In Kabul, a new ritual: Hungry women wait for bread outside bakeries

In the late afternoons in Kabul, a familiar ritual takes place as Afghans head to bakeries to buy fresh flat loaves for dinner.

But since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan last August, another ritual has emerged: Women in blue burqas settle in front of the city's upscale bakeries, silently waiting for charitable passersby to purchase bread for them.

They include Khadija, a mother of nine young daughters. Every day, she walks with swollen feet and blackened toenails to this bakery from the distant hilltop slum where she has lived all her life. Then she waits in her tattered burqa, endlessly stitched and mended.

"My daughters cry from hunger," says Khadija, who like other women interviewed, requests only her first name be used for the shame she feels begging. She guesses her age at about 30.

The sight of the women reflects how sharply the country's economy has unraveled, and how its people's resilience has been depleted by multiple crises. They have been battered by conflict, pandemic closures, three droughts and an earthquake over the past five years.

After the Taliban came to power, Western governments cut off the aid that propped up the Afghan government. Washington froze Afghanistan's central bank assets. The banking system largely seized up, preventing traders from easily importing or exporting goods. The number of Afghans needing food aid roughly doubled to 20 million people, about half the population. These are people who have gone into unsustainable debt or have sold off assets like land and homes, their kidneys and in the most extreme cases, their children to purchase food. In one remote province, the U.N. found some 20,000 Afghans who were starving in famine-like conditions. Officials say it has only been wide-scale food aid that has prevented more from the same fate.

Yet even for humanitarian workers who were anticipating a crisis after the Taliban takeover, the speed at which Afghans descended into extreme hunger was still surprising, says Hsiao-Wei Lee, deputy director for the World Food Program in Afghanistan. "It really comes from the fact that there is a lot of reliance on the international community's presence here and on just the general economy," Lee says. "The people of Afghanistan really need continued support."

But the international community hasn't stepped up enough, experts say. The U.N.'s appeal for this year — $4.4 billion — is only one-third funded. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is diverting resources and has caused food prices to rise.

When Khadija arrives, there's already a crowd of women waiting for bread in front of the bakery, and so the women have spilled over onto the pavement across the road. The women flock to upscale bakeries in Kabul's city center because their customers are more likely to buy them bread: one or two large flat loaves can be bought for the equivalent of 2 cents. Some pull out tattered clothes to mend while they wait.

Khadija says she often walks back home in the twilight empty-handed. On those evenings, she says, "I knock on the neighbors' doors to ask for spare food. I ask the Taliban at the checkpoints if they have dry bread," she says.

Fahima, 23, began begging for bread after the Taliban's policies made her family destitute. When the Taliban banned girls' secondary education, her mother lost her job as a cleaner at a girls' school. Her father was killed years ago.

Now, Fahima says, her life involves walking for hours from her hilltop slum, waiting outside a bakery and walking home with sore legs. It's hard, painful and boring. "I tell myself, 'What will we eat if I don't do this?'" Fahima says. "My mother is too old to walk this far. My sisters are too ashamed to beg."

It is not just the bakeries where signs of hunger are apparent.

In Kabul's Indira Gandhi hospital, the children's malnutrition ward has tripled to three rooms, with seven to nine children in each. In one room, Leila sat on the sticky floor with her 8-month-old boy, Ali Mohammad. Like the other children here on a recent day, her son had a small head, big eyes, a wrinkled face and stick-like arms and legs.

Leila said she did not know her age, explaining she could not read or write. "Maybe I'm 20, 30 or 40," she shrugged. But there was a date she could remember: two months ago, she says, when her breast milk dried up.

Her family had no money for infant formula. She said they had always been poor. Her husband, a day laborer in the southern province of Uruzgan, had fallen ill and hadn't been able to work for months. So she gave Ali Mohammad tea instead, and soon, "he was shriveling up," she says. "It is the poverty that is killing him."

