NEW DELHI—Already stressed by continuous drought and conflict the number of Afghans needing humanitarian assistance increased from 18 million to 24 million after the Taliban took over the country on Aug, 15, according to Babar Baloch, the global spokesperson, for the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
The 24 million in need account for over half of Afghanistan’s total population of 40 million.
“So these are people who need support from humanitarian agencies, otherwise, it’s very hard for them to survive,” Baloch told The Epoch Times over the phone from Geneva. After Aug. 15 he spent three months inside Afghanistan and on the border inside the Pakistan side and he said the situation calls for an urgent humanitarian response.
Baloch said during his stay and travel he witnessed 3.5 million people displaced by “fighting and conflict” and 1.5 million people displaced by drought. “So this is a big number,” he said. In 2021 alone 700,000 people were displaced by conflict in Afghanistan, and 80 percent of them are women and children, he said.
“Even before events of 15th of August, we know that since last two years, Afghanistan has heavily relied on international help and support. So since the takeover of the Taliban, since the new de-facto rulers who have come into power, that support has diminished. In many sectors, it has stopped. So now we see that people who were doing routine jobs, may be employed right now, but there is no money to pay their salaries,” said Babur.
“And I’m talking about essential services, I’m talking about doctors, talking about health support staff, health technicians, talking about teachers, others. So that income has just disappeared, if you had money in the bank before the 15th of August, that money or that access to that money may have disappeared as well.”
The Afghan economy is nearing collapse and the country’s banking system and social services are almost redundant, he said.
When in Kabul he visited the UNHCR Humanitarian distribution center where people would come to collect their assistance.
“So if we have, for instance, a distribution for 500 families, there will be an additional 500 families or additional people who will come there asking us for help as well. And don’t forget that these are not displaced people. They’re staying in their own houses, they are in the locality where the displaced people are. So that need in terms of support is now growing because people have lost incomes,” said Baloch.
‘Don’t Have Enough to Eat’
The UNHCR spokesperson said that farmers in Afghanistan have faced two droughts in the past five years and businesses are also affected—the conflict of the past forty years has aggravated every existing problem. On top of all this, the COVID pandemic “compounded” every existing misery.
“But now because you have a change in those who are ruling Afghanistan and international engagement is not there, our worry is if there’s no fix to Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis. People’s suffering will increase,” said Baloch.
Currently, there is a crisis of hunger and starvation in Afghanistan, according to him.
“The estimates are talking about the 24 million people that I mentioned to you being in need of humanitarian help right now, the majority of them do not have enough to eat and that affects everyone alike. I mean, you have lactating mothers, you have babies who have ended up in hospital needing therapeutic feeding, without which they will just not survive,” said Baloch adding that out of these 24 million, nine million are just one step away from starvation.
These Afghans needing urgent assistance includes “many-many” children, he said, and if help doesn’t arrive soon, “they’ll lose their lives.”
‘Abnormal Lens’
Baloch said to understand the Afghanistan situation today, one has to look at it from a “different and abnormal lens” because nothing has stayed normal in Afghanistan in the past forty years and the Afghans are losing hope.
“So it has seen rounds of conflict. It has seen human suffering. It has seen international troops that have come in and have left. But the impact has been so devastating for our people,” he said.
“It is going to take them a long time, if there is some hope that their lives are going to get normal soon, which sadly, I mean if you’re inside of Afghanistan you go and you talk to people, they’re kind of losing hope, in terms of what is a store next for them.”
Baloch said the complexities are pilling over each other in Afghanistan because hunger is linked to every other factor of existence, and hunger loops into more cycles of crisis.
“Yes, hunger affects people. Yes, hunger is linked to drought, to climate. But hunger is also linked to conflict,” he said.
When the Taliban fell in 2001, almost 6 million Afghans who were living outside their country went back home to restart their lives and to rebuild their country, he said.
“And many of them were former refugees, that we at UNHCR helped them to return back home,” he said adding that Afghanistan’s future is at stake right now.
“I mean the projections that international aid agencies have if no support is given immediately to Afghanistan’s children, one million children are at risk of dying in Afghanistan,” he said adding that these children need therapeutic feeding.
History has been very cruel to Afghanistan and in the past forty years things have only become worse, said Baloch.
‘Harsh Winters’
With so much displacement that happened and still happening, Baloch said people don’t have proper shelter and this is dangerous because the winters in Afghanistan are harsh.
“So there are so many aspects of support that Afghans need today,” he said adding that when he went to the relief distribution centers in Kabul or deep in the countryside in Pakistan he came across many sad stories.
Most of the households in the places he visited are led by women because most of the men are not there or they are killed, he said. Many families are torn apart and households are left with old grandparents with orphaned children.
“So among that queue, we saw a one really elderly woman who just dropped in front of our eyes, she lost consciousness. So my colleagues rushed to help and support her, and they gave her water,” said Baloch adding that at relief distribution sites food is given as uncooked material and her team fetched biscuits and whatever they could find for the woman.
“Someone asked her what happened to her. And she said, she has not eaten for days. So this is the story in terms of when we talk about people going hungry. This is one of the real examples that you can witness, in many places,” said Baloch.
Another sad aspect he witnessed was people working but not being paid. He gave the example of a school he visited in Herat, close to the Iranian border.
“We met a teacher and she was teaching some of the girls in the class. Her focus was more in terms of telling us what her students needed. They don’t have enough stationery, copies, pens and everything else. And she was telling us that this is going to discourage them from not coming,” he said.
The teacher was also explaining to the UNHCR team how important it’s for girls of the higher level to come back to school. “What she wasn’t mentioning was at that stage was she hasn’t been paid for four months and she was still standing there trying to do her job,” said Baloch.
Follow
Venus Upadhayaya reports on wide range of issues. Her area of expertise is in Indian and South Asian geopolitics. She has reported from the very volatile India-Pakistan border and has contributed to mainstream print media in India for about a decade. Community media, sustainable development, and leadership remain her key areas of interest.
