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Parents sell their own children to survive as poverty grips Muslim country

U.N. report warns that nearly all of Afghanistan’s 40 million-strong population could be under the poverty line in the near future.

By World Israel News Staff

On the heels of a chaotic withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, coupled with the freezing of international aid money for fear of the funds falling into the Taliban’s hands, the embattled Western Asian country has been plunged into previously unknown levels of poverty.

According to a U.N. World Food Program report, some 95 percent of Afghans are currently not getting enough to eat, and that number could be even higher in the near future.

“People are being pushed to the brink of survival,” the report reads, adding that the entirety of Afghanistan’s 40 million strong population – save for a handful of elites, including the ruling Taliban – could sink below the poverty line before the end of the year.

The Taliban takeover of the country has posed a serious moral dilemma for Western countries, who have long supported development programs and charities in Afghanistan.

With fears of everything from women being de facto banned from the public sphere and major crackdowns on free expression, some nations don’t want to support the Taliban’s repressive policies via aid money.

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But some believe that Western countries have a special responsibility to prioritize funding which can save lives over making a philosophical point about not endorsing the Taliban’s practices.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, which has done significant work in Afghanistan over the last two decades told the Wall Street Journal that countries “who have their fingerprints all over the sorry situation here have at least to disburse the funding we need so we can avoid people perishing in enormous numbers this winter.”

Egeland added that “to pause the lifesaving funding because we’re still negotiating female rights would be utterly wrong.”

As the world debates whether to shun or partner with the Taliban, Afghan citizens are growing desperate.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, an impoverished woman explained that in order to pay off a $550 debt, she’d sold her daughter to a money lender.

“If life continues to be this awful, I will kill my children and myself,” the woman said. “I don’t even know what we will eat tonight.”