Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/KABUL: Shamila doesn’t have a picture of the baby son who passed away in her arms in the chilly Kabul home this month, but she still remembers his innocent face.
“He had big eyes, a white and bright face, black hair, and a small nose,” she said. Three-month-old Amrullah was one of at least 171 people who have died in recent weeks due to the cold weather in Afghanistan.
Coldest winter witnessed in 15 years
According to the United Nations, around 28 million Afghans, including many children, need urgent help during the coldest winter witnessed in 15 years, when temperatures decreased as low as -29.2 degrees F.
Due to a ruling by the Taliban administration that most female NGO workers are forbidden from working, many aid groups have partially suspended operations in recent weeks. This has left the agencies unable to operate many programs in the conservative country.
Amrullah’s father, 40-year-old Nek Mohammad, lost his income a few months ago when health-related issues stopped his work as a laborer. Several of their eight children quickly fell ill with no money for heating, drafty windows in their mountainside home, and little food besides bread and tea. They took baby Amrullah to the hospital two weeks ago for coughing and congested lungs.
Hospital wards in Afghanistan have been filling up recently with children suffering from pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. Many families face stark choices between being able to heat their homes or afford food.
35-year-old Shamila was clutching her baby and covered herself in a warm quilt. But at midnight, she found that his face was cold. “It was a cold night when I lost my baby, I was trying to warm my son, but I failed,” she said.
They silently buried the baby without informing any family members because they could not host guests without money. Now. a family friend has given them a charcoal heating system to fight the deadly cold. Still unable to afford much food besides bread, Shamila worries about her surviving kids, who have heavy coughs.
She said, “I am … always thinking of my son and my two other small kids; they are also ill. I don’t want to die as well.” She requested international donors for more aid for her country. As her mother didn’t have any pictures of Amrullah, she had the clothes she had made before his birth.
They visited the cemetery, blanketed in snow on Tuesday, and offered prayers for their baby boy. “May God spare other mothers the pain of losing their kids,” Shamila said, by the rock marking his grave. “It is challenging for humans to bear it.”
