Almost all Afghans do not have enough to eat and a failing economy could tip Afghanistan’s increasingly dire situation under Taliban rule into catastrophe next year, the U.N.’s World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday.
WFP surveys showed an es-timated 98% of Afghans are not eating enough, with seven in 10 families resorting to bor-rowing food, which pushes them deeper into poverty, a spokesperson for the agency told reporters.
The abrupt withdrawal of for-eign aid following the Taliban victory in August has left Af-ghanistan’s fragile economy on the brink of collapse, with prices for food, fuel and other basic staples rising rapidly out of reach for many.
“The spiralling economic cri-sis, the conflict and drought has meant the average family can now barely cope,” Tom-son Phiri told a Geneva brief-ing. “We have a huge amount to do to stop this crisis from becoming a catastrophe.”
The WFP has provided food assistance to 15 million Af-ghans so far in 2021, and to seven million in November alone. Next year, it plans to ramp up its assistance to 23 million people across all prov-inces in Afghanistan.
“We cannot waste any mo-ment,” Phiri said. “Our country director describes the situa-tion as quite dire. She says it’s ‘an avalanche of hunger and destitution’.”—Agencies
