Since the Taliban returned to power on August 15, 2021, Afghanistan has been in a severe humanitarian crisis. Today, according to the UN, 95% of the population does not have enough to eat. A situation triggered by the freeze of the Afghan central bank’s assets in the United States and the international sanctions that have brought the country’s economy to a standstill.
“The life of Afghans changed completely on August 15, 2021. Today they are starving and the country is plunged into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at the NGO Human Rights Watch. On the eve of the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul a year ago, half the population was already living below the poverty line. Since then, the situation has only worsened. The country, which lacked international aid – which by then accounted for 80% of its budget – saw its economic system collapse, leaving many Afghans without income, food and health care.
Upon arriving in Kabul in March, Samy Guessabi, regional director of the NGO Action Against Hunger, found the city almost at a standstill. “Many Afghans have lost their jobs and those who continue to work have seen a massive drop in wages,” he said. “At the same time, the standstill in international financing has created a liquidity crisis. People cannot even withdraw their savings from the bank. And those who have left the country are finding it very difficult to send money to their relatives.”
“There is no shortage of food, but the population cannot buy it”
“For many families there is only one priority, shelter and food. However, walking around the market stalls, there is no shortage of food,” the humanitarian continues. “The problem is that people don’t have the money to buy it.” Especially as this half-mast economy has come on top of runaway inflation linked to the global food crisis sparked by the conflict in Ukraine. “The price of some groceries has doubled, including cooking oil, rice and flour,” he said.
Overall, according to the World Food Program (WFP), almost 20 million people, or half the population, are now food insecure and 95% of the population does not have enough to eat. More than a million children under the age of five suffer from acute and persistent malnutrition.
In Ghor province (central country), WFP also recently announced that tens of thousands of residents have fallen into “catastrophic acute malnutrition,” the pre-famine stage. “The situation is even worse in the south of the country, which is mainly agricultural and is often hit by severe droughts,” notes Samy Guessabi. In view of this situation, Action Against Hunger regularly organizes fundraisers for the most vulnerable groups in its areas of operation. An emergency measure that, according to the humanitarian organization, is “far from ideal” and often insufficient.
Women and children at the front
Women and children are the first victims of this twin economic and humanitarian crisis. “Children are taken out of school to go to work. One or more are sold to other families to provide for the needs of others,” Fereshta Abbasi regrets. Children are often sold to traders as cheap labor and little girls are bought through forced marriages – practices that already existed in the country but are on the increase.
“Women, on the other hand, have lost everything. Like men, they find themselves out of work and without income, if sometimes they were the only ones doing household chores, but they have also lost a multitude of fundamental rights,” the researcher continues. For a year, the Taliban authorities have multiplied restrictions on them. They are forced to wear the burqa and are no longer able to move about on their own. If they continue to be allowed certain professions, there must be a clear separation between men and women.
proliferation of diseases
Another direct result of this twin crisis: the number of illnesses is skyrocketing in a breathless healthcare system. “This humanitarian crisis has been going on for decades at the rhythm of wars, political unrest and environmental threats, but today it has reached an unprecedented intensity,” summarizes Amber Alayyan, deputy head of the Afghanistan region, to the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF). has been operating in the country since 2011.
“I remember a mother who came with her baby who was about eight months old. He was tiny,” she says. “Speaking to this woman, we found that most of her dinners consisted of just a cup of tea. She was severely malnourished and didn’t have enough milk to feed her child.” She counts hundreds of cases like this every week.
In Herat, in the west of the country, where MSF runs a clinic, the pediatrician sees an influx of around 800 patients a day, compared with around a hundred a few months ago. However, the facility only has about sixty beds. “We see people coming from much further afield,” she explains. “They are turning to our structures because most local hospitals lack nurses and face shortages of certain medicines, antibiotics in particular.”
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Increasing pressure on humanitarian aid
Taking stock of the past year, Amber Alayyan and Samy Guessabi share the same observation: Given this situation, the pressure on humanitarian organizations is stronger than ever. And when Action Against Hunger, like MSF, has managed to massively increase its operating budget and strengthen its field staff, they are concerned about the coming months. “We are approaching the rainy season and then winter, some villages will become inaccessible… I don’t want to imagine the situation if the residents could not make reservations,” fears Samy Guessabi.
“We need awareness from the international community,” he said. “The international sanctions are killing the population. The only way out of this humanitarian crisis is to restart the economy, and the only way to do that is to reopen the door to foreign investment.”
The international community has made the issue of human rights, and women’s rights in particular, a condition for the granting of international aid. When the Taliban decided in March to ban girls from secondary school, the World Bank decided to suspend around $600 million in aid.
“For a year, the Taliban have shown that they prefer to impose more and more restrictions than to meet demands from the international community to improve the living conditions of the population,” said Fereshta Abbasi of Human Rights Watch. “They urgently need to live up to their responsibilities. But the major international organizations must continue to fight for a solution in order to continue to help the population there.”
Alongside this increasingly massive influx, Amber Alayyan is also noting that more and more patients are arriving in serious condition. “We are seeing an explosion of cases of acute diarrhoea, measles and even cholera. This is a direct result of poor access to health services and poor nutrition… We are in a vicious circle,” he laments.