In Kabul’s crowded neighborhoods, hunger has reached a breaking point. Families say they are surviving on little more than scraps — and some, exhausted and hopeless, are preparing themselves for the worst.
“I had nothing at home. Not even potatoes or tomatoes. I hated my life. Last Thursday I was even ready to accept death,” said Abeda, a 54-year-old widow who lost her job as a cleaner at a girls’ high school after the Taliban shuttered it. She now shares a home with her teenage son, widowed daughter, and two grandchildren, all without a stable source of income.
Her story is echoed across the capital. “We are begging for rice,” another Kabul resident told RFE/RL. “We are ready to accept death.”
The World Food Program (WFP) warns that Afghanistan faces a looming famine of historic proportions. “During the winter, there could be 10 to 15 million people needing food assistance,” said John Aylieff, the WFP’s country director. “And at the moment, we have no funding and there will be no response.”
A toxic mix of prolonged drought, drastic cuts in international aid, and the forced return of 1.5 million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan has fueled what the agency calls “rising acute malnutrition.” The WFP says it needs $539 million over the next six months to sustain life-saving operations. Instead, it has received just $155 million for 2025 — a fraction of the nearly $560 million provided last year and a dramatic fall from the $1.6 billion allocated in 2022.
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The United States, once Afghanistan’s largest humanitarian donor, has sharply reduced funding, citing the Taliban’s diversion of aid since seizing power in 2021. “It is due time that the Taliban provide for the welfare of the Afghan people,” a State Department spokesman said.
But ordinary Afghans say politics offers them little comfort. Among them is Gul Dasta, 42, once employed as a cleaner in a government ministry. Fired under the Taliban’s ban on women working in public offices, she now scrapes by on handouts.
As winter looms, aid groups warn that millions of Afghans face starvation — caught between geopolitical fatigue abroad and a government at home unwilling, or unable, to care for them.