The war-torn country is on the verge of mass starvation nearly four months after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, where more than half of the population faces acute hunger amid freezing temperatures. According to a report by the United Nations World Food Program, Afghanistan’s economy has been in freefall since the Taliban took control of the country after ousting the Western-backed government.
According to the UN agency, the economic crisis have created a distinct class of hungry. This is because, for the first time, urban residents are experiencing food insecurity at similar rates to rural communities. David Beasley, lead of WFP’s operations in Afghanistan, told reporters the organization is in a ‘race against time’ to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
‘What’s happening in Afghanistan is just horrific. I met families with no jobs, no cash and no food, mothers who sold one child to feed another, and the lucky children who made it to the hospital. The world cannot turn its back as the Afghan people starve’, said Beasley.
Several humanitarian organizations have warned that a million children could lose their lives as winter sets in. According to the New York Times, the food insecurity and looming mass starvation could be a damning sign for both the Taliban government and the United States, which has imposed economic restrictions as the country measures the Sunni Pashtun group’s progress.
As WFP’s country director for Afghanistan, Mary-Ellen McGroarty called on the international community to intervene to end the “tsunami of hunger”. According to her, ‘the innocent people of Afghanistan, the children…whose lives have been upended for no reason of their own, cannot be condemned to hunger and starvation just due to the lottery of geopolitics and the lottery of birth’.
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