The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reported to Congress on Feb. 3 that the drastic forecasts made in September for this winter in Afghanistan are coming true. The report describes a “tsunami of hunger” for over half the country. It verifies the magnitude of the crisis, along the lines of the UN World Food Program’s numbers. “[R]ecord drought, rising food prices, internal displacement” add to the economic breakdown and the collapse of public services.
UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimated that 22.8 million Afghanis would be at “potentially life-threatening levels of hunger” come the winter, with 9.7 million of them in “near-famine conditions.” Around 3.2 million children under the age of five would experience acute malnutrition conditions, and approximately 1 million of them were at risk of dying of acute malnutrition. Even though the Taliban in December banned forced marriages, requiring women to consent to marriage, the savaging of the economy and the starvation conditions have forced many families to sell their daughters.
