Daily Times

UN Children’s Fund estimates that 167 children die in war-torn Afghanistan from preventable diseases every day. Let that sink in. 167 children lose their battle to life even before learning how to make sense of the new strange world around them. That too, from the likes of pneumonia, which has been reduced to a disease of poverty thanks to modern medicine.

Though staggering, the number is only the tip of the iceberg, as evidenced by hospitals full of sick children. That the minimally-equipped health facilities can be counted on the fingers of one’s hand gives further credence to the shrill alarm bells: public healthcare has long crossed the edge of the precipice and the well-being of millions is now in a shambolic freefall. The healthcare system had been crumbling at the expense of an international aid freeze since the fall of Kabul. Merely weeks into the new government, experts had started sending distress calls about no pay available for staff and the crippling absence of patient supplies. While aid started trickling in the form of emergency concerns, only five per cent of the UN’s appeal for Afghanistan has been funded so far. Given the string of covid-19 variants and harsh winters, all the more emphasised by the famine strokes, a system as fragile as Afghanistan’s was doomed to end up in smoke from the very beginning.

However, those determined to continue with their responsibilities towards humanity–though weakened by lack of resources–are showing signs of despair. The recent ban slapped on Afghan women means yet another series of restrictions for humanitarian agencies as they try to step in to provide women and children with basic amenities. In a report published by an international news outlet, a nurse whimpered, “There’s nothing we can do but watch babies die.” If this does not express the exasperation of fighting a failing fight, nothing on God’s green earth can.

Of course, their misery would not make much sense to those busy working their own angles. Elsewhere from the relative comfort of his position (in a now-deleted tweet), a Taliban leader instigates his supporters in the developed world to pinpoint and attack critics. Despite being a de facto authority, the Taliban do not show any signs of trying hands at governance. *