On Monday, an engineer set himself on fire in a Kabul street because he could not find work to feed his wife and three children. He died in hospital. It was the latest sign of desperation in Afghanistan, a nation that has seen people selling vital organs and even their daughters to buy food. ‘The country is experiencing the sharpest surge in malnutrition ever recorded,’ according to the World Food Programme, quite a claim for an organisation with data going back six decades. Seventeen million people face acute food insecurity, with women and children the hardest hit.

Apart from paying for repression the Taliban do little other governing, and take no responsibility for the collapse of the economy or the starving and dying people around them

Apart from paying for repression the Taliban do little other governing, and take no responsibility for the collapse of the economy or the starving and dying people around them

Severe drought is a factor, but Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis is manmade. The men who made it are the misogynist tyrants of the Taliban, whose only governing principle is repression of women, backed up with extreme violence. The assault on rights and dignity for women is not just an add-on, an element of the Taliban’s moral code, it is the foundation on which they base their control of Afghanistan. Apart from paying for repression they do little other governing, and take no responsibility for the collapse of the economy or the starving and dying........

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