Afghan families now sell children to survive as US freezes country’s asset, NGO support dries up

Life is getting harder by the day under the Taliban government, and Afghan families are preying on their own children’s freedom and wellbeing to survive.

A mother just sold her infant so she could feed the older ones. Another sold her three-year-old to settle part of her debt. Some kids are dying.

BBC reporter, Yogita Limaye, spoke to a mother who sold her infant for $500 to get money to feed the other children.

The buyer claimed he wanted to raise the girl to marry his son.

“He paid $250 upfront, enough to feed the family for a few months, and will pay the rest when he returns to collect the baby ‘once she can walk,” the woman was quoted to have said.

“My other children were dying of hunger so we had to sell my daughter. How can I not be sad? She is my child. I wish I didn’t have to sell my daughter.”

The father, a junk collector before but jobless now, said they had to do it.

“We are starving. Right now we have no flour, no oil at home. We have nothing. My daughter doesn’t know what her future will be. I don’t know how she’ll feel about it. But I had to do it.”

Eight children were reported to have starved to death in the capital of Kabul this week.

A house cleaner in western Afghanistan named Saleha, sold her three-year-old daughter to a man to whom she owed a $550 debt.

Saleha, 40, receives 70 cents a day from her job, and her husband doesn’t work, according to Wall Street Journal.

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

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“I will try to find money to save my daughter’s life,” husband Abdul Wahab said.

Khalid Ahmad, the lender, told the newspaper he had to accept the three-year-old girl to settle the debt.

“I also don’t have money. They haven’t paid me back,” he said.

Since the US and its allies pulled out of Afghanistan after the Taliban took over, aid, grants, donors, and international NGO withdrew support and funding. Many left.

And the US has also insisted the all-male Taliban government won’t have access to Afghan central bank reserve of $10 billion in the US.