While many in the United States are decorating their front porches with pumpkins and stocking up on autumnal harvest produce to celebrate the season of plenty and thanksgiving, Afghan citizens are facing severe food insecurity as a result of the Taliban’s August 2021 takeover of the country and subsequent economic collapse.
Not Enough to Eat
According the World Food Programme, which provides food assistance in emergencies, ninety-five percent of Afghan families do not have enough to eat every day, and fifty percent of Afghan families have run out of food completely at least once over the past few weeks (source).
Mothers of young children lack sufficient nutrients not only for themselves, but also for their nursing children. Men are selling family belongings in the hopes of earning some money and of even having access to purchase food with that money. Half of the children of Afghanistan are now in danger of malnutrition (source).
Vulnerable and Abandoned
The tales of Afghan citizens left vulnerable by the new regime are abundant. And inexcusable. Children should never have to suffer for the atrocities of bad politics. The innocent should never be abandoned at the time of their greatest need. This slow starvation of the citizens that remain behind in the unstable country kills not only the body, but also the soul.
Many Afghans share the sentiment of one mother displaced from her home: “We are so far from a good life” (source). This loss of hope has most recently been felt by the country’s pomegranate farmers, who, in cruel irony, have an abundance of fruit that, in seasons past, has been exported to bordering countries.
Afghan Citizens are Suffering
The livelihood of these pomegranate farmers depends on the exporting of their harvest. Unfortunately, the borders frequently close, which has severely retarded the farmers’ economy. While they wait at the borders for days or weeks in hopes of selling the pomegranates to Pakistan, the fruit is slowly rotting (source).
The farmers want and desperately need their fruit to leave Afghanistan. They depend on the large-volume sales. The parallels of the suffering Afghans and the rotting pomegranates are hard to ignore. Both wait at the closed borders, eagerly anticipating their moment of relief from the oppression.
Both are slowly fading into nonexistence while they wait. Pomegranates are fruit, and if they rot, they rot. The Afghans are people, human souls, that cannot just be left to starve to death. We receive emails filled with cries for help from many, including Afghan SIV holders and others.
We are absolutely brokenhearted about their dire situation and how hard they are fighting to stay alive. Many know that they won’t be able to leave Afghanistan at all, so they are working hard to better their lives, in spite of their dire situation at the moment.
When you donate to our cause, we are also able to provide safe houses to those in danger as well as give them money for food and warmer clothes. Please, don’t hesitate to give. If you want to make a difference, here’s your chance.
Help Our Efforts In Afghanistan
Would you like to help save people from the Taliban’s reign of terror? Donate to support our rescue operations and help save an Afghan life. Your money will support immediate evacuation and keeping refugees fed, watered, and in warm clothes while they await a bird to fly them to safety.”
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