(Dasht-e Fulool) “Our wells are filled with mud: to drink, we have to let our buckets settle,” says Nawroz, a month after the floods which ravaged his province in northern Afghanistan where humanitarians and residents now fear dehydration and epidemics.
“We fill our buckets with this dirty water and let the deposits fall to the bottom before using it. Without that, we have nothing to drink,” this 46-year-old Afghan explains to AFP in his village in Baghlan province.
Around him, in a landscape of desolation where gaping holes have opened where before there stood houses swept away by flash floods, families are filling cans with this brackish water.
In normal times, in the country scarred by four decades of war and which today struggles with economic, humanitarian and climate crises, nearly 80% of the more than 40 million inhabitants do not have sufficient access to drinking water, according to the UN.
Recent floods have worsened the situation.
In May, at least 480 Afghans, according to the UN, many of them women and children, were mowed down by these torrents of mud which suddenly swept over the north and west of the country, one of the poorest in the world. world and one of the most vulnerable to climate change too.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated at the end of May that 60,000 people had been affected by these floods: thousands of houses were destroyed or damaged, thousands of hectares of crops were flooded, entire herds disappeared…
Today, “the most serious problems are the lack of water and shelter,” Sher Agha Chahrani, who has been left lastingly scarred by the terrible hours of Friday, May 10, when his village was suddenly submerged in mud, told AFP.
The water tank and the network of pipes which supplied all the surrounding families were “destroyed and swept away by the floods”, he says.
Across Baghlan province, 14 water supply networks and nearly 300 water pumping points were damaged or destroyed, a Taliban official recently told the local press.
But almost a month later, “nothing has been put in place to find a lasting solution,” accuses Mr. Shahrani.
“Floods cause material damage but they also contaminate wells” when they resist, Daniel Timme, spokesperson for UNICEF, explains to AFP.
The surviving families have good access to these water points, “but they cannot use them because they are filled with mud or contaminated by bacteria,” he says, returning from Baghlan where he describes a landscape “covered in mud, trash, and decomposing animals.”
“The smell is unbearable,” adds Barakatullah, a resident of Dasht-e Fouloul where parents, he says, are worried about an increase in cases of diarrhea among children.
“If the drinking water problem is not resolved, we will have another crisis and epidemics,” he worries.
For the moment, UNICEF is delivering 500,000 liters of water to the disaster areas every day – enough to ensure 15 liters per person, the minimum established by the UN for survival.
“But if sometimes it is enough, other days it is not enough,” said Rahim Abdul Jamil, from the village of Goul Dara Chikha in the western province of Ghor also affected by the flash floods.
This teacher also says he is already seeing an increase in episodes of fever or respiratory problems among his students.
“The absence of drinking water creates big problems: my children and those of the neighbors have already fallen ill,” he told AFP.
And this, in a country where the “health system is already overwhelmed”, recalls the WHO.
