Ramazan Mengal looks older than his age, even though he has applied henna on his beard and moustache to dye the grey strands of hair.

He is a local villager and shepherd from Sangeen, a remote settlement in an abandoned cluster of villages called Daak, located along the Pakistan-Iran border in Balochistan’s Nushki district.

To an outsider, it might appear as if he leads a very simple life, but in reality, Ramazan is saddled with debt, one which he hasn’t been able to repay for years. He says that instead of shrinking, the borrowing has continued to grow. He tells Dawn that his debts are tightly bound to the drought that has defined life in his village for decades.

The old shepherd’s livestock began to weaken as the grazing land dried up and the grass started to vanish. Many animals died due to the extreme shortage of food and water. With no pasture left, he was forced to purchase the animals’ fodder at prices far beyond his means.

Ramazan’s creditor, a trader in the main bazaar of Nushki town, lends money to many villagers. Like most families in Sangeen, Ramazan survives on borrowed money. Due to the frequency of borrowing, he cannot recall the exact amount he owes.

“I think I have to pay Rs300,000 or Rs400,000 to the trader,” he says, sitting in his guest room, situated within a mud-house or kaccha makan.

“If we do not ask for loans, we cannot survive, as there is nothing we can do to make ends meet.” He explains how each visit to the bazaar deepens his losses. “When I go to the bazaar, I sell a goat or sheep for Rs20,000, and then I have to buy ration for my family and fodder for my animals worth Rs60,000. So I pay Rs 20,000, and the trader writes the remaining amount in his register. This is how my debts have mounted in a couple of years.”

The cycle of borrowing has left Ramazan spiritually uneasy as well. “Despite offering prayers, I have to lie to the trader that I will pay back all his debts soon,” Ramazan says, touching both ears in a gesture of seeking forgiveness. “Then I go back to him to take another loan.”

A drought that does not end

Ramazan’s story is not unique in Daak. Over cups of black tea, villagers recount similar struggles related to livestock losses, mounting debt, and the slow collapse of livelihoods.

According to Ihsan Mir, a local researcher from Nushki, the region has endured repeated droughts for decades. “If there is a drought in Daak, it continues for five or six years,” he says, explaining that dry spells in the area are long and relentless.

Nushki district lies around 140 kilometres southwest of Quetta and borders Afghanistan. Its landscape is marked by an unusual convergence of mountains, plains and desert. Sangeen sits at the mouth of the desert, making it especially vulnerable to rainfall failure and prolonged dry periods.

Residents say drought existed even before the 1990s, but it rarely stretched beyond a year or two. That pattern changed after 1997. Since then, dry spells have become longer and more frequent, steadily eroding water sources, rangelands and livelihoods across Daak.

According to the Pakistan Meteorological Department’s Drought Watch 2025, Balochistan has an arid to semi-arid climate marked by erratic rainfall, extreme temperatures and prolonged dry spells. Much of western and southwestern Balochistan depends on winter rain rather than the summer monsoon.

Annual rainfall in these areas ranges between 71 and 231 millimetres, with districts like Nushki receiving far less. Forecasts for December 2025 to February 2026 predict below-normal rainfall and above-normal temperatures, conditions likely to intensify drought further.

Villages left behind

The effects of the drought can be seen in abandoned homes and shrinking villages of the district. Sangeen’s old populated area has now become completely deserted.

“We left our houses because of the 2022 floods that wreaked havoc in the Nushki district,” says Qudoos Mengal, a teenager who accompanies visitors to the abandoned settlement.

The floods of 2022 caused widespread devastation across Pakistan, especially in Balochistan and Sindh, washing away swathes of land, affecting 33 million people, killing 1,700, and incurring losses worth $30 billion, according to government estimates.

Displacement has continued since then, largely driven by drought. “There used to be over 40 households in Sangeen,” the teenager tells Dawn. “Now there are only 15.”

People still living in Daak have to survive without basic facilities. Residents tell Dawn that there are no schools, no health unit and no source of clean drinking water there.

