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On the eastern edge of the European Union and NATO, a growing humanitarian controversy is unfolding in Poland, where sweeping temporary restrictions on asylum access have left hundreds of Afghan migrants facing deportation to a Taliban-led regime that rights groups and survivors say threatens their lives. The policy, first rolled out in March 2025 as a 60-day emergency measure targeting irregular border crossings from Belarus, has been repeatedly extended by Polish authorities, creating a de facto suspension of asylum rights that has now stretched well over a year. Human rights organizations say officials are stretching the scope of the original law far beyond its stated parameters, applying it to any migrant who first entered Poland across the Belarus border regardless of where they are apprehended within the country.

On a muddy, sloped lane in one of Kabul’s poorest neighborhoods, 52-year-old Marofa stands visibly frustrated, pulling back her headscarf to show her thick graying hair. Like thousands of other residents in the Afghan capital, she is forced to haul heavy water containers long distances every day just to access drinkable water for her household.

“My back has no strength left, my legs can barely carry me,” she says. “Even with my white hair, I still have to do this work.”

Down the hill, a local mosque operates a free well, but its water is too yellow and brackish to drink, meaning residents still have to haul it for other uses. Potable water is only available via small three-wheeled water trucks that sell it at a price out of reach for many low-income families. “We can barely afford bread to eat,” said 90-year-old Wali Mohammad, another angry Deh Mazang neighborhood resident. “How are we supposed to pay for water?”

Both long-term residents say that just months after the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, Taliban authorities cut illegal pipes that some households had laid to siphon water from a shared communal well directly to their homes. Mohammad says officials gave no explanation for the cut-off: “They hold all the power, and they did not even tell us why they cut our water.” But 32-year-old local resident Najibullah Rahimi says the unregulated piping drained the well’s water level so drastically that households further up the hill were left completely dry, forcing the government to intervene.

This tense neighborhood conflict is just one visible symptom of a far deeper, rapidly accelerating crisis unfolding across Kabul: the capital is running out of groundwater at an alarming rate, threatening an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in the coming years, aid experts warn.

Nestled in a high-altitude valley of the Hindu Kush mountains, Kabul’s population of 6 million relies almost entirely on groundwater pumped from underground aquifers for daily use. A 2025 report from international aid organization Mercy Corps found that aquifer levels across the city have plummeted by 25 to 30 meters (80 to 100 feet) over the past decade. Today, some new wells must be drilled as deep as 150 meters (nearly 500 feet) just to reach usable water.

Aquifers are underground storage zones that collect water slowly over decades, as rain and melted snow seep through natural soil to replenish supplies. Depletion occurs when water is pumped out faster than it can be refilled, a process driven by two major forces: climate change and unregulated population growth.

Climate change, fueled by global fossil fuel emissions, has brought repeated multi-year droughts to Afghanistan, cutting the snowpack that normally melts gradually through spring and summer to replenish Kabul’s aquifers. Instead, the region now sees more frequent sudden, intense downpours that cause destructive flash flooding rather than slow recharge of groundwater. A recent 10-day period of heavy rain and landslides already killed 77 people across the country, underscoring the new climate reality facing the nation.

But water expert Najibullah Sadid, a Germany-based member of the Afghanistan Water and Environment Professionals Network, says the crisis would have arrived even without climate change. Kabul’s population has exploded more than twofold over the past 20 years: from 2.5 million in 2001, when the Taliban first fell from power and many Afghan refugees returned from neighboring countries, to an estimated 6 million today. A second wave of refugee returns began in 2023, when Pakistan and Iran launched large-scale expulsions of undocumented Afghans, putting even more strain on the capital’s infrastructure.

Rapid unplanned urbanization has compounded the problem: most new development has covered open natural ground with concrete and asphalt, eliminating the porous soil needed to absorb rainwater into aquifers. “Even if it rained every single day, it would not raise groundwater levels anymore,” Sadid explained. “There is simply no unpaved ground left for water to seep through.” Longstanding mismanagement has made the crisis worse, he added, pointing to unregulated groundwater extraction by large commercial beverage companies and commercial greenhouses that draw down massive amounts of water for profit.

Taliban authorities acknowledge the gravity of the situation. “The water situation in Kabul city is in a critical state,” said Qari Matiullah Abid, spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Water and Energy. “The main causes are a dramatic population increase, reduced rainfall, and sharply higher consumption across the city.”

