Heartbreaking Loss: Afghan Mother Mourns Three Sons to Starvation Amid Crisis

Fri Oct 10 2025 14:32:57 GMT+0300 (Eastern European Summer Time)

In a poignant reflection on the escalating humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, a mother shares her grief over the loss of her three young sons to malnutrition, highlighting the dire conditions families face in the country.

Ghulam and Nazo, a couple from the Sheidaee settlement in Afghanistan, have recently lost three children due to malnutrition, a grim testament to the ongoing hunger crisis in the nation. With aid declining and crises compounding, experts warn that the lives of millions of Afghans are at risk, echoing the desperate pleas of parents struggling to feed their children.

Gusts of wind blew dust up off the ground as Ghulam Mohiddin and his wife Nazo walked towards the graveyard where all their children are buried.

They showed us the graves of the three boys they lost in the past two years – one-year-old Rahmat, seven-month-old Koatan, and most recently, three-month-old Faisal Ahmad.

All three suffered from malnutrition, say Ghulam and Nazo.

Can you imagine how painful it's been for me to lose three children? One minute there's a baby in your arms, the next minute they are empty, says Nazo.

I hope every day that angels would somehow put my babies back in our home.

There are days the couple go without food. They break walnut shells for a living in the Sheidaee settlement just outside the city of Herat in western Afghanistan and receive no help from the Taliban government or from NGOs.

Watching helplessly as my children cried out of hunger, it felt like my body was erupting in flames. It felt like someone was cutting me in half with a saw from my head to my feet, said Ghulam.

The deaths of their children are not recorded anywhere, but it's evidence of a silent wave of mortality engulfing Afghanistan's youngest, as the country is pushed into what the UN calls an unprecedented crisis of hunger.

We started the year with the highest increase in child malnutrition ever recorded in Afghanistan. But things have got worse from there, says John Aylieff, the World Food Programme's country director.

Food assistance kept a lid on hunger and malnutrition, particularly for the bottom five million who really can't cope without international support. That lid has now been lifted. The soaring of the malnutrition is placing the lives of more than three million children in peril.

Amid this heartbreaking situation, families like Ghulam and Nazo's continue to struggle in silence, haunted by the weight of their losses and the relentless cycle of poverty and hunger.

Hanifa Sayedi's one-year-old son Rafiullah could barely hold himself up, even while sitting. I took him to a clinic where they told me he's malnourished, but I don't have the money to keep taking him there, says Hanifa. She and her husband can only afford dry pieces of bread with Afghan green tea on some days.

The malnutrition crisis has become so severe that many parents are resorting to desperate measures, faced with the heart-wrenching decision of how to care for their children. The looming winter exacerbates their plight, and as aid continues to decline, the urgency for action grows.