- Yogita Lemaya
- BBC News – Herat
Ghulam (center) says he gives his six hungry children sedatives to put them to sleep
Some Afghans give their starving children sedatives to put them to sleep, and others sell their daughters and human organs to survive.
By the second winter since the Taliban seized power, and with the foreign money flowing into Afghanistan still frozen, millions are on the brink of starvation.
Abdel Wahhab said, “Our children are crying and can’t sleep, and we don’t have any food to feed them, so we buy some pills that make them sleepy from the pharmacy, so their eyes fall asleep.”
Abdul Wahab lives outside Herat, the country’s third largest city, in a cluster of thousands of small mud houses, which have increased over the decades, and are now crowded with displaced people whose homes have been destroyed by wars and natural disasters.
Abdel Wahab, one of a group of about ten men gathered around us. We asked them, How many people give their children narcotic drugs?
They answered: “Many of us, but all of us.”
A young boy pulled out an envelope of pills from his pocket. They were the sedative alprazolam, which is usually prescribed by a doctor to treat anxiety disorders.
Ghulam, who has six children, said that he gives these pills even to his little one, who is only one year old.
Others showed us strips of escitalopram and sertraline, commonly prescribed for depression and anxiety, that they said they were giving to their children.
Doctors say that when given to undernourished young children, these drugs can cause liver damage, along with a host of other problems such as chronic fatigue and sleep and behavioral disorders.
The price of five alprazolam tablets is equal to the price of a piece of bread
At a local pharmacy, we found that you could buy five pills of used medication for ten Afghani (about 10 US cents), or the price of a loaf of bread.
Most of the families we interviewed shared a few pieces of bread with each other every day.
One of the women told us that they ate dry bread in the morning, and at night they dipped it in water to moisten it and make it soft.
The United Nations said a humanitarian “catastrophe” was now unfolding in Afghanistan.
The majority of men in the area outside Herat are day laborers. They have lived a difficult life for years.
But when the Taliban took power last August, with no international recognition of the new de facto government, foreign money flowing into Afghanistan froze, leading to an economic collapse that left men out of work most days.
And on the few days that they might find a chance to work, they only earn about $1 a day.
Everywhere we went, we found people forced to take fateful steps to save their families from starvation.
Men in Herat suffer from a lack of job opportunities
Ammar (not his real name) said he underwent surgery three months ago, to remove his kidney and showed us the scars of his surgery where his stomach was cut 9 inches long.
He’s a young boy, in his twenties, whose identity we concealed to protect him.
“There was no way out,” he told us, “I heard that a kidney could be sold at a local hospital, so I went there and told them I wanted to sell my kidney. A few weeks later I got a phone call asking me to come to the hospital.”
“They did some medical examinations, then they drugged me and I passed out. I was scared but I had no other choice.”
Ammar received $3,100 for his kidney, most of which went to repaying the money he borrowed to buy food for his family.
He said, “If we eat some food one night, it may not be available the next day, and after selling my kidney, I feel half a man and I feel hopeless. If life goes on like this, I feel I might die.”
Selling organs for money is not uncommon in Afghanistan.
This was happening even before the Taliban took control. But now, even with such a frightening trade, people still find they can’t find a way to survive.
In a cold, unfurnished house, we meet a young mother who says she sold her kidney seven months ago.
They had to repay the loan they took to buy a flock of sheep, but they all died during a flood that hit the area a few years ago and the family lost their source of income and livelihood.
Ammar said he sold his kidney three months ago for money
The $2,700 they received from selling the kidney was not enough to pay off the debt. “Now we are forced to sell our two-year-old daughter as well. Those we borrowed money from, they harass us every day, and instead of paying the debt, they asked us for our daughter,” she said.
Her husband said, “I feel ashamed and embarrassed by our situation. Sometimes I feel that death is better than a life like this.”
We have heard here many times about people selling their daughters.
“I sold my five-year-old daughter for 100,000 afghanis — just over $1,000,” Nizamuddin said. That’s less than half the price of a kidney, according to what we found on the ground.
The man bit his lips with burning and tears in his eyes. People here have lost their dignity because of hunger.
Nazia still lives with her family but was already sold into marriage once she turned 14.
“We know that it is against Islamic law, and that we are endangering our children’s lives, but there is no other alternative,” said Abdul Ghaffar, one of the neighborhood’s notables.
In one of the houses we entered, we met four-year-old Nazia, who was small and playful, changing her facial features to look funny while playing with her 18-month-old brother, Shamsullah.
“We don’t have any money to buy food, so I announced at a local mosque that I want to sell my daughter,” said her father, Hasretullah.
Nazia was sold to marry a boy from a family living in the southern province of Kandahar.
The girl will be sent to the new family when she turns 14, and so far, Hasretullah has received two payments of the agreed amount.
“I spent most of the money on buying food and some medicine for my youngest son. Look at him, he is malnourished,” says the man, as he lifts the shirt off the belly of his son, Shamsullah, to show his swollen stomach.
The staggeringly high rates of malnutrition are evidence that hunger is already affecting children under the age of five in Afghanistan.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has seen a rise in the number of people visiting its institutions that treat malnutrition across the country. The increase is 47 percent this year compared to last year.
MSF’s nutrition center in Herat is the only well-equipped facility to treat malnutrition cases and serves not only Herat, but also the neighboring provinces of Ghor and Badghis, where malnutrition rates have increased by 55 percent over the past year.
Omid is 14 months old, but he weighs the same as a newborn
Since last year, the center has increased the number of beds to cope with the number of sick children that have to be admitted to the centre. However, the facility is always overcrowded with patients.
The center often has to treat children for more than one disease.
Omid, who is 14 months old, is malnourished, has a hernia and blood poisoning. And it weighs only four kilograms. Doctors told us that a normal child at this age weighs 6.6 kilograms as a minimum.
His mother, Amna, had to borrow money to pay for her trip to the hospital when Omid started vomiting badly.
We asked Hamidullah Mutawakkil, spokesman for the Taliban provincial government in Herat, what they are doing to address the hunger crisis.
He replied: “The situation has been exacerbated by international sanctions on Afghanistan and as a result of the freezing of Afghan assets. Our government is trying to determine the number of people in need, as many lie about their living conditions because they think they can get help.”
Mutawakel stood his ground despite being told that we had seen overwhelming evidence of how bad the situation was.
He also said that the Taliban is trying to create job opportunities, adding, “We are looking forward to opening iron ore mines and a gas pipeline project.”
It is unlikely that this will happen soon.
People told us they feel abandoned and neglected by the Taliban government and by the international community.
Hunger is a slow and silent killer, and its effects are not always immediately apparent.
The true scale of this crisis may never appear because the world is not accused of it and no one counts on that.
Get involved in the coverage: Imogen Anderson and Malik Mudasir