By Mahtab Safi*, Mehsa Elham* in Afghanistan, and Freshta Ghani
Ishaq’s mud house in Firozkoh city, the capital of Ghor province, faces away from the sun, making it a cold home. It was the 32-year-old’s first winter in the city. After drought destroyed their living, he and his family moved there to be nearer to aid agencies. They survived on food packages from an NGO and his occasional work as a labourer, which paid for the firewood used in the rusty heater in the corner of his family home. Then, the NGO stopped its activity after the Taliban’s order to ban women from working in such organizations. Now vulnerable people like Ishaq* and his family face two simultaneous dangers: hunger and severe cold.
By the time the temperatures plunged to -33 Celsius on Friday, January 20, Ishaq hadn’t worked for weeks. His family home was so cold that their drinking water froze. Ishaq and his wife, Amina*, borrowed some oak from a neighbour. They put the wood in the stove but the oak was damp and no matter how hard the husband and wife tried, they could not start a proper fire. Finally, they decided to sleep under the blanket with their three children.
The cold woke Ishaq. When he put his hand on the face of seven-year-old Wahid, the boy’s face felt frozen. So were his son’s hands and feet. In shock and fear, he shook his son, but little Wahid did not move. He was dead.
Then, Amina shook their three-year-old son and nine-year-old daughter. Though their bodies were extremely cold, they were still breathing. “We thought that if I left the house in this cold weather, we might lose our other two children as well,” Ishaq tells Zan Times. “We had to sit next to our son’s body until morning and tried to keep our other two children alive.”
Conditions were so extreme that, by morning, Ishaq’s wife and their two surviving children were unable to move their arms and legs. They spent two days in hospital before being discharged on Monday, January 23. “Our neighbours and friends helped me get firewood for a few days, but our life is not limited to just these few days,” says Ishaq. “What to do in this situation? There is no one to hear us.”
Seven-year-old Wahid wasn’t the only Afghan to die in this winter’s brutally cold weather. Statistics collected by Zan Times from 11 provinces show that at least 174 people have died in the past three weeks due to the cold weather. To collect this data, Zan Times journalists reached out to 40 local sources, including residents, elders, activists and health workers. They indicated that most of the victims are homeless drug addicts.
Local sources in Nimroz province report that 41 people, including 31 male homeless drug addicts, have died due to the cold. At the same time, 36 people, including two children, died in Badakhshan province, residents tell Zan Times. In Herat province, health workers who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to ZanTimes that 32 homeless drug addicts, including seven women, died due to the freezing weather.
Though winter temperatures are often below freezing in Afghanistan, this month has been remarkably cold. Kabul, which usually averages lows about -4 Celsius in January, has recorded temperatures below -20. Exacerbating the harsh weather is that many families need food and other aid, including heating. The website of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Afghanistan (OCHA) shows that more than 28 million people need vital aid, including 15 million children.
In a video message to Zan Times, Shafiullah Rahimi, spokesman for the Taliban’s Disaster Management Ministry, states that 175 people have died due to the cold, fires, floods, and mudslides since January 10 in 24 provinces. He also adds that 80,000 livestock have been destroyed.
One of the provinces in which Zan Times recorded deaths due to the winter’s unusually cold weather is Samangan, in northern Afghanistan. When the temperature dropped to -23 Celsius on January 13, Fateh*’s house was as cold as a freezer. He couldn’t afford coal or firewood, having lost his job in the local coal mine a month ago. He and his wife used dried cow dung to heat the house.
“My wife screamed loudly in the middle of the night, and I woke up. I saw that she is distraught,” Fateh tells Zan Times. “When I looked at my daughter, I saw that she was blue.” His wife told him that the blanket had slipped off the 10-year-old. They carried their daughter in their arms to the nearest clinic but the doctors confirm that she is no longer alive. “One of my daughters died, but I am afraid of losing my other three children because cow dung does not help in this cold,” he says. In addition to not being able to afford firewood, Fateh worries that he will not be able to get enough food for his children in the coming months.
That same night, Sediq* died in a village on the outskirts of Sheberghan, the capital of Jawzjan province. He had been ill for around 18 months. “My husband’s health was very bad,” says his wife, Rukhsar*. “I told the doctors that our house is too cold and I don’t have a warm place for him to sleep. I begged them to let him stay in the hospital, but they refused and said that we don’t have space.”
That night, Sediq slept under their home’s sandali, a low table covered with blankets that has heating, often a coal brazier, underneath to provide warmth. In the middle of the night, Rukhsar checked on her husband. His body was cold.
The new widow had no money to pay for her husband’s funeral. “My neighbours and relatives brought the shroud and accessories for the dead, and we buried my husband,” she says. Now, Rukhsar worries about how she can care for their six children, the youngest of whom is two years old. “My situation is extremely bad: we have no firewood and no food to eat. My neighbours gave me some hot coals to warm the sandali, otherwise my children will freeze.”
*Names have been changed to protect the identity.
Matin Mehrab*, Atia FarAzar*, and Sana Atif* in Afghanistan contributed to this report.
