'It’s not clear when this is going to end': The humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan
Atika Abulmalik Mingally and her three daughters are struggling to feed themselves in Afghanistan.
When heavy fighting between Taliban and Afghan national army forces broke out in Atika Abulmalik Mingally’s home province of Takhor four years ago, she and her family fled to Kabul.
In the Afghan capital, the mother of seven found that she couldn’t afford new clothes for her children or the medical costs for her youngest son’s liver condition, but she was able to prepare one meal each day for her family - at least until now.
After the Taliban take-over in August, the hotel that her husband worked at closed. Other than a few days of delivery work where he earns 10-15 Afghani (10c), stable employment has been impossible to find since.
Faced with an empty kitchen and no money to buy food at the market, Mingally sought help last month from her neighbours on Company Road, a deprived part of West Kabul. Those who were able to help gave her a small amount of beans.
Aged from four to 15 years old, Mingally’s children are now increasingly going whole days without any food.
“At the moment, almost 23 million people can't put food on the table every single day,” says Mary Ellen McGroarty, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Afghanistan.
Sitting in the UN compound in Kabul, McGroarty adds that 8.7 million of those people are now taking “absolutely desperate” measures to feed themselves, including selling household goods and early marriage for their daughters.
Even with these desperate measures, half of all Afghan children under five years old — around 3.2 million — are expected to suffer from acute malnutrition by the end of 2021.
At the Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, the malnutrition unit is treating 50 children and admitting ten new cases every day.
In the unit, Kobra (25) is sitting with her daughter Omol (1) who became sick two months ago; they've been in the hospital for two days. Before Omol became malnourished, she was “trying to walk and learning to speak and eat food with her hands but now she can't walk,” says Kobra. “She's always on the bed, just breathing.” Kobra’s husband currently earns 10-15 Afghani per day. “How can he bring them good food?” she says.
Even before the aid cuts imposed after the Taliban takeover in August crippled the public health sector, many Afghans were required to buy their own medicine for hospital treatment and many staff were already going months without salaries.
A doctor told Kobra the medicine that she needs to buy for Omol from a pharmacy. She doesn’t have the 2,000 Afghan (18 euro) it costs and has begged her husband to borrow the money.
In another corner of the unit Zobaida (27) is with her son, Maiwand, almost four but tiny for his age. She has spent the last nine days at the hospital, sleeping on the floor beside his cot at night. Before he became sick, Maiwand was “very active and played with his brothers and sisters” but now he “can’t move and spends all his time on the bed,” says Zobaida.
He’s still visibly unwell after his nine days in hospital but the doctor says he must go home. Maiwand will get better with milk, the doctor says, and they have more children they need to treat. Zobaida says her husband is jobless - “When I leave the hospital, I can't get milk for my son.” The nurse overseeing the malnourishment unit says it's very difficult when they tell the mothers to leave the hospitals.
“We had to tell five mothers to leave because another ten children have arrived,” she says. “We give the mothers some medicine so they can take care of their children but when they finish the medicine, they get malnourished again. The mothers can't prepare food for their children because of the economic situation.” Afghan children have long suffered from malnutrition due to poverty and droughts during the summer months, says Gaïa Giletta, a nurse who oversees a malnutrition unit with Doctors Without Borders in Herat, but this is normally followed by a decrease in September.
So far, she has not seen a decline in numbers at the unit, which is admitting 60 babies every week - “It’s not clear when this is going to end, or how long is it going to be like this.”
Afghanistan is now among the worst humanitarian crises in the world, as hunger threatens the lives of millions of Afghans. The country is dealing with the most severe droughts it’s faced in 30 years, the fallout from decades of conflict, regime change, Covid-19, and punishing sanctions and aid cuts.
Any one of the factors would have created pressure on vulnerable groups during the unforgiving Afghan winter but the combination of all of them has created an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
“It is nobody's choice where they are born or when they are born,” says McGroarty. “What I'm seeing is that the children of Afghanistan, by the sheer lottery of birth and lottery of geopolitics, are getting caught up in something that is not of their making.”
*Climate destruction has made Afghanistan’s weather even more extreme Afghanistan is dominated by mountain ranges and the northeast part of the country experiences subarctic winter conditions, dropping to –15° C in winter. This landscape creates icy conditions which routinely delays food supplies during the unforgiving winter period in Afghanistan.
Despite contributing little to the causes of climate change, Afghanistan is also now one of the most vulnerable nations in the world to the adverse effect of global warming. Afghan communities regularly face significant risk from flooding and drought which is amplified by poverty, food insecurity, and inequality.
In rural areas, a second drought in just three years is severely affecting the livelihoods of 7.3 million people who rely on agriculture and livestock to survive.
Due to the scale of the drought, McGroarty says that WFP “was already planning to scale up for a massive drive and response given what's coming this year.” Food stocks are expected to run out this summer and millions of families will be forced to choose between migration and starvation without urgent action.
