Barren fields and empty stomachs: Afghanistan’s long, punishing drought

When they wake up in the morning, they discover that another family has left. Half of one village and the entire next village have left in the years since the water dried up – looking for work, for food, for any means of survival. Those who remain take apart the abandoned houses and burn the pieces for firewood.

They speak of the lushness that once blessed this corner of southwestern Afghanistan. Now it’s dried out as far as the eye can see. Boats lie on bone-dry sandbanks. The meager water that trickles out from deep beneath the parched earth is salty, cracking their hands and leaving streaks in their clothes.

Years of punishing drought have displaced entire parts of Afghanistan, one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. Millions of children are malnourished and already impoverished families have been pushed even deeper into despair. And there’s no relief in sight.

In Noor Ali’s village in Chakhansur district, near the border with Iran, four families remain of the forty who once lived there. Mr Ali, a 42-year-old father of eight who used to grow melons and wheat, in addition to raising cattle, goats and sheep, is too poor to leave. His family lives on a dwindling £440 bag of flour, bought with a loan.

“I have no options. I am waiting on God,” he said. “I hope there will be water.”

Desperation in rural areas, where a majority of Afghanistan’s population lives, has forced families into impossible cycles of debt.

Rahmatullah Anwari, 30, who farmed rain-fed wheat, left his home in Badghis province in the country’s north for an encampment on the outskirts of Herat, the capital of a neighboring province. He borrowed money to feed his family of eight and to pay for his father’s medical treatment. One of the villagers who had lent him money demanded his 8-year-old daughter in exchange for part of the loan.

“I have a hole in my heart thinking about them coming and taking my daughter,” he said.

Mohammed Khan Musazai, 40, had bought cattle on loan, but they were swept away by a flood. When rain comes, it comes in an erratic manner, which has led to catastrophic flooding. The moneylenders took his land and also wanted his daughter, who was only four at the time.

Nazdana, a 25-year-old woman who is one of his two wives and the girl’s mother, offered to sell her own kidney instead — an illegal practice that has become so common that some have started doing so. referring to the Herat encampment as the ‘one-kidney village’.

She has a new scar on her stomach from the kidney extraction, but the family’s debt is only half paid.

“They asked me for this daughter, and I’m not going to give her,” she said. “My daughter is still very young. She still has a lot of hopes and dreams to fulfill.”

A few years ago, 30-year-old Khanjar Kuchai was thinking about going back to school or becoming a shepherd. He had served in Afghanistan’s special forces and fought alongside NATO forces. Now he’s trying to figure out how to survive day by day. On this day he was rescuing wood from a relative’s abandoned house.

“They all left for Iran because there is no water,” he said. “Nobody thought this water could dry up. It’s been like this for two years.”

At Zooradin High School in Chakhansur, where the wind whips through empty window frames, there has been no running water for two years since the well went dry. Students regularly become ill due to poor hygiene. The lack of rain creates perfect conditions for water-borne diseases such as cholera, according to aid organizations.

Mondo, a mother from Badghis who only gave her first name, has lost two of her children to the drought. She miscarried one child and lost another child when she was just three months old because the family had almost nothing to eat.

Her nine-month-old son is always hungry, but has not been able to produce milk for a while. The large tracts of land where her family once grew abundant wheat, and occasionally poppies for opium, have long since become barren.

“We wait all day to get something to eat,” she said. Around her in a brightly painted free Doctors Without Borders clinic were other mothers holding vulnerable, starving babies.

With three-quarters of the country’s 34 provinces experiencing severe or catastrophic drought, few parts of the country are unaffected by the disaster.

In Jowzjan province in northern Afghanistan, some with solar panels have drilled even deeper sources of electricity and are now growing cotton, which can yield higher profits than other crops. But cotton uses even more water.

“The Taliban came, and the drought came with them,” said Ghulam Nabi, 60, who has recently been growing cotton.

Even after the years of drought, many speak as if they can still vividly see their land as it once was: green and bountiful, full of melons, cumin and wheat, river birds flying overhead as fishing boats navigated the waterways.

With little help from Taliban authorities and continued shortcomings in international aid, some say they can only trust that the water will return one day.

“We have memories of these places being completely green,” said Suhrab Kashani, 29, a school director. “We just spend the days and nights until the water comes.”

This project was supported by the National Geographic Society.