BABA QASHKHAR (Afghanistan): A drought which has plagued Afghanistan for more than three years is threatening to wreck the traditional karez irrigation systems, as farmers bore ever deeper for water in a bid to save their harvests.

The karez systems, which cover 15 per cent of irrigated land, consist of a series of wells connected by tunnels, which usually stretch for a number of kilometres before the water spills out into irrigation ditches and fields.

The shafts can reach depths of more than 30 metres, and need to be cleaned and desilted a couple of times a year.

Farmers are trying to counter the current lack of water from rains and melting snow by boring to new depths but “the deeper digging of the shafts deprives the karez of their water,” warned vice minister of water and irrigation, Pir Mohammad Azizi.

As farmers dig down to access the deepest of a series of layers of water tables, they risk drying up the higher ones and disrupting the flow of water in the tunnels.

At the foot of the Paghman mountain range, some 30 kms north of Kabul, farmers Nur Arha and Islamuddin struggle under a scorching sun to keep their karez clear of mud and stones.

They know that if the karez ceases to function effectively, their families may face starvation.

They have to enter the shaft to hoist buckets full of silt and stones up from a 30-metre deep well, which serves 36 families in this village.

Other local farmers have bought a pump to carry out the work but Islamuddin, who is in his 60s, is forced to labour under the scorching sun.

According to the last available figures, compiled in 1997, some four million hectares of Afghanistan’s farmland is rain-fed while 3.5 million is irrigated — but the latter accounts for 80 per cent of wheat crops and 85 per cent of other produce.

The unreliable weather can make the harvesting of rain-fed crops a thankless task. Last year’s rain-fed wheat harvest was near zero, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

The system is also found in the semi-desert regions of Iran, Oman and in the Chinese region of Xinjiang.

As so much of Afghanistan’s farmland has been damaged, destroyed or abandoned after 23 years of war, the total number of karez is unknown, but there are thought to be some 1,500 in the central province of Ghazni alone.

The snow from the massive Hindu Kush mountain range which cuts through much of the country provides some 85 per cent of the irrigation water.

But as little snow has fallen in the last few years, and with the drought showing few signs of easing, farmers have been forced to dig ever deeper.—AFP