UN agencies have warned of food shortages to Afghanistan as early as September without urgent aid funding, as it emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.
The World Food Programme (WFP), which brings in supplies by road, said it was getting food through via four different supply routes for the moment, but could start running out of food by next month.
Andrew Patterson, the WFP’s deputy country director in Afghanistan, said they were transporting food through humanitarian crossings, including from Uzbekistan, though which 50% of supplies arrived, as well as via Pakistan and Turkmenistan.
“Winter is coming. We are going into the lean season and many Afghan roads will be covered in snow. We need to get the food into our warehouses where it needs to be distributed,” said Patterson. “We’ve got 20,000 metric tonnes of food in the country now, we’ve got 7,000 metric tonnes on the way.
“We need another 54,000 metric tonnes of food to get the Afghan people through to the end of December. We could start running out of food by September.”
Patterson said the WFP needed $200m (£146m) to buy food for up to 20 million people who they predict will need it. Nearly 18.5 million people – half the population – already rely on aid, and the current drought is expected to exacerbate that.
The WFP said it was working through the challenges brought about by the rapid Taliban takeover.
Aid agencies say it is critical that medical and food supplies reach about 300,000 people displaced in Afghanistan over the past two months amid advances by the Taliban that culminated in the capture of Kabul on 15 August.
Dr Richard Brennan, the WHO emergency director in the region, said in an emailed statement: “While the eyes of the world now are on the people being evacuated and the planes leaving, we need to get supplies in to help those who are left behind.”
He said the WHO was calling for empty planes to divert to its warehouse in Dubai to collect supplies on their way to pick up evacuees from the country.
The WHO is also looking at setting up a “humanitarian air bridge”, Brennan said.
Gregory Matthews of the International Red Cross said that the people of Afghanistan faced a triple threat.
“There is the uncertainty in the political situation, there are 550,000 people displaced and also people are at crisis levels of food insecurity. The government had already declared a crisis in July, after a major drought. Levels of food insecurity are exceptionally high.”
Covid was also leaving the country’s health systems at a “perilous point” Matthews said. Henrietta Fore, the executive director of Unicef, said on Monday that about 10 million children across Afghanistan need humanitarian assistance, 1 million could die without treatment and that conditions are expected to deteriorate further.
“Right now, Unicef is scaling up its lifesaving programmes for children and women – including through the delivery of health, nutrition and water services to displaced families. We hope to expand these operations to areas that could not previously be reached because of insecurity.”
At the beginning of 2021, a third of the country’s population was facing crisis and emergency levels of food insecurity, and half of all children under five were malnourished.
Even before the Taliban seized power, the country was in great humanitarian need following the second drought in three years.
About 40% of Afghanistan’s crops were lost to drought this year, according to the WFP, and the socioeconomic impact of Covid has left essential food out of reach for many families. Wheat prices are 24% above the five-year average.
The UN humanitarian response plan is only 38.7% funded, leaving a shortfall of $800m.