top political aides and economic advisers, whose warnings before the war of the potential economic shock were largely ignored, appear to have played a major role in pushing Trump’s efforts this week to reassure skittish markets and contain rising oil and gas prices.
His public shift to downplaying the war’s impact, describing it as a “short-term excursion,” and his insistence that gas price hikes would be short-lived appeared aimed at calming fears of an open-ended conflict.
Some top aides have advised him to work toward a conclusion to the conflict that he can call a triumph, at least militarily, the sources said, even if much of the Iranian leadership survives, along with remnants of a nuclear program that the campaign was meant to target.
Wave after wave of US and Israeli air strikes have killed a number of top Iranian leaders among some 2,000 people overall – some as far away as Lebanon – devastated its ballistic missile arsenal, sunk much of its navy and degraded its ability to support armed proxies around the Middle East.
But the military achievements have been seriously undercut by Iran’s stepped-up attacks on oil tankers and transport facilities in the Gulf, driving up oil prices.
Trump has said he will decide when to end the campaign. He and his aides say they are far ahead of the four- to six-week timeframe Trump initially announced.
The shifting reasons for launching the conflict, which has spilled over into more than half a dozen other countries, have only made it more difficult to predict what comes next.
For their part, Iran’s rulers will claim victory, analysts say, for simply surviving the US-Israeli onslaught, especially after demonstrating their ability to fight back and inflict damage on Israel, the US and its allies.
Venezuela miscalculation
Critical to the war’s final trajectory will be the Strait of Hormuz. A fifth of the world’s oil shipments, which normally traverses the narrow waterway, has come to a near-standstill. Iran in recent days has struck tankers in Iraqi waters and other ships near the strait, and the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has vowed to keep it shut.
If Iran’s stranglehold on the waterway pushes US gas prices high enough, that could increase political pressure on Trump to end the military campaign to help his Republican Party, which is defending narrow majorities in Congress in November’s midterm elections.
Trump has recently refrained from pushing the idea that the war seeks to topple the government in Tehran. US intelligence indicates that Iran’s leadership is not at risk of collapse anytime soon, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
At least some of the confusion over the war’s trajectory appears rooted in the quick US military success in Venezuela.
Since the start of the war, some aides have struggled to convince Trump that the Iran campaign was unlikely to unfold in the same way as the January 3 Venezuela raid that captured President Nicolas Maduro, according to another source familiar with the administration’s thinking.
That operation opened the way for Trump to coerce former Maduro loyalists into giving him considerable sway over the country’s vast oil reserves – without requiring extended US military action.
Iran, by contrast, has proved a much tougher, better-armed foe with an entrenched clerical and security establishment.
Experts have rejected claims by Trump aides that Iran had been within weeks of being able to produce a nuclear weapon, despite the president’s insistence in June that US-Israeli bombing had “obliterated” its nuclear program.
Most of Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed to have been buried by the June strikes, meaning the material potentially could be retrieved and purified to bomb grade. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons.
If the war drags on, American casualties mount and the economic costs multiply, some analysts say it could erode backing from Trump’s political base. But despite criticism from some supporters opposed to military interventions, members of his “Make America Great Again” movement have so far largely stayed with him on Iran.
“The MAGA base is going to give the president wiggle room,” said Republican strategist Ford O’Connell.