Leila said her neighbors could not offer any help. They urged her to go to the hospital instead, where she would be given free food for the baby. Once she leaves the hospital, she will have no means to improve Ali Mohammad's diet. Although she fears her baby will die, "he will drink tea again."

A spokesman for the Taliban's ministry of public health, Dr. Javeid Hazheeri, says the Taliban did not expect so many Afghans would be malnourished when they seized power. The U.S. Congress alone appropriated about $138 billion since 2002 on reconstruction in the country. Experts say, however, that not enough international aid funded the kinds of development that address hunger, such as improved access to water and nutrition education for women.

Hazheeri lists the ways the ministry is trying to help, including operating more than 2,300 malnutrition clinics. But he says it's not enough, given the scale of the problem.

He says ultimately, to curb malnutrition, the Taliban government needs the economy to function, which would mean halting Western sanctions: Afghan central bank assets should be released. Afghan banks should be able to conduct cross-border trade. But those are political decisions, which would require the international community to recognize, in some way, the Taliban government. That proposition is complicated by the group's violations of human rights, including denying girls the right to attend secondary school, and issuing rules to enforce the veil in public.

While most of those in need of food after the takeover were already poor, the economic crisis has sucked in Afghanistan's middle class as well. At a food distribution center run by the World Food Program, Taliban gunmen try keep order as a crowd waits outside. Inside, women register for a month's worth of flour, cooking oil and beans.

They include a 57-year-old woman with a shiny handbag and tidy shoes, also named Khadija — a common name in Afghanistan. Her family used to live off the pension her husband received as a retired school teacher.

After the Taliban came to power the pension stopped. One son dropped out of college because the family could no longer afford tuition. She supports another son because his salary as a teacher was cut dramatically after the takeover. She sold her apartment to keep them all going, but that money is running out. "I have never opened my hands to ask for charity in my life," she says. "It felt so hard to ask."

Outside, men with wheelbarrows wait in a row, hoping those receiving food aid will need help to cart it away. They get a 2-cent tip for the work.

One of the men, Mohammad Hussein, guesses he's about 60 years old. He's tied a piece of cloth around his waist to keep his pants up. "We carry other people's food but we are hungry," he says. "Nobody gives us food." Other men surround us and echo him: "Nobody gives us food. Help us."

They're unlikely to get help. Lee, from the World Food Program, says they don't have the money to expand their aid program. She says they're trying to plan for the winter, when even more Afghans are expected to go hungry.

Transcript

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

In Afghanistan, about half the population is regularly going without food. Some people are selling land, livestock - even their own children - just to eat. The U.N. says the country needs more humanitarian aid to prevent starvation, but that help has yet to come. NPR's Diaa Hadid reports from Kabul on exactly what the hunger crisis looks like there.

(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)

DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Leila (ph) sits with her baby on the sticky floor of the malnutrition ward of the Indira Gandhi Hospital in Kabul. Her baby, Ali Mohammad (ph), is 8 months old. He has a small head, big eyes. His face is wrinkled. His arms and legs are sticks. He tries to cry.

(SOUNDBITE OF BABY CRYING)

HADID: Leila says her breast milk dried up.

LEILA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: And so what did you give Ali?

UNIDENTIFIED INTERPRETER: (Non-English language spoken)?

LEILA: (Through interpreter) Nothing. I was just giving him black tea.

HADID: She could only feed him tea.

LEILA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: She says, "it made him shrivel up."

LEILA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: Leila says, even as her baby starved, her neighbors had nothing to give her. Everyone around her has been struggling since the Taliban seized power last August. After they came to power, Western governments cut off the aid that propped up the Afghan government. Washington froze Afghanistan's central bank assets. The number of Afghans needing food aid to survive doubled to 20 million people - about half the population.

HSIAO-WEI LEE: What happened after August was extremely surprising. It really showed that there was a lack of resilience in people because, by September, we were seeing what you saw in Indira Gandhi Hospital.

