Sharafuddin stands on the side of a road in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat, fighting off his pangs of hunger with sheer determination to score enough work or food to get his family through another day.
It was already an exhaustive daily ritual amid the relentless economic and humanitarian crises that have besieged Afghanistan, but a deadly cold snap has left the 35-year-old father of three praying for survival.
"During the cold nights, we are awake with our children and cannot sleep," the Herat resident says as he tries to warm his hands with his breath. "It is already midday, and I have neither had breakfast nor drank tea. Since the morning I have only earned 20 afghanis ($0.22) and I’m sitting here praying to God."
The severe cold that arrived on January 10 has been brutal, worse than any winter that locals in the city can recall, and has compounded the difficulties faced by Afghans around the country.
In just over two weeks, at least 158 people and well over 70,000 farm animals have succumbed to the unprecedentedly low temperatures, according to the Taliban government, and officials are bracing for a higher death toll as remote areas dig out from heavy snowfall.
A woman and child in Kabul
The central province of Ghor has experienced the lowest temperatures, with Afghanistan's Meteorological Department saying the thermometer dipped to minus 34 degrees Celsius.
Deaths have been reported in 24 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces, Abdul Rahman Zahid, a director with the Taliban's State Affairs Ministry, said in a video message to RFE/RL's Radio Azadi on January 25.
Electricity outages in many areas, including the capital, Kabul, have compounded the problem, while soaring prices for coal, firewood, and other fuels have left many Afghans with no heat. As many as 5,000 children have been hospitalized in the past week alone, according to the Taliban’s Health Ministry.
Temperatures are expected to warm in the coming weeks, but the situation has prompted Zahid to call on the United Nations and donor countries to provide more humanitarian aid to help vulnerable Afghans.
'To Eat Or To Buy Heat'
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) projected this week that 28.3 million people will require humanitarian assistance this year.
Even before the Taliban seized power in 2021, Afghans were struggling from the effects of successive droughts and other natural disasters, as well as insecurity that pushed many from their homes and onto the streets or to crowded refugee settlements where they were at greater risk of contracting diseases.
Under Taliban rule, the country has faced even more challenges, including earthquakes, floods, drought, and rising unemployment and prices. The militant group, isolated and unrecognized by the global community due to its human rights abuses, has also had to deal with the loss or disruption of much of the international aid that Afghanistan depended on.
Aid organizations were bracing for the worst even before winter arrived, with the International Red Cross (ICRC) underscoring the troubling trend of rising disease and hunger among children.
"Afghan families face an impossible choice: to eat or to buy heat," ICRC director of operations Martin Schuepp said during a visit to Afghanistan in November. "And, really, they can’t afford either, resulting in a frightening rise in malnutrition and pneumonia cases."
A barefoot boy carries bread home in Kabul.
The ICRC at the time described the humanitarian situation in Afghanistan as "alarming," predicting that 24 million Afghans -- more than half the population -- would require humanitarian assistance and estimating that 20 million were "acutely food insecure."
Saying that "aid organizations can’t answer all the overwhelming cries for help," Scheupp called on states and development agencies to return to Afghanistan to help.
But the distribution of aid has since become even more complicated, after the Taliban decided in December to bar women from working for local and international NGOs.
'The Coldest In Recent Years': Dozens Killed By Cold Snap In Afghanistan
Following her visit to Kabul the same month, UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous said that, by barring women from contributing to aid organizations, "the Taliban has in effect suspended aid for half the population of Afghanistan."
Last week, a top delegation of UN women officials met with the Taliban's leadership and pleaded with the government to "put the good of the country first."
Help cannot come quickly enough for Afghans like Khair Mohammad, a resident of Herat who told Radio Azadi that he is struggling to provide for his family.
"Every day we face this cold weather, but there is no work," the 48-year-old father of six said. "There is nothing left to eat. Rice and flour for one night and no more. In this cold weather, life is very difficult."