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When Mohamad Nasir went to a camp for internally displaced refugees in Kabul for the first time, people swarmed around him, trying to get their hands on packages of food he was carrying. In the desperate scrummage, Nasir was dragged around and manhandled, his clothes torn.
“It’s a terrible feeling when someone is asking you for food and you can’t help because you have limited resources,” the 25-year-old says of that late August visit.
Nasir is a staff member of Aseel, an e-commerce startup that created a marketplace for rural artists in Afghanistan. The platform has enabled more than 400 artists to sell their handmade pottery, embroidery and jewellery to people around the world. Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, however, the company has switched focus to allow its global customers to buy food and medicine for Afghans.
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“We are now using the supply chain that we created earlier to focus on the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan,” Nasir says.
The situation is desperate. With a cash-strapped Afghan economy facing rampant food shortages and inflation, the United Nations has warned that millions of Afghans could run out of food as winter approaches. A million children face the risk of starvation and death if their immediate needs are not met and many rural areas may be cut off by snow as the bad weather sets in.
Read More: How Female Afghan Governor Salima Mazari Escaped the Taliban
The situation “is magnifying and accelerating at an incredible pace,” warns Mary-Ellen McGroarty, the Afghanistan country director for the World Food Programme (WFP).
To be sure, Afghanistan faced food shortages before the Taliban came to power. The country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures, and has faced two major droughts in three years. According to the WFP, 14 million Afghans face food insecurity.
“In large parts of the country, farmers have just watched their lands and crops disintegrate into…
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Source : time
