About the Emergency
By the Numbers
More than 36% of the 30 million people in Afghanistan live below the poverty line
6.6 million people in Afghanistan do not meet the minimum food requirement
72% of the population suffers from illiteracy
(Source: U.N.)
Outside Afghanistan’s biggest cities were makeshift camps where people would go when they had nothing. Families go there after fleeing from violence, or just when they couldn’t find any work in post-war Afghanistan and could no longer afford to live in the city.
The winter was so cold that they were literally freezing to death.
When the camp residents had a little money, they had to choose which to buy—a little fuel to stave off the freezing cold, or a little food to fend off starvation. For many families, they couldn’t have both.The New York Times reported that at least 22 children froze to death in January 2012 in camps around Kabul. One of them was 1-month-old Ismail, the son of Juma Gul. “He was never warm in his entire life,” his father told a reporter. “Not once.”
Ghulam Faroq lived in one of these camps with his wife and his two children—4-year-old Mustafa and 2-year-old Ruqia. He used to have a job in a factory and a rented house in the city, but after work opportunities disappeared, he had to move his family to a tent and beg for food: “This year the winter is very cold and we need fuel and food,” he told an Islamic Relief Afghanistan team. “Those are things that will keep us alive for the rest of the winter.
“I would like to ask donors of Islamic Relief and my Muslim brothers and sister to help us in the cold weather,” said Ghulam. “We do not have anything at all. If the cold weather remains for a few more days, we will not be alive.”
How Islamic Relief Helped
Alhamdulillah, with the help of our donors, Islamic Relief’s team in Kabul were able to purchase emergency supplies and distribute them to families in camps near Kabul to help them get through the winter. The supplies included:
Coal for heating, 90 kg
Wheat flour, 49 kg
Rice, 10 kg
Sugar, 3 kg
Cooking oil, 5 liters
The conditions are still very harsh in the camps, but with fuel to burn, alhamdulillah, many more parents have been able to keep their children safe.
Islamic Relief has been working in Afghanistan since 1992 and has an office in Kabul. Islamic Relief’s early work in Afghanistan combined emergency relief with economic development initiatives, in addition to drought relief and food assistance. Later projects added education, water and sanitation, livelihood support and rebuilding of community infrastructure. To learn more, visit irusa.org/afghanistan.