HADID: Hsiao-Wei Lee is the deputy director for the World Food Programme in Afghanistan. She says Afghans became malnourished so quickly because their ability to cope was depleted over the years by conflict, drought, the pandemic and now the economic fallout.

LEE: There was a lot of reliance on the international community's presence here.

HADID: But the international community hasn't stepped up enough. The UN's appeal for this year, $4.4 billion, is only one-third funded. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is diverting resources, even as it's caused food prices to rise.

(SOUNDBITE OF CAR PASSING BY)

HADID: Now, women in blue burqas flock like birds outside bakeries. They wait for charitable Afghans to buy them bread. One of the women waiting is Khadija (ph).

KHADIJA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: She's got nine daughters. She says they cry from hunger.

KHADIJA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: She walks to this bakery from her hilltop slum nearly every day, ever since her husband lost his job as a watchman last winter.

KHADIJA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: Her feet are swollen. Her toenails are black. On the day we meet Khadija, there's already a crowd in front of the bakery. Men are slapping the dough into flat loaves inside...

(SOUNDBITE OF DOUGH BEING POUNDED REPEATEDLY)

HADID: ...But she often goes home empty-handed.

KHADIJA: (Through interpreter) I knock on the neighbors' doors to ask for spare food. I ask the Taliban at the checkpoint if they have dry bread.

HADID: Some of the women waiting for bread were made destitute by the Taliban's own policies.

What is your name?

FAHIMA: Fahima (ph). My name is Fahima.

HADID: Hi, Fahima. How do you do?

Fahima sits outside another bakery.

FAHIMA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: When the Taliban banned secondary education, her mother lost her job as a cleaner in a girls' school. Her father was killed years ago. She starts crying.

FAHIMA: (Through interpreter, crying) It's hard for me to walk here because my legs ache. But I tell myself, what will we eat if I don't do this? My mother is too old. My sisters are too ashamed to beg. I go home so sad.

HADID: A spokesman for the Taliban's Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Javeid Hazheeri (ph), says they did not expect so many Afghans would be malnourished when they seized power.

JAVEID HAZHEERI: It was one of the challenges and one of the things that - we were shocked when we came here. And we saw that, in the past, millions of dollars came to Afghanistan.

HADID: He says they're trying to help.

HAZHEERI: Right now, we have more than 2,300 clinics for the malnourished children.

HADID: But it's not enough, given the scale of the problem. Dr. Hazheeri says, ultimately, to curb malnutrition, they need the economy to function. As it stands, the economic crisis has sucked in Afghanistan's middle class. We head to a food distribution center run by the World Food Programme. Taliban security forces - young men with curly hair - try keep order as a crowd waits outside. One shouts over a megaphone.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: Inside, women register for a month's worth of flour, cooking oil and beans, including Khadija. She's 57, has a shiny handbag and tidy shoes. Her family used to live off the pension her husband received as a retired schoolteacher.

KHADIJA: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: After the Taliban came to power, the pension stopped. She sold her apartment, but that money is running out. I asked Khadija how it feels to ask for help.

KHADIJA: (Non-English language spoken, crying). It's a hard ending for me. I've never opened my hands to ask for the charity in my life. It feels so hard to ask.

HADID: Outside, we pass a row of men with wheelbarrows. They're hoping those receiving food aid will need help to cart it away. They get a two-cent tip for the work. One of the men stops us, Mohammad Hussein (ph).

MOHAMMAD HUSSEIN: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: He's tied a piece of cloth around his waist to keep his pants up. He says, "we carry other people's food, but we are hungry. Nobody gives us food." Other men surround us and echo him.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).

HADID: "Nobody gives us food. Help us." They're unlikely to get help. Lee from the World Food Programme says they don't have the money to expand their aid program. She says they're trying to plan for the winter, when even more Afghans are expected to go hungry.

Diaa Hadid, NPR News, Kabul.