Afghanistan's 7-Year Drought The Worst In Living Memory - NYT

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"Afghanistan remains in the grip of the most debilitating drought in living memory, now in its seventh year. Government and foreign aid officials warn that despite the outside help and a good harvest last year, the country is living on the brink, with nearly 40 percent of the population below subsistence levels.

The World Food Program, which had hoped to reduce assistance, put out an appeal to donor countries in September to help Afghanistan through the winter until the harvest of 2005. The agency reports that districts in 17 provinces are in urgent need of help and that 37 percent of the population is unable to meet its basic needs. "You have a recurring drought in Afghanistan, particularly because of deforestation and soil degradation," said Susana Rico, head of Word Food Program in Afghanistan. "There is significant underlying poverty, and a significant portion of the population that are not able to feed themselves. Any shock will push more under the threshold."

The shock this year was simply the lack of rain. Crops failed, farm laborers were left without work and food prices rose sharply, by 50 percent in some places. Wells, rivers and canals have gone dry. The World Food Program estimates that three quarters of a million people in the country are in "severe distress" because of an acute shortage of drinking water. At least 4,000 families - 20,000 people - have abandoned their homes in search of water and jobs, said the minister of rural rehabilitation and development, Hanif Atmar. "These 4,000 families are known, but the real figure may be higher," he said. This province, Nimruz, in the far southwestern corner of Afghanistan, bordering Iran and Pakistan, is probably the worst affected area. The World Food Program estimates that 92 percent of the Nimruz's population - 130,000 people - needs food aid or other assistance.

The great Helmand River, which descends from the Hindu Kush and, along with other rivers, feeds the traditional wetlands of the Sistan Basin, has run dry in Nimruz. A new bridge spanning the Helmand at Zaranj, at the border with Iran - built by the Iranian government and officially opened in November - crosses a dry river bed. "For the last four or five years we have not had a drop in the river," said Hajji Qesim Khedri, the mayor of the provincial capital, Zaranj, as he stood on the bridge. "We used to use boats, now we drive our cars in it." The province, once a cultural and rich agricultural center, is fed by the rivers that descend from the snowfields in Afghanistan's central highlands but the snow caps have shrunk to half their size and the rivers no longer reach the river basin in Nimruz. Annual rainfall, always low, was about 2 to 2.3 inches in Nimruz before the drought, but for the past three years it has been a little over a tenth of an inch, said Muhammad Akbar Sharifi, head of the government's Agriculture Department in Zaranj."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/12/international/asia/12drought.html?oref=login