To top it all off, people are forced to travel around 15 kilometres to fetch water from a place called Zagarwal. During a visit to Daak, there was barely any water in the villages there or even in parts of Nushki town.

Tube wells exist in some areas, including Sangeen, but the water is saline and unfit for drinking. “There are two tractors and a couple of donkeys in the village,” says Haji Manzoor Mengal, a man in his seventies. “Those who can afford to do so bring water by tractor tankers while the poor ones in the village fetch water on their donkeys.”

Whenever there is an emergency, tanker water is shared among families. Some land is cultivated, but only when it rains, which is extremely scarce. Agriculture is entirely dependent on rain and limited largely to domestic use. “We mostly grow wheat and a few other crops for our own consumption,” Haji says.

The village cleric joins the conversation quietly: “I am a mullah, and I don’t even have a donkey to fetch water.”

Livelihoods under pressure

Nushki and the neighbouring Chaghi district were once known for producing watermelons and muskmelons, widely sold in Quetta and other parts of Balochistan. However, the prolonged drought has made the cultivation of these fruits increasingly unreliable, forcing many farmers to sell livestock to survive. The concerns of the local population have been aggravated by the proposed construction of the Burj Aziz Dam near Quetta.

Tribal elders from Nushki, led by Sardar Asif Sher Jamaldini, have raised these concerns publicly. They argue that farmers in Nushki and Chaghi are heavily dependent on seasonal river flows and fear the dam could deprive them of their livelihood. They also recall that a similar project proposed in Afghanistan’s Helmand province was dropped after opposition to rainwater harvesting laws. In a district already reeling from prolonged drought, residents say the dam could worsen their hardships.

Nushki has experienced multiple severe droughts. The first major spell began in 1997, killing livestock and forcing families to migrate from Daak. In its aftermath, non-governmental organisations began operating in the district to provide relief. One such local is Zahid Mengal, now head of the Azad Foundation in Quetta.

Originally from Nushki, Zahid has worked in drought-affected areas of Nushki and Chaghi since the early 2000s. He says recovery from drought is slow and requires consistency. “For Nushki, drought recovery typically requires at least one full year of near-normal rainfall, especially during the winter season,” he explains. “Sustainable improvement depends on repeated seasonal rains, not isolated events.”

Balochistan receives about 176 millimetres of rain annually, but districts like Nushki and Chaghi receive less than 50 millimetres. In such arid zones, even minor rainfall deficits can devastate water sources, crops and livestock. “We have seen this pattern for more than 20 years,” Zahid says. “Thus, farmers suffer, compelled to sell their livestock.”

Relief without recovery

Relief work continues sporadically. Recently, district authorities, in coordination with the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA), have distributed food supplies in remote areas affected by drought, floods and landslides, including Nushki.

Officials say the aim is to support vulnerable families and farmers while addressing water shortages and unsanitary conditions, and that relief activities will continue. They, however, acknowledged that the situation in the district was worse than expected.

“The drought situation is worse, not bad, in Nushki,” Additional Deputy Commissioner of Nushki Umer Jamali tells Dawn. “It rained recently in the district, but it cannot cover the long drought season. Daak and Keshangi, among other places in Nushki, are severely affected by the drought.”

Never-ending battle

As the visit to Sangeen ends, Ramazan remains where he began — tending what is left of his livestock, measuring survival in loans and dwindling fodder.

His henna-darkened beard hides the grey, but not the toll of decades spent battling a drought that never truly ends.

For Ramazan and others in Daak, relief arrives in fragments, rain in rumours, and recovery remains a distant promise. Until the land changes, so too will their debts continue to grow, written into the soil itself.

Header image: Abandoned mud-and-stone dwellings sit amid parched desert scrub as sand dunes creep closer, reflecting prolonged drought and a landscape steadily losing its ability to sustain life in the Daak area of Balochistan’s Nushki district. The area has been affected by repeated spells of drought since 1997. — Akbar Notezai