Thread by @TelGlobalHealth

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan has sent the country spiralling into a humanitarian crisis.

19m Afghans cannot feed themselves and 3.2m children are acutely malnourished.

Video report by @benfarmerDT, produced by @Harrietmbarber ⬇️ @Telegraph

The humanitarian catastrophe didn't begin with the Taliban's takeover in August.

The country is enduring its second severe drought in 3 years, Covid lockdowns hit the economy hard, and endless war sent hundreds of thousands into camps or urban poverty.

(c: Rahmat Gul)

But the Taliban's stunning victory and the international community's response have pitched the country into economic free fall.

International officials say few countries were so dependent on foreign aid.

Three-quarters of Afghanistan's government budget was paid for by foreign donors and international aid amounted to some two-fifths of GDP.

That funding stopped overnight when Ashraf Ghani's government fled.

Hundreds of thousands of civil servants, former police and soldiers, teachers and doctors and nurses have gone unpaid.

(c: Khodaiberdi Sadat)

Many of the Taliban's leadership are on foreign sanctions lists, including Sirajuddin Haqqani, the interior minister, who has a $10m bounty on his head.

International banks are refusing transactions with Afghan banks for fear they will be breaking restrictions.

The UN estimates it needs to provide more than $200m of humanitarian aid a month to avert disaster.

But this will only keep people alive and will not dig the economy out of its hole.

(c: Hector Retamal)

The Taliban appear to have no plans to deal with the crisis, except calling for America to end sanctions and release $9bn of frozen foreign reserves.

(c: Hector Retamal)

Doctors fear the fragile improvements in infant and maternal mortality and life expectancy will collapse at the same time as the state built up over the past two decades.

🔓Read the full dispatch: telegraph.co.uk/world-news/202…