According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), one million Afghan children are now at risk of acute malnutrition leading to death if there is no immediate action to secure humanitarian relief. The urgency of the matter proves the lethal nature of US sanctions.
As of early this January, the UN estimates that 9 million Afghans are currently at risk of facing a famine, with almost the entire country considered to be undernourished. On the 23rd of January, Pravaran Mahat, a specialist at UNICEF’s South Asia regional office, stated on a visit to Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital that “UNICEF estimates that without urgent action, more than one million children [in Afghanistan] can suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year,” adding that hospital workers are overburdened.
The humanitarian situation, as it is often referred to, is ever deteriorating and ordinary Afghan’s are paying the ultimate price. Since the final withdrawal of US government forces from Kabul, following a months long campaign by the Afghan Taliban to remove the US-backed government, an Islamic Emirate was declared in early September by the Taliban leadership. The catastrophic loss by the US military establishment and their Afghan allies (which quickly scrambled to abandon their posts) proved a nation-building effort, costing in excess of 137 billion dollars, a failure. But with many now turning their eyes away from the chaos in Afghanistan, which Westerners would be led to believe has little to do with them anymore, one of the poorest nations on earth has just got a lot poorer.
Read more: US Afghanistan Sanctions Are Starving 1 Million Children To Death
