Sohaila is a widow. She has six children, her youngest a 15-month-old girl named Husna Fakeeri. The tea that Sohaila refers to is what’s traditionally drunk in Afghanistan, made with green leaves and hot water, without any milk or sugar. It contains nothing that’s of any nutritional value for her baby.
Sohaila is one of the 10 million people who have stopped receiving emergency food assistance from the UN World Food Programme (WFP) over the past year - cuts necessitated by a massive funding shortfall. It’s a crushing blow, especially for the estimated two million households run by women in Afghanistan.
Under Taliban rule, Sohaila says she can’t go out to work and feed her family.
“There have been nights when we have had nothing to eat. I say to my children, where can I go begging at this time of night? They sleep in a state of hunger and when they wake up I wonder what I should do. If a neighbour brings us some food the children scramble, saying ‘give me, give me’. I try to split it between them to calm them down,” Sohaila says.
Fr. I think Afghanistan demonstrates that the desire for change needs to come from within a country because even if you have an imperialist force come in and nation build for 20 years, it won’t stick. The best you can do is try and educate people.