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 from 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.
We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, says John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director. Food assistance kept a lid in this country on hunger and malnutrition, particularly for the bottom five million who really can't cope without international support. That lid has now been lifted. The soaring of the malnutrition is placing the lives of more than three million children in peril.
Aid has sharply declined because the single largest donor, the US, stopped nearly all aid to Afghanistan earlier this year. But WFP says eight or nine other donors who funded them in the last two years have also stopped, with many others giving much less than they were last year. The Taliban government's policies also affect how much the world is willing to help.
At the Sheidaee graveyard, two-thirds of the graves are for children, highlighting the grim reality of this humanitarian disaster. Families struggle to feed their children, with many resorting to desperate measures as they face unending hunger. With winter approaching, the urgency of the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan cannot be overstated.
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 from 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.
We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, says John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director. Food assistance kept a lid in this country on hunger and malnutrition, particularly for the bottom five million who really can't cope without international support. That lid has now been lifted. The soaring of the malnutrition is placing the lives of more than three million children in peril.
Aid has sharply declined because the single largest donor, the US, stopped nearly all aid to Afghanistan earlier this year. But WFP says eight or nine other donors who funded them in the last two years have also stopped, with many others giving much less than they were last year. The Taliban government's policies also affect how much the world is willing to help.
At the Sheidaee graveyard, two-thirds of the graves are for children, highlighting the grim reality of this humanitarian disaster. Families struggle to feed their children, with many resorting to desperate measures as they face unending hunger. With winter approaching, the urgency of the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan cannot be overstated.
