Afghanistan’s mothers sell babies to pay for food after a year of the Taliban
When the couple arrive, Farheena is clinging on to her four-month old daughter, Laila, whose face has become wet from her mother’s tears.
She barely knows the couple, but they will soon take Laila back with them to Kabul, having paid Farheena £2,000 for her child.
When they left she covered her mouth with the sleeve of her jilbab to stop anyone hearing her cries; the Taliban could punish them all if they found out about the exchange.
It has now been a year since the 28-year-old teacher from Mayamana, Afghanistan lost her job and sold her daughter, which she said was to ensure the rest of her family could eat.
The mother of six was banned from returning to her students when the Taliban captured the city exactly one year ago, on August 15, 2021.
Without any income, and a husband stuck in Iran, she said her children were starving and that her eldest was hospitalised with acute malnutrition. When her neighbour told her that an infertile couple had been looking for a family willing to sell them a newborn baby, Farheena said she was interested.
She told The Times: “There is not a day that I do not cry out for my baby”, but admitted it is possible she will have to sell another for the others to survive the coming winter.
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Since the takeover last year, international organisations have said that families in Afghanistan selling their newborn to strangers had become “common practice”. Staff at maternity wards are also increasingly involved in facilitating the sales.
A spokesman for the Afghan National Aid and Humanitarian Organisation (ANAHO) said the trade, which is outlawed under the Taliban and happens covertly, was observed “very rarely” before last September, but in recent months, the charity has been dealing with “at least two families a week” who have sold a child.
Four other families who also sold babies in the past six months spoke with The Times. The most recent of their sales was in May, when a mother was offered £200 for her two-month-old son.
The mother of the child, who was from Kabul, said some of her friends were refusing to breastfeed their newborns because they believe they will not be able to sell the child if it “has formed a bond with the mother”.
ANAHO said the asking price for a child has nosedived because of the mounting number of “families [who] are now desperate for some financial relief.”
When the Taliban transformed the country into the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the US froze $7 billion of the central bank’s foreign assets. The addition of international sanctions and a decline in development funding has caused the country to fall into its worst hunger crisis in decades.
The Taliban’s restrictions on women’s employment also lost the country over $1 billion, according to the UN, adding to the “catastrophic” levels of food insecurity. More than 900,000 people have become unemployed since the group took control.
Two senior midwives at government hospitals in Afghanistan told The Times they were aware of staff on maternity wards who had been facilitating the sale of babies because “so many mothers are afraid to take home babies who they cannot afford to feed”.
It is understood that in some cases mothers have given their infants to strangers free of charge in the hope that they will provide them with the food and shelter they cannot.
Save The Children Afghanistan said that while the practice existed prior to the Taliban takeover, it has increased in the past year.
Athena Rayburn, its director of advocacy, compared the underground trade to “quicksand” with few families admitting to buying or selling children. She said there was no official blackmarket, but often “someone in a position of power has noticed someone is extremely vulnerable, and said, ‘If you sell me your child, I’ll give you money’.”
The organisation said it had come across instances of landlords pressuring families unable to pay rent to sell their child. It has at times intervened and offered mothers cash grants to keep the babies, but admitted this was not sustainable.
A 27-year-old dentist from the Balkh province, who is married to a doctor and has a three-year-old biological daughter, said he paid £1,600 for a boy because the family wanted a son.
He was told about the infant by his friends at university, who are all also in search of more children to buy. He said he “paid a higher price” because he wanted to help the family. He also claimed to know one family whose daughter was bought by a couple and sold on to traffickers for organ harvesting.
Farheena said the money she received for selling Laila only lasted a few months — it helped to pay for treatment for her eldest daughter and provided them with food.
If she resorts to selling another child, the money would be significantly less and would only last her family a few weeks. She asked for “help [so] other parents do not feel the intolerable pain” she has experienced.