Abid says the Taliban administration has already implemented a series of corrective measures: it has restricted commercial groundwater extraction by beverage producers, large-scale farmers and other businesses, installed water meters and imposed usage quotas on high-consumption operations like car washes and large commercial buildings, with eviction from the city as a penalty for exceeding limits. To boost groundwater recharge, the government has built small check dams across seasonal waterways in all 14 of Kabul’s districts, and dug thousands of absorption wells to capture stormwater for recharge. It also completed the Shah wa Arous Dam, inaugurated in 2024 with a 10 million cubic meter storage capacity, and removed millions of tons of sediment from the existing Qargha Dam to expand its usable storage.

Even with these steps, experts say the measures are not enough to reverse the depletion trend. Two large-scale infrastructure projects that could deliver a long-term sustainable solution for roughly 4 million Kabul residents have been bogged down by delays and funding gaps.

The first is a 200-kilometer pipeline that would carry fresh water from the Panjshir River north of Kabul to the capital, and the second is the planned Shah Toot Dam, a reservoir project located 30 kilometers southwest of the city. Together, the two projects would deliver a sustainable long-term water supply for the capital, Sadid says. While the dam would require six to seven years of construction, the pipeline could be completed relatively quickly if funding and approvals move forward.

Shafiullah Zahid, Kabul Zone Director for Afghanistan’s state-run Urban Water Supply and Sewage Corporation, says the Panjshir pipeline’s $130 million budget has been approved, but the original survey completed under the former Afghan government has required full revision, and an additional review is still pending. Once the review is complete, construction can begin, he said. The Shah Toot Dam, first planned as a joint Afghan-Indian project months before the 2021 Taliban takeover, has also been held up by funding delays, and would take six to seven years to complete if construction launches.

Sadid says the persistent delays stem from a long-running pattern, across both the current and former Afghan governments, of prioritizing flashy, visible infrastructure over life-sustaining water projects. “They spend billions on new roads and flyovers that catch the public eye,” he said. “But water projects that are fundamental to public health and people’s basic human rights get no priority. Water is essential to life — it is more important than any road.”

The widening geopolitical fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran has sent shockwaves through India’s energy supply chain, triggering the most severe cooking gas shortage in 10 years and pushing hundreds of thousands of low-income internal migrant workers to abandon urban livelihoods and return to their rural hometowns. The crisis traces its roots to Iran’s recent decision to close the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic maritime chokepoint that carries roughly 20% of the world’s daily crude oil shipments. As one of the world’s largest LPG importers, India relies heavily on Middle Eastern energy exports: approximately 60% of the country’s total LPG comes from Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and 90% of those shipments pass through the Strait of Hormuz. This dependence has left India uniquely exposed to the disruptions sparked by ongoing regional conflict.

For millions of Indian households, LPG – a blend of propane and butane – is the primary cooking fuel, making consistent access a non-negotiable requirement for daily life. For low-wage migrant workers, who make up the backbone of India’s urban industrial and service sectors, the supply crunch and subsequent price spike has proven catastrophic. Thirty-year-old Raj Kumar, a daily-wage laborer who spent 15 years working at a New Delhi bathware factory earning less than $7 a day, is one of hundreds of thousands of workers forced to leave the capital. For weeks, Kumar attempted to secure LPG to cook for his wife and two children, but skyrocketing prices and persistent shortages made staying impossible. The factory where he worked, one of thousands of small businesses affected by fuel shortages, shut down entirely, leaving Kumar and all 40 of his co-workers unemployed. Left with no other options, Kumar loaded his family’s belongings and traveled 650 kilometers back to his hometown in Mahua, Uttar Pradesh. “It is hard to stay here anymore. We were struggling to eat properly. Seeing my children and wife suffering for the past few days was painful,” Kumar told reporters.

Stories like Kumar’s are not isolated. Across major Indian industrial hubs including New Delhi, Mumbai and Gujarat, thousands of small and medium enterprises – from textile and ceramic manufacturing units to food processing facilities, local eateries and street food vendors – have scaled back operations or shut down completely as fuel supplies dried up. Migrant workers, who move from rural areas to cities in search of scarce, low-paying work, have borne the brunt of the crisis, a pattern that mirrors the widespread displacement seen during India’s 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.

Twenty-two-year-old Chandan, who works at a motorcycle spare parts factory in Bhiwandi, Rajasthan, spent all of his wedding savings trying to refill his small 5-kilogram LPG cylinder before being forced to head home to Balia village, also in Uttar Pradesh. After exhausting his savings, Chandan switched to eating at roadside eateries, but found that tripled commercial gas prices had pushed food prices up threefold as well. “Before the unforeseen gas crisis, I would buy a plate of rice for 50 rupees (around half a dollar), but all the eateries have tripled the price for the same plate, claiming an equal rise in commercial gas in the grey markets. I earn around 500 rupees a day ($6), and I cannot purchase a kilo of gas for 400 rupees ($4),” Chandan explained. With no government relief in sight, he joined the wave of reverse migration back to rural Uttar Pradesh.

