“The U.S. withdrawal exacerbated an already bad situation,” said Sherine Ibrahim, a former head of the Afghanistan office of the International Rescue Committee, which received three-quarters of its funding from the U.S. government. “No other donor has stepped in and no one will in those proportions.”
In 2024, the United States funded over half of Afghanistan’s nutrition and agricultural programs. Food insecurity has skyrocketed since last year’s cuts. More than 17 million Afghans — 40 percent of the population — now face acute levels of hunger, two million more than last year.
Seven provinces face critical food insecurity, the final stage before famine, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a group of international organizations that the United Nations and aid agencies rely on to monitor global hunger. None were at this level a year ago.
Afghanistan is projected to lose 5 percent of its national income in 2026 as donors slash aid, according to the Center for Global Development. Researchers warn that will have long-term consequences for children, causing malnutrition that will stunt their development.
“That is a 20 to 30-year impact, not a one-year budget decision,” said Mohammad Mustafa Raheal, a research fellow at Lund University in Sweden who studies humanitarian aid delivery in Afghanistan. “You can’t just ‘switch the aid back on’ later and undo that damage.”