After the chaotic and deadly withdrawal last year, a food crisis now plagues Afghanistan. Our people and the Afghans alike need prayer. The horrible circumstances worsened by the abrupt U.S. departure persist.

From CNN. At midday, Shakeela Rahmati starts the long walk from her home in a poor neighborhood in the hills above Kabul.

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Along the way, other women quietly join the journey. It will take them three hours to reach the city center. But each day they are driven by gnawing hunger and the need to feed their children.

Their destination is a bakery, one of many in Kabul where crowds of women have started gathering in the late afternoons, patiently waiting for customers who might give them some bread.

“Sometimes we eat dinner, sometimes we don’t,” Rahmati says. “The situation has been bad for three years, but this last year was the worst. My husband tried to go to Iran to work but he was deported.”

The United Nations says that nearly half of the country faces acute hunger. According to a May report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), 43% percent of Afghanistan’s population is living on less than one meal a day, with 90% of Afghans surveyed reporting food as their primary need.

They’re sobering statistics that encapsulate the first year back under Taliban rule, with the nation isolated and increasingly impoverished. As the US and its allies left the country, they imposed sanctions, froze $9 billion in central bank funds, and halted the foreign aid that once constituted nearly 80% of Afghanistan’s annual budget.

Outside the foreign ministry, a large mural, one of the few written in English, trumpets the Taliban government’s official stance: “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants positive and peaceful relationships with the world.”

Yet, after a year of governing, the Taliban has yet to be recognized by a single country in the world, with international funding still largely frozen. One of the main issues for Western countries has been the new government’s marginalization of minorities and women, which includes a de facto ban on secondary education for girls.

Repeated promises from the Taliban to allow girls to return to school have yet to be honored. In late June, the Taliban’s supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, pushed back against international pressure, saying Afghanistan would make its own rules….

Amid fears of a full-fledged famine last winter, the US — through the World Bank — released over $1 billion in aid funding….

But a growing chorus of aid workers and economists say it’s not enough and that the continued freeze of Afghanistan’s funds is having a devastating effect….

According to a senior State Department official, the US is not close to recapitalizing the Afghan central bank. Although there have been discussions on the matter, the official said they still have deep concerns about the assets potentially being diverted to terrorism….

At the markets in Kabul, the stalls are groaning with fresh fruit and produce. The issue, vendors say, is that most people can’t afford them….

As Kabul’s nights begin to cool and its days grow shorter, the fear among humanitarian workers is that this winter will be even worse than the last….

From Fox News. A minority House Republican investigation discovered that 800 Americans have evacuated from Afghanistan since the Taliban takeover…

The report, generated from data gathered by House Republicans and the State Department, indicates a steady pace of evacuation, with 479 reported American evacuations by Dec. 14, 2021, according to a previous GOP report from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Biden administration had initially pledged to leave no U.S. citizen behind, saying, “We’re going to stay to get them all out” in the run-up to the end of the withdrawal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken later admitted that at least 100 Americans remained in the country after the final pull-out.

The subsequent reports have highlighted the magnitude of the problem that the administration continues to face as it tries to bring every American citizen home….

The earlier Senate report harshly criticized the Biden administration for ignoring “numerous intelligence reports” about the potential for the Taliban to quickly take control of Kabul and for abandoning “tens of thousands of Afghan partners.”

The new House report, which comes in at 118 pages, argued that “the choices made in the corridors of power in D.C. led to tragic yet avoidable outcomes: 13 dead service members, American lives still at great risk, increased threats to our homeland security, tarnished standing abroad for years to come, and emboldened enemies across the globe….”

How are you praying for Afghanistan? Share your thoughts and prayers in the comments below.

(Excerpts from CNN and Fox News. Photo Credit: Mohammad Rahmani on Unsplash)