Gusts of wind blew dust up off the ground as Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked towards the graveyard where all their children are buried. They showed us the graves of the three boys they lost in the past two years – one-year-old Rahmat, seven-month-old Koatan, and most recently, three-month-old Faisal Ahmad. All three suffered from malnutrition, say Ghulam and Nazo.
Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo. I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.
There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or NGOs.
Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames. It felt like someone was cutting me into half with a saw from my head to my feet, said Ghulam.
The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.
Food assistance has diminished drastically, pushing more children towards starvation. We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, cites John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director.
Nearly half of all Afghan children under the age of five are stunted, with countless families like Ghulam and Nazo's facing the grim reality of hunger and helplessness in a country that once thrived. As government support falters and international aid declines, the children of Afghanistan find themselves caught in a catastrophic web of despair.
Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo. I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.
There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or NGOs.
Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames. It felt like someone was cutting me into half with a saw from my head to my feet, said Ghulam.
The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.
Food assistance has diminished drastically, pushing more children towards starvation. We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, cites John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director.
Nearly half of all Afghan children under the age of five are stunted, with countless families like Ghulam and Nazo's facing the grim reality of hunger and helplessness in a country that once thrived. As government support falters and international aid declines, the children of Afghanistan find themselves caught in a catastrophic web of despair.