Government data and official statements have painted a conflicting picture of the crisis. India’s federal energy ministry has claimed that it maintains uninterrupted domestic LPG supplies and that no large-scale worker outmigration from major cities is occurring, despite long queues of workers seeking tickets home at railway stations across the country. However, during a March 12 parliamentary address, junior petroleum and natural gas minister Suresh Gopi admitted that India holds only five days of strategic crude oil reserves, and just 20 days of LPG reserves to cover unexpected supply disruptions.

Compounding the crisis for migrant workers are long-standing regulatory barriers that limit their ability to purchase LPG in urban areas. Under current government rules, each household is only eligible for one subsidized LPG connection, which is almost always registered to the worker’s home village. In cities, migrants are only permitted to purchase small 5-kilogram cylinders, a process hampered by heavy bureaucratic restrictions. As a result, most migrants are forced to buy LPG on the unregulated black market, where prices are often multiple times the subsidized rate. In response to growing public pressure, the government announced on April 7 that it would ease these restrictions and double the national allocation of 5-kilogram cylinders, a move analysts say is too little too late.

The reverse migration trend has experts warning of long-term social and economic damage that mirrors and exceeds the fallout from past crises. Sunil Kumar Aledia, executive director of the Centre for Holistic Development and a prominent social activist, argues that the Indian government has failed to take proactive steps to mitigate the crisis, leaving vulnerable migrant communities to fend for themselves. “They are facing the burden of the LPG crisis. Although it seems the impact is gradual, the government has not offered any help,” Aledia said, warning that the government’s slow response could allow the crisis to escalate into a larger humanitarian catastrophe in the coming months.

Professor S Irudaya Rajan, chairman of the International Institute of Migration and Development in Kerala, compared the current crisis to the displacement seen during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the 2008 global recession, noting that the long-term damage is likely to be far more severe this time around. Rajan added that the crisis will be compounded by an additional wave of reverse migration from Gulf nations, where thousands of Indian expat workers are employed. “Not only India, but people from several other countries in Southeast Asia earn a significant percentage of remittances from the Gulf nations that outweigh the earnings from domestic labour engagement. As the people start migrating from the war-hit countries, the impact of internal migration would be aggravated by this international reverse migration,” Rajan explained.

Dr Adfer Shah, a New Delhi-based sociologist and South Asia analyst, described reverse migration as an existential threat to India’s most economically and socially marginalized communities. “Reverse migration places enormous pressure on village economies and rural livelihoods that are structurally not equipped to reabsorb the returning workforce. Such a shock affects their whole life, even their children’s education. It curtails all freedoms and opportunities that urban proximity offers them,” Shah said, noting that the influx of returning workers will push down rural wages, increase joblessness, and destabilize already fragile village economies.

At major railway hubs across New Delhi, thousands of workers are scrambling to secure tickets home, often paying double or triple the official fare because of overwhelming demand. Twenty-one-year-old Sintu Kumar Bhagat, who has been out of work for more than a month, waited at New Delhi Railway Station to board a train to his home village in Purnia, Bihar, after scraping together enough money to buy overpriced tickets for himself and his brother. “I got the tickets for double the price with difficulty. Booking has to be done a day or two in advance as everyone is leaving for home,” Bhagat said.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ashok Kumar Chaudhary, who traveled 1,000 kilometers from his Jharkhand village to work in Delhi’s iron manufacturing industry to support a family of five, echoed the despair shared by many returning workers. “I had travelled 1,000 kms from my village in Jharkhand to Delhi to support my family of five, now going back home empty-handed feels like a curse,” Chaudhary said as he waited to board his train at Anand Vihar Railway Station.

For workers like Raj Kumar, who waited with his wife and newborn child for a train back to Uttar Pradesh, the only hope is that the crisis will end quickly, allowing them to return to the urban jobs that offer their children a better future. “At home, we have firewood to cook and feed ourselves. I will work on farms until the end of the crisis, and I hope the situation here improves soon. We don’t have any option but to return so that we earn better and make a good future for our kids,” Kumar said. With India’s domestic energy reserves stretched thin and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East showing no sign of easing, that future remains increasingly uncertain for hundreds of thousands of the country’s most vulnerable workers.

Following the collapse of weekend ceasefire negotiations with Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a full blockade on the strategic Strait of Hormuz has sparked widespread pushback from key NATO allies, while triggering sharp volatility in global energy markets that threatens broader economic fallout. The strait, one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints for global energy trade, has become a central flashpoint in the escalating conflict between the U.S.-Israel coalition and Iran.

