In brief
The heartbreaking story of Nazo and her husband Ghulam illustrates the devastating impact of the ongoing hunger crisis in Afghanistan, where their three young children have died from malnutrition. With rising child malnutrition rates and increased food scarcity, the humanitarian crisis intensifies as families like theirs suffer the consequences. Experts warn that three million children are now in peril as the international community struggles to respond to the crisis.
My three boys starved to death. I hope angels bring them home, says Afghan mother
Gusts of wind blew dust up off the ground as Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked towards the graveyard where all their children are buried. They showed us the graves of the three boys they lost in the past two years – one-year-old Rahmat, seven-month-old Koatan and most recently, three-month-old Faisal Ahmad. All three suffered from malnutrition, say Ghulam and Nazo. Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo. I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.
'Three million children in peril'
There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or from NGOs. Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames. It felt like someone was cutting me into half with a saw from my head to my feet, said Ghulam. The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest, as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.
'Hungry all the time'
At the Sheidaee graveyard we found startling evidence of child deaths. Villagers told us the graveyard is relatively new, between two to three years old, and roughly two-thirds of the hundreds of graves were of children. Nearly half of all Afghan children under the age of five are stunted, the UN says. In one of the mud and clay homes, Hanifa Sayedi's one-year-old son Rafiullah could barely hold himself up, even while he's sitting. She and her husband have two other children, and dry pieces of bread with Afghan green tea are the only meals the family can afford. Some days they don't eat.
'We simply cannot afford to feed them'
This isn't the first time we've documented child deaths from malnutrition in Afghanistan, but this is the worst we've ever seen. Within a span of a week, three babies from one ward became the latest casualties of Afghanistan's crisis of hunger. The urgency of the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan is hard to overstate, especially with winter approaching.
