hen Mohamad Nasir went to a camp for internally displaced refugees in Kabul for the first time, people swarmed around him trying to get their hands on packages of food his was carrying. Nasir was dragged around in the desperate scrummage and manhandled with his clothes torn.
It s a terrible feeling when someone is asking you for food and you can't help because you have limited resources, the 25-year-old says of that late August visit.
Nasir is a member of the Aseel, an e-commerce startup that created a marketplace for rural artists in Afghanistan. The platform has enabled more than 400 artisans and craftspeople to sell their handmade pottery, embroidery and jewellery to people around the world. Since the Taliban took control of the country in August, the company switched focus to allow its global customers to buy food and medicine for Afghanistans.
We are now using the supply chain that we created earlier to focus on Afghanistan, Nasir says.
The situation is desperate. With a cash-strapped Afghan economy facing rampant food shortages and inflation, the United Nations has warned that millions of Afghans could run out of food as winter approaches. A million children face the risk of starvation and death if their immediate needs are not met and many rural areas can be cut off by snow as bad weather sets in.
The situation is accelerating at an incredible pace, warns Mary-Ellen McGroarty, the country director of the WFP for Afghanistan. To be sure, Afghanistan faced food shortages before the Taliban came to power. The country is one of the most vulnerable to the effects of rising temperatures, and faced two major droughts in three years. According to WFP, 14 million Afghans face food insecurity.
In large parts of the country, farmers just watched their lands and crops disintegrate into dust, McGroarty says.
The situation has deteriorated markedly since the Taliban took power, forcing international aid agencies to evacuate their staffs. As countries figure out how to deal with a regime they have fought for years, humanitarian aid has also slowed down in Afghanistan. In late August, President Joe Biden ’ s administration froze U.S. government's reserves, worth $7 billion, held in Afghan banks.
Watching this crisis unfold from afar in London, Aseel founder Nasrat Khalid knew it couldn t be business as usual. In 2017, the 30-year-old started the platform to promote Pakistani art. Having grown up as a refugee in Pakistan, Khalid had always wanted to use his self-taught coding and technology skills to help other people in his country — it was only natural to shift Aseel s focus to humanitarian aid at this critical juncture.
If there are tools to order food and get it delivered in 10 minutes, it s also important to have a tool for people who were fed by the Global System to get food for survival, he tells TIME.
Aseel now sells emergency food packages — consisting of rice, flour, cooking oil, lentils and tea — which people from all over the world can buy on the company's website or app. They also sell First Aid Kits, diapers and formula for babies as well as tents, scarves and blankets. The company uses previous relationships with vendors to source the materials and marketing materials. So far, Aseel has distributed food and medicines to more than 1,400 families across different provinces in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan what killed, S. Didn t Mean To Kill
The rapid pivot a meant pausing the Company s mid-term plan to add every Afghan artists and create thousands of jobs in the country by 2022, by adding more of them to its platform for Afghanistan. No one was going to go into the economy or trade without Khalid saying. You can't build a nation on empty stomachs. The company s situation is emblematic of the plight of Afghanistan s startup scene, which flourished in recent years and played a major role in creating jobs. But regime change has forced many startups to shut down or change their operations, fearing for the safety of their staff.
Some staff members stopped working in a few weeks as they tried to cope with the new reality. The a dozen fled the country.
Many other Afghans who may have left have stayed back, though, including Nasir — an only child with parents to look after. Watching others evacuate wasn t easy for him. He says : "But I was waiting for the evacuation to end so that I could stop thinking about it and instead concentrate on working for Afghanistan." Before the rise of the Taliban, his job consisted of traveling to rural parts of India to seek out artisans willing to list their products for sale. He took photos and wrote stories about the products before assisting with shipping. We were trying to bring a big technology revolution for rural Afghan artists, especially for women in rural areas, says he.
On weekdays he works with his team to compile a list of people in need of aid and then processes orders and matches them with beneficiaries.
During the weekend, Nasir and his team of four men go around the city to distribute packages. Outside Kabul, the company has a network of volunteers, among them artists they have worked with in the past, to find people in need of food and distribute equipment.
Nasir says he doesn t know what the future holds for him and his country. What keeps him going are the spirit of Afghans and the willingness of people to help.
If nobody is going to take responsibility for our country and our people, it is on us, he says.