When Siddiqa* heard the roaring sound of approaching flood waters, she didn’t immediately realize how dangerous her situation had become. She went to the window of her room to look outside, as it had a good view to the end of the alley. She saw a wave of water approaching their house and immediately sounded the alarm: “There is a flood coming! Hurry up, run!”
As she shouted warnings, she gathered her three young children into her arms. At that moment the only adults in the house were Siddiqa, her mother-in-law and father-in-law, and her brother-in-law’s wife. Moments later, the front gate of the house burst open under the power of the flood wave. The water was so dangerous that her father-in-law, Mohammad Kabir*, was only able to take a few relatives at a time to the safety of a hill near their home. First, he took Siddiqa, 24, and her six-year-old daughter, then he returned to get his wife and his other daughter-in-law, who was carrying Siddiqa’s one-year-old daughter. Finally, 70-year-old Mohammad Kabir tried to return to save Siddiqa’s five-year-old son, but was quickly swept away from their house by the flash flood. He repeatedly tried to rescue his grandson but was knocked against the wall. Finally, he was able to grasp the boy’s hand, but not for long. “I was holding my grandson Abu Bakr’s hand tightly when a flood knocked us down,” he recounts to Zan Times. “We swirled three times, but on the fourth, his hand split from mine. First my feet, then my head hit the rock, and my grandson was swept away.”
Siddiqa was watching as her father-in-law struggled to save her son. She thought about going into the raging current to save her boy but feared losing another child if she was no longer there. “When I wanted to enter the water, my daughter held my leg so as to not to go and not let her get swept away,” she tells Zan Times.
Siddiqa cries and is clearly distraught as I talk to her. As a female reporter in this province whose only family has been displaced by the flash floods that hit Baghlan province, it is my duty to report on the situation facing Siddiqa, her family and hundreds of other women. Recent floods have killed hundreds in the province, especially in the districts of Pul-e-khumri, Barka, Guzargah Nur, Nahrin, and Dehna Ghori.
The dangerous flood appeared without warning on May 10, 2024, after heavy rains started falling in Baghlan at 1 p.m. and continued for the next two hours. The death toll is at least 315 in Baghlan province, with another 1,630 injured, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which said that more than 2,600 houses have been completely or partially destroyed. A source at an aid organization tells Zan Times that most of the injured and dead are women and children, especially young girls.
Siddiqa, her husband, and their two surviving children now live in a tent provided by the Aga Khan Foundation. In her hand is a small blue car that was her son’s favourite toy. “This is the only thing left of my son. I am waiting for him, maybe he will come back to me,” she says as she touches it and kisses the toy.
The painful story of Siddiqua is retold countless times by women in Baghlan province. Twenty-one-year-old Siahmoi* lived two houses apart from her elder sister and four children. With Siamoi’s husband in Iran looking for work and her brother-in-law at work, there was no one to help the sisters when the flood waters arrived in their area. They stood inside their homes and cried out for help but no one came.
Siamoi could do nothing as flood waters carried away all four of her nieces and nephews, who ranged in age from a six year old to a one-month-old baby. Her 20-year-old elder sister had four children. “I saw my sister struggling in the water, but no one reached out to her. All of a sudden, one wall collapsed and then the other wall collapsed and I didn’t see anything anymore,” she tells Zan Times. Siamoi washed up on a bit of dry land.
Nothing is left of their houses – the land has been swept clean of all debris. “There was nothing left. I could only see flood destruction around me,” Siamoi explains. Now, she lives in a tent. She doesn’t even know the fate of her brother-in-law, who had gone looking for work in the provincial capital, Pul-i-Khumri, on the day of the disaster. She is completely alone: “I don’t know anyone. I am very afraid that the flood may come again and what will I do here alone. My husband is in Iran and I don’t know anyone else here.”
Near Siamoi’s tent, I see an old woman who is mourns the death of her 18-year-old son. While Basira* and the rest of her children were saved by neighbours, who lifted them onto the roof of the house, her teenage son fell under a collapsing wall and died. “The house was shaking and the walls were falling one by one. I thought that everyone was saved, but I noticed that my son is missing,” she explains. Basira does not talk much. Her pain is the death of her son, not her completely destroyed house, nor her family’s homelessness.
A source at an aid organization tells Zan Times that the number of dead and wounded will keep increasing in the aftermath of this disaster. Many are in urgent need of shelter, food, and clothing. The source says that at least 30 percent of victims in Barka district have not yet received any help, even drinking water.
The World Health Organization has said that it and its local partners have deployed 17 mobile teams in flood-affected areas in Baghlan province. The WHO is providing medicine and medical equipment, stated director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on X (formerly Twitter). In addition, the WHO states it has sent seven metric tons of medical equipment to the flood-affected areas in northern Afghanistan. Several other international organizations as well as local merchants and youth volunteers are also distributing aid to the flood victims. And Baghlan isn’t the only province affected by heavy rains. In recent days, at least 65 people were killed by flood waters in Faryab province, with around 1,500 homes destroyed, according to the Taliban, while another 50 were killed in the western province of Ghor. These most recent floods come after devastating floods in April, which killed more than 70 in western and southern Afghanistan.
In Baghlan province, Siahmoi says that she and other women have lost everything and need help rebuilding their houses: “Women need help with building shelter. We cannot live in these tents any longer. I am a lonely and displaced woman, what can I do?”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees and writer. Laila Khomeosh is the pseudonym of a journalist in Afghanistan.
