Snowmelt Displaces Thousands

Spring’s floods caused by the heaviest snowmelt in six years are being blamed for causing at least 14 deaths, leaving thousands homeless and swamping Afghanistan’s modest flood-prevention programme.

At least 19 of the country's 34 provinces sustained serious flooding, according to an emergency commission created by President Hamed Karzai before the current crisis.

The commission is funded with 11.4 million US dollars from the national budget and foreign aid organisations. Afghanistan's contribution - 6.2 million US dollars - was earmarked for emergency engineering works along the Amu Darya river, which runs along part of the northern border with Central Asia.

However, aid groups soon found themselves scrambling to provide blankets, food, medicine and shelter all over the country as people were driven from their homes by unrelenting floodwaters.

The Amu Darya, which flows from the Pamir mountains, this year swamped at least 168,000 hectares of land, washing away crops and orchards.

Agriculture Minister Obaidullah Ramin recently told Balkh provincial government officials that stabilising the river would take 12 years and cost about 240 million dollars. Each year, it threatens about 300,000 people living in low-lying areas.

Elsewhere, on March 18, the Helmand river flooded large areas of Uruzgan province. Then, on March 29, the Band-e-Sultan dam, north of Ghazni city, ruptured, killing at least six and sending floodwaters into the provincial capital, 30 kilometres to the south.

Meanwhile, several hundred residents of Chak, about 40 kilometres north of Band-e-Sultan in Wardak province, remain threatened by floodwaters building up behind a dam that is much larger than the one at Band-e-Sultan.

Engineers at Chak, 90 kilometres southwest of Kabul, are working to create a controlled release from the overflowing reservoir, trying to open floodgates that have remained locked during six years of dry weather.

At least 80 families are uncertain whether to return home, said Gulam Sakhi, 61, whose house sits just 200 metres from the dam and says that thousands of hectares of nearby farmland have been rendered useless for crops this year.

Meanwhile, the start of classes has been delayed at Chak’s primary school, built by the United Nations last year at a cost of 200,000 dollars, but now tilting dangerously due to the rising water table.

Amanullah Nasrat is an IWPR staff reporter in Chak. Mohammad Jawad Sharifzada is an IWPR staff reporter in Kabul.