A Mother's Heartbreak: navigating starvations in Afghanistan

Tue Sep 30 2025 02:31:12 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

Ghulam and Nazo Mohiddin mourn the loss of their three sons to malnutrition amidst Afghanistan's escalating hunger crisis. Their story highlights the urgent need for humanitarian aid and the plight of families facing starvation.

In Sheidaee, Afghanistan, Ghulam and Nazo Mohiddin share their devastating journey after losing their three sons to hunger and malnutrition. With no support from the Taliban regime or NGOs, they survive by breaking walnut shells but often find themselves going without food. Their grief illustrates a broader crisis affecting millions of Afghan children, as humanitarian aid declines sharply. Experts warn of a looming disaster as the number of children facing acute malnutrition surpasses three million in the country.

Gusts of wind blew dust up off the ground as Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked towards the graveyard where all their children are buried.

They showed us the graves of the three boys they lost in the past two years – one-year-old Rahmat, seven-month-old Koatan and most recently, three-month-old Faisal Ahmad.

All three suffered from malnutrition, say Ghulam and Nazo.

Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo.

I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.

There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or from NGOs.

Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames. It felt like someone was cutting me into half with a saw from my head to my feet, said Ghulam.

The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest, as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.

We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, says John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director.

Food assistance kept a lid in this country on hunger and malnutrition, particularly for the bottom five million who really can't cope without international support. That lid has now been lifted. The soaring of the malnutrition is placing the lives of more than three million children in peril.

Aid has sharply declined because the single largest donor, the US, stopped nearly all aid to Afghanistan earlier this year. But WFP says eight or nine other donors who funded them in the last two years have also stopped this year, and many others are giving much less than they were last year.

In the Sheidaee graveyard, we found startling evidence of child deaths. There were no records of the people buried there, so we counted the graves ourselves. Roughly two-thirds of the hundreds of graves were of children.

Hanifa Sayedi's one-year-old son Rafiullah could barely hold himself up. I took him to a clinic where they told me he's malnourished, but I don't have the money to keep taking him there, she said, spotlighting the suffering that is defining life for many families.

Across hospitals in Afghanistan, the situation mirrors Ghulam and Nazo's heartache. In one ward, three babies died recently, showcasing the severe acute malnutrition seen more widely.

As winter approaches, the alliance between rising malnutrition rates and diminishing aid signals a dire future for Afghan families, with the urgency for humanitarian intervention intensifying.