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Afghanistan: An Overview of Ground Water Resources and Challenges

Afghanistan, a land-locked country in central Asia, is 647,500 km2 in area and characterized by extensive desert plains, high mountain ranges, and scattered fertile valleys along the major rivers. Most of the cities, towns, villages, and settlements are along major and minor river valleys. The Hindu Kush, the westernmost extension of the Himalaya-Pamir Mountain Range, cuts the country in half from northeast to southwest. Irrigation is important to the main economy, which is agriculture (crops and livestock). Surface water accounts for .80% of irrigation water. Ground water has traditionally been developed and used for irrigation purposes through the use of karezes (also referred to as qanat, foggara, and falaj—a karez is essentially a horizontal well in which the discharge of the upper portion of an aquifer is brought to the surface by a hand-dug tunneled conduit), springs, and shallow hand-dug open wells. In recent years, deep-drilled wells (tubewells) have become more common, particularly in the southeastern river basins (Tarnak, Ghazni, Kabul, and Loghar among others). Most urban centers and towns depend on ground water for drinking, commercial, and institutional water supply. Ground water is an underused resource in certain parts of the country and, more than likely, overused in others.