KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The toddler cries as an oxygen mask is fitted to his face, its green elastic band stretched across his sunken cheeks. When he was first hospitalized a month ago, the 2 ½-year-old was fighting for his life.
Severely malnourished, Abu Bakar weighed just 6 kilograms (13 pounds), about half what he should. And yet, he is one of the lucky ones: His family got him to Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, where doctors are providing life-saving care.
But for every malnourished child receiving treatment, there are many more who cannot get help.
“We have a catastrophic nutritional crisis on our hands with two-thirds of the country in a very serious or crisis level for acute malnutrition,” said John Aylieff, Afghanistan Country Director for the United Nations’ World Food Program. “This is the highest surge in malnutrition ever recorded in the country. And the lives of 4 million children are hanging in the balance.”
Desperate children turned away
Devastated by four decades of conflict, Afghanistan has long relied on foreign aid. But the Taliban takeover in 2021 saw direct foreign aid halted almost overnight, driving millions into poverty and hunger. The situation is compounded by a moribund economy, a severe drought, two devastating earthquakes in late 2025 and the return of 5.3 million Afghans expelled mainly from neighboring Pakistan and Iran.
Now, funding cuts to humanitarian organizations, including the halting of U.S. aid to programs such as the WFP’s food distribution, have severed a lifeline for millions.
“The aid cuts have been devastating,” Aylieff told The Associated Press. Of the 4 million acutely malnourished children, “we are forced now to turn away three out of four of them because we simply don’t have the money.”
This, he said, “is unprecedented and I’ve never seen this in my more than 30-year-old career as a humanitarian.”
Of the 17.4 million people facing acute hunger, the organization can now only reach 2 million. And even for them, it is forced to provide less food.
No more food parcels
Donor countries’ budgets are spread thin among humanitarian emergencies around the world, including famine in Sudan and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. In 2024, the WFP’s budget in Afghanistan was $600 million after “very generous” donor contributions, Aylieff said.
Last year, the amount fell by half and the organization expects to receive even less – about $200 million – this year. It’s not enough to tackle a hunger problem that “is spiraling out of control,” he added.
Abu Bakar’s family was among those who saw aid dry up.
“We once received assistance from an organization that helped us a lot with food,” said his mother, Latifa, 36, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name. But that stopped three years ago. Since then, there’s been nothing.
Her husband, a construction worker, has been unemployed for a year. Now, at times, she has nothing at all to feed her five sons.
“I am trying to provide food for my kids,” Latifa said, cradling her emaciated toddler in her arms. She doesn’t care if she doesn’t eat, she says. “I can control my hunger. I will handle it. But my child can’t.”
Children dying
Hunger is driving an increase in child mortality, Aylieff said, with the WFP logging more than 500 child deaths in recent months. The number, he noted, was “the tip of the iceberg” as many deaths during winter occur in villages blocked off by snow and are unregistered.
“How many more Afghan children will die here before the world wakes up and realizes that that’s enough? Aylieff asked. “Before the world says, ‘OK, we’ve crossed a threshold, we are not willing to stand by anymore, and we’re coming now to help.’ How many? What is the number? I really don’t know.”
Sharara, 21, is fighting to prevent her 6-month-old son Samir from becoming one of those children.
From the far northeastern province of Badakhshan, the young mother of two was bounced around hospitals there and in the northern city of Kunduz as doctors struggled to treat her gravely ill baby, suffering from a heart problem and severe pneumonia compounded by malnutrition.
Eventually, Sharara, who also goes by one name, made it to the malnutrition ward of Kabul’s Ataturk Hospital. But she is still desperately worried.
“Doctors say his condition is currently critical,” she said. In the 13 days Samir has been hospitalized, he hasn’t gained any weight.
The government’s response
Afghanistan’s government is well aware of the country’s hunger problem, and has expanded its malnutrition treatment facilities from 800 to about 3,200, Health Ministry spokesman Sharafat Zaman told the AP. In 2025, about 3 million malnourished children and mothers were treated, he added.
“Malnutrition is not a one-day problem. Malnutrition has been a problem in Afghanistan for decades due to poverty, war and other problems,” said Zaman, who is also a medical doctor.
The government has been speaking with aid agencies, he said, including those that have reduced funding or suspended projects.
“Health is separate from politics. Providing health services is an inalienable right for all people,” Zaman said.
Women bear the brunt
Women are especially affected by rising hunger. Banned from nearly all jobs by the Taliban government’s draconian restrictions on women, widows with children are especially vulnerable.
Many are so desperate they say they want to die.
“As WFP, we’re getting more and more suicide calls from women because they just don’t know how to feed their children and they don’t know where to turn,” the WFP country director said.
WPF nutrition programs have seen a 30% increase in the number of acutely malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women, an increase Aylieff said nobody in the nutrition community had seen before.
“These are the women to whom the world pledged unwavering solidarity in the aftermath of the takeover of the country in 2021. … Those same women are asking us, where is the solidarity of the international community?” Aylieff said.
“If I had one plea, it’s to not walk away from Afghan women who are now facing abject misery, hunger, malnutrition and watching their children die.”
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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece.
Afghanistan Peace Campaign
