The icy - and forgotten - Afghan winter, according to the World Food Programme, threatens to turn the situation in the country (already exhausted by 40 years of conflict) from a "collective failure" to a "catastrophe", with 22.8 million people at risk of food insecurity, 9.7 million children without health care and 18.4 million civilians in need of humanitarian aid. According to Unicef, there are more than 3.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), of whom some 700,000 were forced to flee last year. A scenario even worse than the humanitarian crises in Ethiopia, South Sudan, Syria and Yemen. By June, according to the UN, 97% of Afghans will be living below the poverty line.

From the suspension of funds to the 'opium economy'

Since the Taliban's rise to power, the US government and US-affiliated institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have stopped sending aid and frozen all Afghan money deposited in American and Western banks ($9.5 billion in the US alone), fearing links between Islamists and international terrorism. (Some of this money is also claimed by the 150 families of the Twin Towers victims who sued al-Qaeda and the Taliban 20 years ago, with the American courts awarding $7 billion in compensation). At the same time, Haji Mohammad Idris, the new governor of the Central Bank of Afghanistan (known to the chronicles for having chaired the Taliban's economic commission for 20 years "without a university degree or classical training in finance"), is faced with a desperate monetary policy: banks have been closed since the fall of the previous regime, foreign transactions are blocked, ATMs are running out of cash and the value of the Afghan currency has fallen to an all-time low. Last but not least, the prices of many foodstuffs (also affected by the 2021 drought), including wheat, flour and oil, have skyrocketed, with inflation ranging from +30% to +55%.

Between the folds of this impending financial, health and humanitarian crash, however, lie even worse scenarios. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan produces 89% of the world's dry opium, followed by Mexico (6%) and Myanmar (5%). The poppy industry is virtually the only domestic industry in Afghanistan, employing 2 million people and providing growers with 40% more income than non-growers. Cultivation increased by 37% in 2020 alone, while the pandemic raged. In July 2021, according to UNODC, 'the harvest will be the fifth consecutive year of record production of more than 6,000 tonnes, with the potential to produce up to 320 tonnes of pure heroin for sale on global markets'. Opium revenues in Afghanistan 'will amount to approximately $1.8-2.7 billion in 2021', or 7-11% of the country's GDP. The "opium economy", as international analysts call it, which 20 years of occupation have failed to eradicate, and on which the United States has spent some $9 billion in counter-narcotics efforts, is thus the new face of Afghanistan: an open-air narco-state in the hands of the Taliban. Forgotten, one step away from a humanitarian catastrophe and holding 39 million civilians "hostage". Many of them on the brink of starvation, especially children.

Food famine

At the same time in October, Save the Children said that more than 14 million children will go hungry this winter and 5 million are one step away from famine, an increase of 35 per cent on the same period last year. The combined effects of drought, conflict and economic collapse have pushed many families into critical situations, forcing them to take drastic measures to survive, such as selling what little they have to buy food or sending their children to work. Only a few months ago, eight motherless and fatherless siblings, aged between 18 months and 8 years, died of starvation on the outskirts of Kabul. Chronicles also tell of mothers forced to sell a child in exchange for cattle or money to feed the rest of the family, of arranged marriages and of the increasing number of boys and girls being recruited as soldiers.

More than half of Afghanistan's population - a record 22.8 million people - have been acutely food insecure since November, according to the latest Integrated Food Security Classification (IPC) Scale report from the Afghanistan Food Security and Agriculture Cluster, jointly led by the Food and Agriculture Organization and the UN World Food Programme. The report also found that "more than one in two Afghans will experience acute food insecurity at crisis (CPI Phase 3) or emergency (CPI Phase 4) levels during the least productive season between November 2021 and March 2022, requiring urgent humanitarian action to meet basic food needs, protect livelihoods and avert a humanitarian disaster".

L'Inverno

In this dramatic scenario, the onset of winter, with temperatures that can reach 25 degrees below zero, does not help. According to Save the Children, nearly 800,000 children in Afghanistan face a freezing winter without adequate shelter. Some 8.6 million children live in families without enough blankets, and more than 3 million have no heating to keep them warm. Price hikes and the collapse of the economy have pushed many families to the brink of poverty, unable to afford fuel or firewood to heat their homes. At the same time, data collected by the United Nations shows that 1.6 million people are living in emergency tents or makeshift shelters with little protection from rain, snow and sub-zero temperatures. In some provinces, children sleeping outside without adequate winter clothing or heating are at serious risk of hypothermia, acute respiratory infections such as pneumonia and, in the worst cases, death. There is also the spectre of the Covid-19 health emergency, with the Taliban obstructing vaccinations and crippling the health system.

Collapsing healthcare system

The Afghan health system, fragile and plagued by serious shortcomings, is currently on the verge of collapse, while the needs of the population remain enormous. Thanks to the sanctions imposed on the new regime by the United States and the West, 87% of the country's health facilities have closed. There were 2300 before the Taliban came to power, but now there are barely 300, many of which are run by international organisations. This is the alarm sounded by the Lancet, which, in a study, recorded "a reduction in health services of between 39% and 52%, which could mean a devastating increase in child deaths to a total of 2170 per month". The same alarm was sounded by Médecins Sans Frontières, which runs a nutrition centre in Herat where malnutrition cases have risen by 40% since last year, with more than 60 new admissions a week.

Access to health care in Afghanistan was already a major problem before the Taliban came to power, but today,' says a note from MSF, which has teams working in Herat, Kandahar, Khost, Kunduz and Lashkar Gah, 'the situation has worsened due to the suspension of most international aid, including World Bank funding for the World Health Organisation's (WHO) primary health care programmes in Herat province. The Herat Regional Hospital, where MSF runs the nutrition centre, has lost some of its key staff, including the director and some of the most experienced doctors, who fled before the Taliban came to power. Outside MSF's nutrition centre, salaries have not been paid for five months, and there are no medical supplies or money for maintenance.

Internally Displaced People

Today, exodus remains the only scenario to escape death. Within the country, according to UNHCR, more than 3.5 million people have been displaced by the conflict, including some 700,000 who will be forced to flee by 2021, 80% of whom are women and children. Possible escape routes are across the borders into Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Iran. The UN has urged Afghanistan's neighbours to keep their borders open to refugees and called on the international community to support these countries. But it is the western migration route, from Iran to Turkey, that worries the Old Continent the most. There are many ways for displaced people to reach Turkey, all controlled by human traffickers and more dangerous than in the past, as several transit countries tighten their borders. Those who can afford it from Turkey try to reach Italy directly by sea, exposing themselves to all the risks involved. Others are forced to take the land route, the notorious Balkan route, through Greece or Bulgaria towards Serbia and then across the Hungarian or Croatian border.

The Game

Once they arrive at the gates of democratic Europe, after 40 years of conflict, domination and civil war, after leaving their homes, travelling thousands of kilometres, escaping the grip of the same Taliban that the West condemns for repeated rights violations and for being responsible for the biggest humanitarian crisis ever, can one hope that Afghan refugees will find a welcome? Walls are being built, fundamental rights are being violated, and there is "the game", a term used by the migrants themselves to describe the back and forth between no man's land and the European borders along the Balkan route. A repetition that very often means torture, theft, physical and psychological humiliation at the hands of police and soldiers. For those who choose the sea, the waters of Europe's largest graveyard await. In between, only one thing is certain. From a remote town in Panjshir to the gates of Europe, the desperation remains the same, while the names of the executioners along the way are destined to blur.