Wednesday, March 16, 2022

The world might never know the scale of the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan.

Naseebullah with his sister Farzana

 Every few seconds a sick child is brought in to the emergency room of the main hospital in Lashkar Gah in a race against time to save the youngest casualties of Afghanistan's hunger crisis. 
Lashkar Gah is a city in the capital of Helmand, one of Afghanistan's most war-ravaged provinces and lies roughly 400 miles (644km) south-west of Kabul. 
 In a mud home nearby lives Hameed Gul. Two of his daughters, Farzana and Nazdana, are malnourished. Nazdana is so ill he's sent her to her grandparents because he's unable to feed her. 
His 10-year-old son Naseebullah has already begun to work on the fields to help out. 
 The unending suffering of his family is the legacy of foreign actions, present and past. 
Hameed's home was bombed in American airstrikes five years ago. Ten of his family, including his parents, six brothers and a sister were killed. "We had no connection with the Taliban. My house was unjustly bombed. Neither the Americans, the previous government or the new one offered to help me," Hameed says. "We eat just dry bread. About two to three nights a week, we go to bed hungry."  Children are the most vulnerable in this crisis of hunger. Afghanistan's youngest generation is being left to die. 

 
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