Afghanistan horror one year on as children sold into marriage while families starve

One year after the disastrous withdrawal which saw desperate people clinging to the outside of planes to escape, Afghanistan is facing a food crisis with girls getting less food than boys

Afghan children are being sold for marriage and forced to work as slaves to help their desperate families.

A year since the Taliban takeover, almost 20 million people – nearly half the population – face starvation.

One in eight children goes to bed hungry, with girls eating less than boys.

The departure of Western troops plunged Afghanistan into a humanitarian crisis, leaving the economy on the floor, crippling drought, and girls banned from going to school.

Twelve-year-old Meena was sold off to an older man for marriage because her mother Sadia, 30, needed cash to feed her other three children.

Sadia, whose story is featured in a Save the Children report, was given half the cash pre-wedding but her dad Ahmed vanished with the rest.Meanwhile orphaned 13-year-old Nagina was forced into child labour in order to survive.

Nagina was attending school and had dreams of becoming a doctor before the Taliban returned.

As the economy went into freefall, her older sister Yasmin, 35, had to make the difficult decision to remove Nagina from school and send her to work cleaning houses in order to ­support their siblings.

Sharara, 10, and her family were evicted because they couldn’t pay the rent.

Their landlord offered to buy one of the children in exchange for free board but they were thrown on to the streets when they refused.

Her older sister Parishad, 15, said: “Some days my father cannot bring food.

My brothers wake up at midnight and cry for food. I don’t eat, and I save my food for my brothers and sisters. I feel very frustrated and sad. I cry.”

Shekeba, 15, her mother Hameeda and cousin Noria, six, fled their village when a bomb destroyed their home.

To make ends meet, Hameeda now collects cotton from fields, helped by Shekeba who cannot go to school after the same explosion wrecked it.

The family live on stale bread washed down with tea, and rice when they can get it.

A Save the Children report says 97% of Afghan families struggle to provide food for their children.

Forty-six per cent of girls say they are not attending school, compared with 20% of boys.

And nine in 10 girls say they had less to eat in the past year and were losing weight, with no energy to work.

Chris Nyamandi, director of Save the Children in Afghanistan, said: “Children are going to bed ­hungry night after night. They’re ­exhausted and wasting away, unable to play and study like they used to.