*Conflict: Intensive fighting between the Taliban and the Afghan national army between January and September this year drove over 677,000 people out of their homes, disrupting lives and livelihoods. This added to the almost 3 million people internally displaced within the country at the start of the year from the decades of war in Afghanistan.
The conflict has meant that many farmers were unable to sow crops or tend to livestock, while people forced to leave behind their home communities find a precarious existence in the cities.
Mingally, for example, now pays 4,000 AFG (€37) per month in rent in Kabul after leaving behind the home her family owned in Tahor. As well as severing links with her parents who remained in Tahor, the cost of rent reduced the food budget available for her young family.
Decades of conflict has also left Afghanistan with one of the biggest populations of widows in the world. Many of these female-led households are now grappling with Taliban restrictions on women working. The loss of these women’s incomes, even temporarily, will make it harder for their families to see food on the table regularly.
*Sanctions and aid cuts: Until the Taliban takeover, the US and other international donors contributed 80% of the Afghanistan’s national budget.
In August, the international community cut direct aid to Afghan ministries, now under the Taliban’s control. In addition, the US authorities froze 8.4-billion-euro worth of Afghanistan’s national reserves held by US banks.
Long-standing and new sanctions on the Taliban imposed by the EU and US have further complicated the ability of NGOs and UN agencies to provide aid in Afghanistan.
When the international community turned off development funding, budget support, and froze government assets, it created “a whole new level of meltdown in terms of rupturing the middle class with [public workers’] salaries not being paid,” says McGroarty.
90% of Afghan households led by someone with higher education are now experiencing food insecurity, compared with 75% before August.
The nurses overseeing the malnutrition unit at Indira Gandhi Hospital have not been paid in almost four months. “The economic crisis is so hard in this hospital and for all Afghan people, especially for midwives and nurses who haven't received their salary,” says one nurse. “How can I continue my job?” Pharmacies are also struggling to provide medicine to those who need it due to inflation and capital controls on cash withdrawals. A pharmacy owner in Kabul said that they can only take out 10,000 Afghan (around 90 euro) a week and it’s not enough to pay salaries, expenses, and re-stock medicine.
*Donate to the humanitarian response: The US and EU granted exceptions to their sanctions on Afghanistan in September to allow humanitarian aid into Afghanistan. UN agencies and international NGOs are now attempting to make up the shortfall from cuts to direct aid to the Afghan government by channelling funding directly to Afghan people and local NGOs.
Large-scale humanitarian funding is now required to stave of the worst-case scenario that could leave millions dead or seriously ill this winter. “Based on the numbers we have and what we’re seeing in nutrition centres, we need $220 million dollars a month to do the minimum that we need to do,” says McGroarty in Kabul. “That means close to a billion dollars for the first 6 months up until 2022.” “We have discussions ongoing with donors, but we have no confirmed contributions for that yet,” she says. “There’s a funding gap of $1 billion for the first few months of 2022.” Much of this funding will go towards cash assistance programmes, one of the most effective and dignified ways to prevent hunger.
The WFP and other UN agencies also need to take steps now to stabilise Afghanistan’s food systems and rebuild the agricultural sector for next winter and in the longer term. Supporting the agricultural sector from which 60 per of Afghans derive their income is key to rehabilitating the lives of people impacted by conflict and displacement.
*Demand quick and pragmatic diplomacy: UN and aid workers have privately said that in the face of far-reaching sanctions, aid cuts and frozen government assets, the shortfall in funding for Afghanistan will never be filled by humanitarian aid alone.
“The only solution to me is to release the assets [held in US banks],” says Christophe Garnier, the regional director in Herat for Doctors Without Borders. “We are talking about the banking system collapsing and it is certainly not for civilians to pay the price for this.” The decision to lift sanctions and release funds to a Taliban-controlled government is a decision fraught with political sensitives and genuine concern for how far the Islamic group will curtail human rights, particularly those of women and girls. But without some recognition of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan is effectively cut off from the global banking system and international trade, imposing a devasting cost on ordinary Afghans.
Sanctions and aid cuts are already taking the lives of ordinary Afghans, as medical centres close due to lack of funding and the government remains unable to import food and fuel or pay public-sector salaries.
There is a window of opportunity for the West to agree important concessions with the Taliban on women and minority rights, but the stark reality is that slow diplomacy will cost millions of lives as the unforgiving winter arrives in Afghanistan.
*Reduce carbon emissions: The average Irish person emits 13.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year; the average Afghan emits 0.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Ireland is already set to miss its 2030 targets to reduce emissions.
Without a radical reduction in the carbon emissions of Irish people and other citizens of the West, vulnerable countries like Afghanistan will continue to suffer disproportionately from the devastating impact of global warming.
“If this cycle continues, the level of need is just going to increase,” says McGroarty in Kabul, “what happens then is that desperate people make desperate choices and take desperate measures.”
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
