Taliban Beheading Afghans in Brutal Crackdown, Millions Face Starvation: 'A Humanitarian Catastrophe'

Even though much of what's happening in Afghanistan isn't making headlines now, the situation is still critical for Americans and others attempting to leave the country. 

Circumstances are also increasingly dire for ordinary Afghans. NBC News reports millions of them now face a daily fight with hunger. 

For weeks, humanitarian organizations have been warning of an imminent disaster as the Taliban have been failing to feed the nation's poor amid an economy on the verge of collapse. 

Earlier this month, Omar Abdi, deputy executive director for programs at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) cautioned, "We will have a humanitarian catastrophe." 

"There are millions of people who are going to starve. And there is winter coming, there is COVID raging, and the whole social system collapsed, so not just only health, but also other social services. Food shortage, medical shortage. And we heard that there will be fuel shortages. So the whole country is going to collapse if they don't get support immediately."

According to recent surveys conducted by the World Food Program, the United Nations' food assistance branch, 95 percent of households in Afghanistan are not consuming enough food, with parents having to eat less and skip meals to feed their children.

"As more families struggle to put food on the table, the nutritional health of mothers and their children is getting worse by the day," Hervé Ludovic De Lys, UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, said in a statement on Oct. 5.

Account of Life Under Taliban Rule

Tori Richards, an investigative reporter with The Washington Examiner, appeared on the Thursday morning edition of CBN's Newswatch and described what her sources are telling her about what life is like under the Taliban in the newly established Islamic emirate. 

Richards told CBN News, "It's horrible. They are back to beheading people. Hunting people down, going from home to home, and just terrorizing the citizens. It's not the kinder, gentler Taliban that they had promised."

When asked about the number of Americans still in the country, Richard said there are probably thousands of Americans still in Afghanistan. No one knows for sure how many. 

"I've been talking with a family that's desperately trying to get out because someone in that family worked for special operations under our command," she said. "And even a general, who is a source of mine, wrote to the State Department saying, 'Help these people,' but that doesn't really matter. They haven't gotten on a plane."

"So they just hear gunfire every night," Richards continued. "They see people hung up in the square. They're just terrified, hunkered down in some home that's not even theirs because they don't want any trace coming back to them. And so they text me almost every day saying, 'When is it our turn?' It's just tragic."

ABOVE: Watch the full CBN News interview with The Washington Examiner's Tori Richards. 

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