Sohaila is a widow. She has six children, her youngest a 15-month-old girl named Husna Fakeeri. The tea that Sohaila refers to is what’s traditionally drunk in Afghanistan, made with green leaves and hot water, without any milk or sugar. It contains nothing that’s of any nutritional value for her baby.
Sohaila is one of the 10 million people who have stopped receiving emergency food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) over the past year - cuts necessitated by a massive funding shortfall. It’s a crushing blow, especially for the estimated two million households run by women in Afghanistan.
Under Taliban rule, Sohaila says she can’t go out to work and feed her family.
“There have been nights when we have had nothing to eat. I say to my children, where can I go begging at this time of night? They sleep in a state of hunger and when they wake up I wonder what I should do. If a neighbour brings us some food the children scramble, saying ‘give me, give me’. I try to split it between them to calm them down,” Sohaila says.
But you’re going to have to go through the government if the help is against the wishes of it.
Why?
There are always other ways to get the required info, like asking the tribal leaders what help they and their people wanted and/or needed.
I get the impression there was nothing the US government could have done that would have satisfied you.