One year must seem like a life time to the folks in Afghanistan....thanks Joe.
'Sometimes we eat dinner, sometimes we don't.' Afghan food crisis poses dilemma for the West one year after Taliban takeover
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN)
At midday, Shakeela Rahmati starts the long walk from her home in a poor neighborhood in the hills above Kabul.
Along the way, other
women quietly join the journey. It will take them three hours to reach the city center. But each day they are driven by gnawing hunger and the need to feed their children.
Their destination is a bakery, one of many in Kabul where crowds of women have started gathering in the late afternoons, patiently waiting for customers who might give them some bread.
"Sometimes we eat dinner, sometimes we don't," Rahmati says. "The situation has been bad for three years, but this last year was the worst. My husband tried to go to Iran to work but he was deported."
The United Nations says that nearly half of the country faces acute hunger. According to a May report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), 43% percent of Afghanistan's population is living on less than one meal a day, with 90% of Afghans surveyed reporting food as their primary need.
They're sobering statistics that encapsulate the first year back under Taliban rule, with the nation isolated and increasingly impoverished. As the US and its allies left the country, they imposed sanctions, froze $9 billion in central bank funds, and halted the foreign aid that once constituted nearly 80% of Afghanistan's annual budget.
Outside the foreign ministry, a large mural, one of the few written in English, trumpets the Taliban government's official stance: "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants positive and peaceful relationships with the world."
Yet, after a year of governing, the Taliban has yet to be recognized by a single country in the world, with international funding still largely frozen. One of the main issues for Western countries has been the new government's marginalization of minorities and women, which includes a de facto ban on secondary education for girls.
Repeated promises from the Taliban to allow girls to return to school have yet to be honored. In late June, the Taliban's supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, pushed back against international pressure, saying Afghanistan would make its own rules.
Entire article:
Nearly half of Afghans live on less than one meal a day. Women walk miles for bread. One year on, the country is isolated and impoverished.
www.cnn.com