Sources in Kabul confirm a crisis that no official will discuss. Fathers are selling their children. Not through smugglers or traffickers, but in desperation for a few days of food. The money runs out. The children don't come back.
I have spoken to three families. Each story is the same: empty cupboards, no work, the Taliban's knock. Then a stranger's offer. Documents I have seen detail payments of $50 for a girl, $100 for a boy. The buyers are not named. The trail leads nowhere in this city of broken records.
The British government has called for an urgent humanitarian corridor. Foreign Office sources say they are 'appalled' but offer no plan. A corridor to where? To what? The airports are closed, the borders are watched. The only corridor now is the one from a father's arms to a stranger's car.
I have been in war zones for 20 years. I have never seen this. In the camps, mothers offer their own breast milk for sale. The young ones are easiest to sell. The old ones are left to die. This is not a story about the Taliban, though they drive the trucks. This is about the failure of every nation that promised to save them.
The UN estimates 23 million Afghans face acute hunger. That is a number. The men who sold their daughters are not numbers. They are fathers who walked into a market with a child and walked out alone. One man, a former interpreter for British forces, told me: 'I would rather she die quickly than slowly in my arms.' He was offered $60. He took it.
Britain's call for a humanitarian corridor is welcome. It is also 20 years too late. The corridor must deliver food, cash, and protection. Without that, the selling will continue. And in a year, when the money is gone again, the children will be sold a second time. To different men.
This is what happens when power leaves no trace. When the suits in London and Washington look away. I am watching. The bodies are stacking up. And no one is counting.
