People stand while getting free bread in front of a bakery in Kabul.
Kabul:
In the wee hours of the morning, Muhajira rushes to a humble bakery in the Afghan capital in freezing temperatures to wait for warm naan bread to be handed out.
Some days it’s her whole family, and the others in line eat for the day.
“If I don’t bring bread from here, we’ll go to bed hungry,” mother-of-two, Muhajira Amanallah, told AFP on Tuesday.
“I even thought of selling my daughters, but I recoiled and trusted only in God.”
Afghanistan is in the throes of a humanitarian disaster, exacerbated by the Taliban takeover in August — when Western countries froze international aid and access to assets abroad.
Jobs have dried up and many government workers have gone unpaid for months in the country, which relied almost entirely on foreign donations under the previous US-backed administration.
The United Nations has warned that half of the country is threatened with food shortages.
The bread distribution launched on Saturday is part of the Save Afghans From Hunger campaign, organized by a university professor in Kabul.
At least 75 families in seven districts of the capital, which are currently covered in snow, will receive daily Naan rations for a month.
Nouriya stands in line next to five other women, all in the blue burqa that the Taliban encourage women in the country to wear.
After the death of her husband, she received handouts from friends, but that has come to an end.
“We eat rice or soup made with carrots and turnips…and we put pieces of bread in it instead of meat,” says Nouriya, a mother of five.
While men and women wait for their share of the bread, children play, some wearing torn shoes that are too big for them.
When the last person left the bakery, owner Makram El-Din said: “People have lost their jobs and have no income. We used to use four bags of flour a day, now we only use one and a half.”
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
