With winter, hunger in the stomach for millions of Afghans

Khurma had to borrow shoes from her neighbor to come to Pol-é Alam to get modest aid to enable the most vulnerable Afghans to survive the dreaded winter.

This 45-year-old widow in a threadbare blue burqa, mother of six, waits to receive 3,200 Afghanis (around $60) from the World Food Program (WFP) in the capital of the eastern province of Logar, where the thermometer may fall again this winter at -18°C.

“We are in need,” she explains. When we can’t find bread, we go to bed on an empty stomach. »

“As winter approached, the situation was already catastrophic” in Afghanistan, says Caroline Gluck, spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “but here, we have two enormous emergencies” .

Since the three successive earthquakes which destroyed or made uninhabitable in October 31,000 houses in Herat, in the west of the country, tens of thousands of people have been sleeping in tents.

And half a million Afghans expelled from Pakistan returned to a country with an anemic economy, under international sanctions, “at the worst time of the year,” she said.

Rabbani, 32, is one of them.

As a refugee, he is entitled to in-kind assistance from the WFP: 50 kilos of flour, six kilos of red beans, five liters of oil and a pound of salt for his family of seven.

But “there is no work here,” he complains.

“Food emergency”

Shakar Gul, a 67-year-old woman veiled in white, has just received her 3,200 Afghanis, the first of six monthly payments.

“We adults, if we don’t have enough to eat for several days, that’s okay, but we don’t let our children starve. »

She will be able to buy “a bag of flour, five liters of oil, tea and sugar”.

It will only be fine for 15 days.

“People excluded [des dons] still come to wait here, especially the women. They are angry, but we explain to them that there are people even more deprived than them,” says Baryalai Hakimi.

The center manager distributed money to 600 families that day. But this winter, “donations collapsed” due to the multiplication of crises on the planet.

Despite the scale of humanitarian needs in Afghanistan, the UN appeal for $3.2 billion was only 40% funded as of last December. “It’s terrible, there are people who have nothing,” said Mr. Hakimi.

This is the case of Bibi Raihana, 40 years old, eight children, a husband in prison, health problems, plastic sandals and “not a single Afghani in her pocket”. Through the mesh of her burqa, we see that she is crying. “My name was not on the lists. They didn’t give me anything. »

“This winter, 15.8 million Afghans need assistance and 2.8 million are in food emergency,” said Philippe Kropf, WFP spokesperson. Due to the drop in donations, “we are only going to provide emergency aid to six million people,” he explains.

“Ten million people will have to survive without assistance”, in this country bled by four decades of conflict, very affected by climate change and where 85% of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

Extreme poverty which affects both the countryside and the cities.

“So poor”

Among the most miserable, portions gradually decrease, meals are skipped, adults leave their share to the children, we get into debt with neighbors, then the children leave school to work in the streets.

In extreme cases, a child is sold.

Like Allaudin, a farmer from the province of Badghîs (west), who explained to the WFP that he sold his granddaughter to buy 60 kilos of wheat seeds. But the drought prevented any harvest.

An hour’s drive from Pol-e Alam, in the middle of a dusty desert, the WFP — which provides 90% of food aid to Afghanistan — distributes flour, oil and lentils in the Baraki Barak district.

Lambat is waiting for his food, which a three-wheeler will bring to his home. “We are so poor. Look at my clothes,” laments this 40-year-old Afghan, pointing to his threadbare gray tunic.

Already seated in the scooter among the bags of flour, Zulfiqar, 77, explains that his family sometimes does not eat anything for two or three days. “When we have nothing left, we wrap ourselves in patou [grand châle] and we sleep,” said the toothless man.

The Taliban government does not pay allowances to the most deprived, but a modest sum at the Pakistan border to returning Afghans.

” Survive “

It is in the poverty-stricken suburbs of Kabul that thousands of these refugees from Pakistan come to seek help from the UNHCR. At best, $375 per person, sometimes much less, because you have to have papers.

Met there, Najiba, who has only ever lived in Pakistan, showed AFP the hovel where her brother is staying with her husband and their three children. They live in one room and sleep on the floor. “We’re trying to survive,” she says, cradling her youngest child, in front of her other children, barefoot despite the cold.

Benazira is also struggling: at 34, she has eight daughters, a son and a sick husband. In her hand she holds some green notes received from the UNHCR. She had never seen one. We help him count: $340.

The family will return to their province of Nangarhar (east). There “we sleep in a brickyard, there is not a window intact. Only God is with us,” says Benazira.

“I can’t even imagine how we’re going to get through this winter. »

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