Christmas appeal: The past year in Afghanistan has felt like the slow death of a nation

First they sold their belongings. Kettles, blankets and mattresses, spread out on cloths along the roadside. Then they sold their kidneys, leaving vivid scars across their bellies. Others sold their daughters, married off to much older men.

Now some people are so desperate they are giving their children tranquillisers so they sleep through the hunger. The drugs are cheaper than bread. Worse, people talk about all these things as if they are normal.

Away from the international spotlight, a catastrophe is unfolding. The past year in Afghanistan has felt like witnessing the slow death of a nation.

You do not need to look far. The shops in Kabul may have plenty of produce and the barrows on the streets are piled high with pomegranates, but barely anyone has money. This is a country where, according to the United Nations, 90 per cent of people do not have enough to eat.

In a freezing mud-walled shack in western Kabul in January, I met Fatima, a shy eight-year-old in a tattered green dress who looked at me with the saddest eyes. She had been sold off by her father, Lala Jan, to buy food for the rest of the family. The day I visited, he had tried to sell off his baby daughter. His extended family of 30 people were surviving on just eight pieces of bread a day.

Further north, in Kapisa, I watched women scraping snow away to eat grass after the harvest had failed because of drought. In Bamiyan, where giant Buddhas stood until the Taliban blew them up, people were dipping stale bread in water to moisten it.

In Zabul, in the south, in the soaring heat of summer, I went to villages where flash floods had wiped out almond crops and 70 per cent of children were severely malnourished. Those who made it to the provincial hospital were being treated three to a bed. In the maternity ward, midwives told of an increase in mothers dying in childbirth because they were underfed and anaemic.

These are but a few snapshots of what the UN describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The shock Taliban takeover in August last year was disastrous for women and human rights. But this has been compounded by the catastrophic suspension of foreign aid to Afghanistan — where it accounted for 75 per cent of the budget — along with the freezing of the central bank’s dollar reserves.

The result has been a virtual collapse of the banking system and, according to the World Bank, a 30 per cent contraction in the economy. There is almost no work for men such as Lala Jan, while women have been ordered to stay home unless they work in schools or hospitals. As if that were not enough, the country has been suffering its most severe drought in 40 years, compounded by the increase in food and fuel prices resulting from the war in Ukraine. The summer’s flash floods wiped out what small harvests people had managed grow.

The assumptions by western leaders that they could use the country’s desperate need for aid as leverage to force the Taliban to behave more moderately have been proved wrong. Hopes that they would be different than under their previous rule in the 1990s — a so-called Taliban 2.0 — have long faded. Instead, they have grown more hardline: not only is Afghanistan the only nation on earth that bans girls from going to high school but in recent months the Taliban have imposed more and more restrictions on women, demanding that they wear the hijab and have a male escort to travel more than 45 miles. Women have also been banned from going to parks or gyms and, most recently, from buying Sim cards.

I have visited the country three times since the Taliban takeover but still find it hard to understand what has happened. Like many journalists who have covered Afghanistan for years, I feel traumatised by what unfolded.

Yet 40 years of conflict have made Afghans a resilient people. Somehow last winter they survived grim predictions, with those who had little sharing meagre resources. The World Food Programme found itself feeding half the population. But its director in Afghanistan told me this was just “a sticking plaster”.

This winter, with the spotlight having moved to the war in Ukraine, the situation is likely to be far harder.

 “I have not seen a greater level of need in Afghanistan in the last 20 years,” said Chris Kinder, who chairs the British charity Afghanaid. “The impossible choices families are being forced to make in order to survive are beyond anything I have ever witnessed.

“The Afghan winter is very tough and this winter is going to be even harder, with the UN estimating that 24 million people, or over half the population of Afghanistan, are in need of immediate humanitarian assistance, and up to six million face the risk of famine.

“Working with the UN, NGOs like Afghanaid can have a massive impact in reducing this level of suffering, but for that we desperately need urgent financial support at a time when, understandably, so much attention is focused on Ukraine.”

That is why The Times and The Sunday Times have chosen Afghanaid for this year’s Christmas charity appeal.

Whatever one might think of the Taliban regime, it is no reason to punish the Afghan people. Some are risking their lives trying to make a difference. Women activists who bravely stayed behind are running clandestine women’s enterprises and secret girls’ schools in Kabul. There have even been a few protests by women — usually quickly curtailed by Taliban gunfire.

Knowing people outside still care is incredibly important, friends there tell me. And outside help can make a practical difference. Thanks to the generosity of readers earlier this year, a loan to the father of little Fatima enabled him to buy her back and send her to school. Seeing her delight in poring over an exercise book in August was one of the highlights of my year.

Few are in a better position to help than Afghanaid. The British humanitarian and development organisation has been working in Afghanistan for almost 40 years, delivering life-changing help in 31 out of the country’s 34 provinces, including some of the remotest areas.

The one positive of the Taliban takeover is that the end of conflict has meant NGOs can reach places previously deemed too dangerous. But it has, of course, presented other challenges.

The collapse of the country’s banking system meant agencies had to find innovative ways to bring in funds. Within a few weeks, Afghanaid was able to pay staff and suppliers using the traditional hawala system of moving money. The UN now literally flies in pallets of dollars, often amounting to millions, which other NGOs can access by paying into an account in New York.

All this is time-consuming and expensive. Like most agencies, Afghanaid lost some key staff, who fled the country. The biggest challenge has been female staff. The UN insisted to the Taliban that aid agencies must be able to employ women in order to gain access to female-headed households. Although they reluctantly agreed, they then decreed that women needed male relatives to accompany them. Most of Afghanaid’s staff are operating locally, so not travelling beyond the key 45 miles.

There have been attempts by the Taliban to interfere in the recruitment and distribution of aid so they can control who it goes to, but NGOs such as Afghanaid have been robust. Recently there was a standoff in the northern province of Ghor, where all agencies refused to comply and UN officials flew in to negotiate.

“It comes down to those good local relationships from working in a place a long time and developing a well-deserved reputation for impartiality,” said Kinder. “This means that money is directed very effectively following very clear criteria towards those in greatest need. And it’s hard to think of anywhere with greater need.”