The unthinkable has become a grim reality in Afghanistan. Reports emerging from Kabul and Herat describe scenes of fathers compelled to sell their children just to afford bread. This is not hyperbole; this is the brutal arithmetic of a collapsing economy. UK aid agencies, witnessing the catastrophe firsthand, are now demanding immediate intervention from the British government. But the question remains: what can anyone do when the market itself has failed?
Let us be clear. This is not a humanitarian crisis in the traditional sense. It is a liquidity crisis of the most extreme order. The Taliban inherited a central bank whose reserves were frozen, a currency in freefall, and an economy starved of foreign exchange. When the state cannot print money, when trade grinds to a halt, when salaries go unpaid for months, the black market becomes the only game in town. And in that game, children have become a commodity.
The economics are simple. A family that once earned 5,000 afghanis a month now faces prices that have tripled. Wheat, cooking oil, medicine all cost more than they can afford. With no savings, no credit, and no safety net, the only asset left is a child. The supply of desperate parents has increased, and so the price has fallen. A daughter might fetch 100,000 afghanis about £1,000. A son, perhaps half that. It is a transaction that would make any financier recoil, but in a market without regulation, morality is the first casualty.
UK aid agencies, including Save the Children and the British Red Cross, have sounded the alarm. They point to the frozen assets of the Da Afghanistan Bank, held in the US and UK, as the primary cause. Without access to these reserves, the Afghan economy cannot function. The agencies are calling for a humanitarian waiver to release some of these funds, along with a massive injection of aid. But here is the uncomfortable truth: aid is not a long-term solution. It is a bandage on a haemorrhage.
The risk of capital flight is now acute. Afghans with any remaining wealth are trying to get it out of the country. Gold, dollars, even bitcoin are being hoarded. The afghani has lost half its value against the dollar in the past year. This is not a crisis that can be solved by a few billion pounds of aid. It requires a fundamental restoration of trust in the currency and the financial system. That means either recognising the Taliban government which Britain will not do or finding a way to bypass them entirely. Neither option is palatable.
The market is sending a clear signal. When fathers sell children, the price of a human life has dropped below the cost of a meal. Investors understand that risk has been mispriced. The international community gambled that the Taliban would be more moderate this time. They were wrong. Now the price of that mistake is being paid in the lives of the most vulnerable.
Central bank policy, or the lack thereof, is at the heart of this tragedy. The Bank of England's decision to freeze Afghan reserves was understandable in the wake of the Taliban takeover. But it was also a policy without an exit strategy. The result is a humanitarian disaster of biblical proportions. Inflation is running at over 30%, gilt yields would be unimaginable if an Afghan bond market existed, and the real economy is in freefall.
The bottom line is this: Britain cannot afford to look away. The cost of intervention may be high, but the cost of inaction is higher. Every child sold today is a future adult radicalised by poverty and despair. The markets will not solve this crisis. Only a coordinated, massive, and immediate deployment of resources can. The question is whether the government has the will to act before the price becomes unbearable.
