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[CNN] As the sun rises over Kabul’s parched mountains, a family’s daily struggle to find water — and to make it last — is about to begin.
The sound of water tankers rumbling through Raheela’s neighborhood in the Afghan capital prompts the 42-year-old mother of four to rush out to the street to fill her family’s battered buckets and jerrycans. The family’s supply is always running low, she says, and every liter is expensive, stretching nerves and their budgets to breaking point.
"We don’t have access to (drinking) water at all," Raheela, who goes by one name, told CNN
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. "Water shortage is a huge problem affecting our daily life."
Kabul is inching toward catastrophe. It could soon become the first modern capital in the world to run completely dry according to a recent report by Mercy Corps, a non-government organization that warns the crisis could lead to economic collapse.
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Population growth, the climate crisis, and relentless over-extraction have depleted groundwater levels, experts say, and nearly half the city’s boreholes have already gone dry.
Raheela’s family must pay for every drop of water, and watch how they use it carefully, sacrificing food and other essentials just to drink and bathe.
"We are deeply concerned," she said. "We hope for more rain, but if things get worse, I don’t know how we’ll survive," she told CNN.
It’s an emergency that "is not just a water issue," warned Marianna Von Zahn, Mercy Corps’ Afghanistan director of programs. "It’s a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a humanitarian emergency all in one."
Insh'Allah
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