Residents of Kabul are suffering from hunger, with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) reporting an inability to help “hundreds of thousands of people” in food centres.
WFP country director John Ayliffe said the drought, drastic aid cuts and the forced return of 1.5 million Afghans from Iran and Pakistan have combined to “increase acute malnutrition” in the poverty-stricken country.
“We need to do everything we can to avoid famine. This could be unprecedented because 10 to 15 million people may need food aid in winter. In the meantime, we have no funding and there will be no response,” he said.
The programme in Afghanistan said it needs nearly $539 million over the next six months to ensure all programmes reach the most vulnerable families across the country.
At the same time, numerous donors have reduced their contributions. For 2025, WFP Afghanistan said it received about $155 million. That compares with nearly $560 million the year before and nearly $1.6 billion in 2022.
“The U.S. has been a phenomenally generous donor in Afghanistan for decades, providing the lion’s share of humanitarian aid along with other generous donors from around the world,” Eiliffe said. Now is not the time to cut back or withdraw aid, he said.
President Donald Trump has cut more than 7,400 foreign aid programmes worldwide worth $80 billion in his first few months in office, according to a report released last month by Senate Democrats.
A State Department spokesperson said on 4 August that “for the past approximately four years, foreign aid intended for the people of Afghanistan has been systematically diverted and expropriated by the Taliban, a specially designated global terrorist group.”
Nearly four years after taking over Afghanistan, “it is time for the Taliban to take care of the welfare of the Afghan people,” the spokesman added.
The Radio Liberty piece quotes residents of Kabul, the capital, who report significant food shortages. One of them is 54-year-old widow Abed, who lives with her 15-year-old son, 26-year-old widowed daughter and two grandchildren. She used to work as a cleaner at a girls’ high school until the Taliban shut it down as part of a campaign against female education.
“Last Thursday I had nothing at home. Not even potatoes or tomatoes. I hated my life. Life is full of pain and problems. Last Thursday I was even ready to accept death,” she said in an interview recorded on 11 August.
Eiliffe said the situation is even worse in rural areas, where some 400 nutrition clinics have closed due to lack of funds:
“As a consequence, we are turning away hundreds of thousands of people. Sometimes they had to walk five hours to the nearest clinic. Imagine the pain when you arrive and find that the clinic is closed.”
Eiliffe added that the World Food Programme can now provide food for about 1 million people, up from 5 million a year ago. But it will soon run out of money, he said, meaning food aid will “almost completely” stop by October.
Taliban officials have largely avoided public comment on the hunger crisis, instead making vague remarks blaming foreign players for the country’s overall economic woes.
For example, an Economy Ministry statement back in February said, “in addition to the financial and economic sanctions imposed by the United States, the asset freeze has affected the Afghan national economy”