Food Crisis Squeezes Afghan Families

By Caroline Brennan

On the drive this morning to the Herat government hospital in western Afghanistan, where people are facing a hunger crisis, an Afghan doctor described the telltale signs of acute malnutrition. "People look surprised; their eyes are wide and their hair stands straight up."

This was the look we saw when we walked into the pediatrics ward. The mothers who made it here had traveled hundreds of miles—many of them first by donkey, then by bus—over a few days. They couldn't afford the trip, but got the money from selling a vital asset, like a cow or goat. Some mothers told us of their other children, just as sick, left behind. The expense meant they had to choose which child to bring.

The children lying on the beds are barely present. Their eyes blink in slow motion. They have energy only for breathing: no strength left to turn and look up at you. The features of one child, 6 months old, are so sunken he has the face of a 90-year-old man.

His name is Sadiqullah and we met his mother, Gulpasha, 24, sitting next to his crib trying to spoon-feed him milk. She came here seven days ago when he wouldn't eat or move.

"He became weaker and weaker each day," she says.

Though she lives in Farah, more than 185 miles outside Herat City, she felt she had no choice but to come here; the Farah clinic has no medicine or doctor. She had to leave her 3-year-old daughter, also weak and malnourished, back at home.

Running Out of Options

With less means to afford the basics, more families are selling their valuable livestock just to pay for bread. Over the past several months, Gulpasha's husband, Munir, was forced to sell much of their livestock to pay for food. Employment options are scarce in Farah. A drought wiped out this season's crops, leaving Gulpasha and Munir's wheat farm—and their pockets—empty. One by one, Munir began selling his animals at a fraction of their normal value.

Prices have increased by 300 percent for the most important staples: bread, wheat, rice. A few months ago, wheat for bread was sold for 20 cents; now it is sold for 60 to 70 cents. In a country that takes pride in its bread—the centerpiece of each meal—the tripling in price has dealt an enormous blow to family spending. It's especially bad among the majority of the country's population who are rural farmers.

Afghanistan is the world's fifth-least-developed country, according to a 2007 U.N. Development Program report. While Afghanistan may be recognized more for issues of political insecurity, the security concern for people here is food. They are going hungry. The past severe winter affected people so devastatingly they are weaker this year, ill-prepared for the next winter.

"We are not growing enough food and we cannot afford food; the result is our sick children. Many other families—hundreds of children like this—are in our villages but cannot afford to come here," says Munir.

With no wheat or livestock left to earn money, Munir tells me that he is considering going to Iran to find work, most likely as a construction worker. It would be a risk: it's illegal; the transportation, though only two hours by car from Herat, is expensive (hundreds of dollars); and you never know what's waiting for you. He could be exploited by people taking advantage of the desperate migrants, or deported by the police.

But Munir is not alone in his thinking: Hundreds of thousands of Afghans migrate to Iran for work each year, and the number is on the rise despite massive deportation of illegal workers.

No Way Out

"When a child is crying for bread, what will his father do? He will beg, steal, move, do anything to stop that crying," says Arash Barak of INTERSOS, an Italian humanitarian agency working with Afghan migrants and refugees.

Migration within Afghanistan—from country to city—is also seen as a threat by some people in Herat City. They fear the newcomers may deplete more of the waning local food stocks. Some migrants are seen on the side of the roads begging. People who were recently subsistence farmers are now working the streets, coming up to car windows. Children wipe the windshield (ignoring the driver's insults) at one car while, at another, an elder respected man of the family, having come from afar to find work and food, reaches out his hand to ask a stranger for help.

Back in the hospital's pediatric ward, the women are reaching out with spoonfuls of milk and the only place they want to go is home—out of here. But Gulpasha's child and many of the other infants here are not in any condition to go. Acute malnutrition can lead to anemia and decreased cognitive development. So the mothers and medical staff are trying to nurse the children back to health: to taking liquids and foods, breathing regularly, moving muscles and coming back to life.

"If you have a daughter, if you have a son, you can feel what I feel when I look at my son; you feel the same as me. You feel this in your heart," says Munir.

CRS Response in Afghanistan

Catholic Relief Services is planning emergency relief for thousands of the most rural, impoverished families and farmers in response to the massive food shortages in Herat and Ghor provinces.

With three field offices and over 300 staff, CRS Afghanistan directly supports women in farming communities with agro-enterprise projects that help them diversify crops, strengthen their resilience to natural disasters, and boost their long-term self-sufficiency.

Caroline Brennan is South Asia regional information officer for Catholic Relief Services. She is based in New Delhi, India.