The mother who buried three children

Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked to the cemetery where all her children were buried.

They showed us the graves of three children they lost in the last two years-Rahmat, one-year-old, seven-month-old Koatan and last three months old Faisal Ahmad.

Gulam and Nazo suffered from all three of them without malnutrition.

Nazo, “Can you imagine how painful it is to lose three children? There is a baby in their arms, the next minute is empty minutes,” says Nazo.

“I hope every day the angels somehow put my babies back in our house.”

There are days when the couple goes without food. They break their walnut shells to live in the Sheidaeeere settlement just outside the Herat city in West Afghanistan, and they do not get help from the Taliban government or NGOs.

Ghulam, “My children were watched desperately while crying, I felt like my body was exploding in flames.

The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but the UN’s wife is proof of a silent wave of quiet mortality that swallows the smallest of Afghanistan because it is pushed to what he calls an unprecedented hunger crisis.

“We have started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition in Afghanistan. But things worsened than there.” Says.

“Food aid has kept a cover on hunger and malnutrition in this country, especially for the lower five million that cannot cope without international support. This cover has now been removed. The rise of malnutrition is endangering the lives of more than three million children.”

The US, the only largest donor, stopped almost all the aid to Afghanistan earlier this year, the largest donor. However, WFP says that eight or nine donors that finance them in the last two years have stopped this year, and others have given much less than last years.

One reason for this is that donors respond to a series of crisis in the world. However, the policies of the Taliban government also affect how much the world is willing to help.

What are they doing to help their citizens?

Suhail Shaheen, Taliban’s political office in Doha, told the BBC, “Those who face malnutrition, hunger, because of sanctions, because of the help of international organizations, not because of the government.” He said.

“The government has expanded its assistance to the public and is doing what is capable, but our budget is based on internal income and we are facing sanctions.”

However, the Taliban’s compromise on women’s rights affects his proposal for international recognition and abolition of sanctions against it. Other decisions, such as the latest implementation of a previously announced prohibition to Afghan women working for NGOs, allow “life -saving humanitarian aid to be at serious risk”.

Malnuts are combined by other factors – a serious drought affecting agricultural income in more than half of the states of Afghanistan, and the forced return of Afghan from Iran and Pakistan, the refund they sent back.

We found the surprising evidence of child deaths at the Sheidaee Cemetery. There was no record of buried people there, so we counted the graves ourselves. Approximately two-thirds of hundreds of graves were children-easy to say from small tombs from the graves.

The villagers told us that the cemetery was relatively new between two and three years. They also confirmed that there was no specific cemetery for children.

While passing through the settlement in Sheidaee, people went out by carrying their children. Rahila was carrying Hibatullah, who could not stand up in both of them. Durkhane, almost two and unable to stop his son Mohammad Yusuf’u.

The UN says that almost half of Afghan children under five years of age are dwarf.

In one of the mud and clay houses, Hanifa Sayedi’s one -year -old son Rafiullah was not even forcing himself while sitting.

Im I took him to a clinic that they said he had enough to me, but I don’t have any money to take him there, or he says. He and her husband have two more children, and Afghan green tea and dry pieces of bread and the only meal that the family can meet. Some days they don’t eat.

Rafiullah has no teeth yet, so Hanifa bread drinks tea and feeds it.

“But that’s not enough, and it’s always hungry. I’m giving him these medications to sleep,” he says, pulling two tablet strings.

One is a lorazepam strip, anti-anxiety medicine, and the other is a drug that controls high blood pressure. A strip, a piece of bread in the same amount of 10 Afghan ($ 0.15; 0.13 £) cost. Hanifa says that he wanted a sleeping pill for them and said that he bought them from a pharmacy.

“My children are hungry and I feel very guilty I can’t do too much. I feel drowned and I have to kill my children and myself, or he says.

When given to young children, doctors say that drugs like these can damage the child’s heart, kidneys and liver, and even threaten life if given for a long time.

Hanifa is one of the satisfaction for millions of help.

“Being in this country and watching this development and watching this development is incredibly hearted. WFP has a help line. We had to re -train our call operators because we get a much higher call than women who threaten suicide because they don’t know how they will feed their children.”

As in Sheidaee and other parts of Afghanistan, the closure of food aid to communities meant that more children were pushed to severe acute malnutrition.

We saw the proof of this in hospitals in Afghanistan.

There were 26 children in 12 beds in the malnutrition ward of Badakhshan Regional Hospital in Northeast.

The youngest baby in the ward, the three -month -month, has malnutrition, acute diarrhea and a crevice lip. His mother is the second baby of Zamira. The first child, another baby girl died when she was 20 days old.

“I’m afraid that this child can meet the same fate.

While Sana’a’s hands and feet turn blue while talking. The little heart does not pump enough blood. A nurse puts it in the oxygen.

In another cot, there is a five -month -old Musleha with malnutrition and measles. Her mother Karima says she hasn’t opened her eyes in the last few days.

“He’s suffering and I don’t know what we’re going to do. We don’t have access to nutritious foods.

There are twin Mutehara and Maziyan in the cot next to Musleha. Baby girls also have malnutrition and measles and are half of the weight that should be in 18 months. Mutehara allows a weak cry. It is clear that he suffered.

A week after visiting the hospital, we followed the families of the babies. We were told that Musleha and Mutehara were dead.

This is the first time we have not documented child deaths without malnutrition in Afghanistan, but that’s the worst thing we’ve ever seen.

Within a week, three babies from a ward were the latest losses of Afghanistan’s hunger crisis.

And it’s about to worse.

“WFP’s human financing will be exhausted in November. We are starting to refuse them from health centers because we cannot feed them.

As the winter approaches, it is difficult to exaggerate the urgency of the disaster in Afghanistan.

Additional Reporting Mahfouz Zubaide, Aakriti Thapar, Sanjay Ganguly