Within hours of Trump’s claim that other nations would join the blockade effort, top officials from major NATO member states made their opposition explicit on Monday, just ahead of the proposed implementation of the measure. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told the BBC that the United Kingdom would not lend any support to the blockade, emphasizing that London’s top priority remains securing the full, unobstructed reopening of the waterway for global shipping.

“[The closure] is deeply damaging,” Starmer said, adding that the UK and France would host a diplomatic summit this week to develop a coordinated multinational plan to protect commercial navigation through the strait once the broader conflict cools.

Other European and NATO-aligned nations echoed this sharp rejection. Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles described Trump’s order to block all vessels entering or departing Iranian ports and coastal areas in the strait as fundamentally unreasonable, framing the move as the latest escalation in a dangerous downward spiral of conflict. Spain has already consistently condemned the U.S.-Israeli declaration of war on Iran and refused to deploy any Spanish military assets to the conflict zone.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan also added his voice to calls for a diplomatic resolution to reopen the strait, rejecting any unilateral military escalation that would harm global trade.

In an apparent partial retreat from Trump’s initial aggressive announcement, U.S. Central Command clarified Monday that American forces would not block the passage of commercial vessels traveling to and from non-Iranian ports through the strait, softening the original pledge of a “complete blockade” that Trump had reiterated as recently as Monday during an interview on Fox News.

The breakdown of the ceasefire talks followed sharp mutual recriminations between the U.S. and Iranian negotiating teams. Iranian officials have accused U.S. Vice President JD Vance of acting in bad faith during the high-stakes negotiations, while Vance has claimed Iran refused to comply with American demands related to Tehran’s nuclear development program. The collapse comes just one week after the two sides announced a temporary two-week ceasefire, a deal that had been struck hours before a sweeping Trump-imposed deadline that saw the president threaten to “obliterate Iran’s whole civilization” if no agreement was reached.

The ceasefire had already delivered an immediate calming effect on global energy markets, pushing Brent crude prices below $100 per barrel, but Trump’s blockade announcement reversed those gains almost overnight. By Monday trading, Brent crude had jumped 7.7% to settle at $102.52 per barrel, while U.S. domestic crude rose nearly 8% to hit $104.02 per barrel. The UK’s May wholesale natural gas contract surged by an even steeper 11.7%, underscoring the broad impact of the strait closure on global energy supplies.

Before the war began and Iran effectively closed the strait, roughly 20% of the world’s total daily oil and liquefied natural gas supplies, plus large volumes of global fertilizer shipments, passed through the narrow waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea.

Market analysts warn that the risk of prolonged disruption to Hormuz shipping carries severe structural consequences for the global economy, already grappling with persistent inflationary pressures. “The market reaction to Trump’s threat underscores a simple but powerful reality: Hormuz risk is not theoretical; it is structural, and it is real,” explained Priyanka Sachdeva, a senior market analyst at brokerage firm Phillip Nova, in comments to The Guardian. “In today’s environment, every barrel of risk added to oil markets carries an inflation price tag for the global economy,” she added.

Trump’s blockade order would target any vessel that has paid a transit toll to Iran since Tehran closed the strait, with the president accusing Iran of running an extortion racket on commercial shipping. But analysts note that the order would inevitably disrupt energy flows to many U.S. allies, even those that depend entirely on Hormuz shipments for their energy security.

Writing for Responsible Statecraft over the weekend, analyst Kelley Beaucar Vlahos noted that the U.S. blockade plan would directly impact major treaty allies such as the Philippines, which gets 98% of its total energy supplies via the Strait of Hormuz. The blockade would also impact commercial vessels from other major U.S. partners including Japan, which has had LNG carriers transit the strait in recent weeks.

Geopolitical analysts warn that the blockade marks a dangerous escalation of the conflict that erodes the norms of international maritime law. Sarang Shidore, director of the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, described the U.S. move as a further step toward a “might-makes-right” global order. “Illegalities are being heaped on top of illegalities. The attack on Iran that started this war was compounded by Tehran’s seizure of the Strait of Hormuz. Washington’s blockade of the strait has further upped the ante,” Shidore said.

Iranian officials have already signaled they will take aggressive countermeasures to respond to the blockade. An advisor to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said Tehran retains significant unused leverage to retaliate, while Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf warned that American consumers will soon face skyrocketing fuel prices, saying U.S. drivers will “be nostalgic for $4-$5 gas.”

International legal experts echo the widespread concern that the blockade will kill the last remnants of the fragile ceasefire and plunge the region back into full-scale hostilities. Donald Rothwell, an international law professor at Australian National University, wrote in an analysis for The Conversation that a U.S. blockade would almost certainly end the temporary truce and resume full open hostilities. “In purely legal terms, if the US imposes a blockade then the ceasefire is over and hostilities have resumed,” Rothwell wrote.