Official for U.N. warns of Afghan food crisis

UNITED NATIONS — The U. N. humanitarian chief had a dire message for leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies meeting this weekend: Worry about Afghanistan because its economy is collapsing and half the population risks not having enough food to eat as snow starts to fall.

Martin Griffiths said in an interview Friday that “the needs in Afghanistan are skyrocketing.”

Half of Afghan children under age 5 are at risk of acute malnutrition, and there is an outbreak of measles in every province, which is “a red light” and “the canary in the mine” for what’s happening in society, he said.

Griff iths warned that food insecurity leads to malnutrition, then disease and death, adding that “absent corrective action,” the world will be seeing deaths in Afghanistan.

He said the World Food Program is feeding 4 million people in Afghanistan, but the U. N. predicts that because of the dire winter conditions and the economic collapse, it is going to have to provide food to triple that number — 12 million Afghans.

“And that ’ s massive,” Griffiths said.

The program appealed last week for $ 200 million to finance its operations until the end of the year, and Griffiths urged countries that suspended development assistance for Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15, including the United States and European countries, to transfer that money for desperately needed humanitarian aid.

The U. S. on Thursday announced more than $144 million in humanitarian aid, he said, raising its total aid to Afghans in the country and refugees in the region to nearly $ 474 million in 2021.

Griffiths said the current crisis is the result of two significant droughts in the past

few years, the disruption of services during the conflict between the Taliban and the Afghan government, and the collapse of the economy.

“So the message that I would give to the leaders of the G-20 is worry about economic collapse in Afghanistan, because economic collapse in Afghanistan will, of course, have an exponential effect on the region,” he said.

“And the specific issue that I would ask them to focus on first is the issue of getting cash into the economy in Afghanistan — not into the hands of the Taliban — into the hands of the people whose access to their own bank accounts is not frozen.”

Griffiths said it’s also critical that frontline health workers, teachers and others get their salaries paid.

He said many ideas are being discussed with increasing urgency to get liquidity into the market, and his message is that an urgent response is needed this year, not in the spring.

Griffiths warned of the effects of an economic collapse, saying the first worry is that if people don’t get services, food, schooling for their children and health care, then they will move, either inside the country or by fleeing Afghanistan to survive.

The second worry, he said, is the growing problem of terrorism, “and that is something which usually breeds in times of uncertainty and in times of suffering.”

The undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs also said the Taliban need to ensure the rights of women and girls “because that’s part of stabilizing Afghanistan.”