Extreme Hunger: Illegal Kidney Trading Black Market Exploded After Millions Plunged Into Poverty

Peter Kessler, a UNHCR spokesman based in Kabul, described streets filled with children desperately searching through litter for food waste, and men pacing with wheelbarrows hoping for work transporting goods.

“What was once a really thriving central Asian city, no longer has vehicles on the roads. Shops are closed – people do not have money to buy anything. Street vendors have oranges and pomegranates, but rarely do people buy them,” Mr Kessler told The Telegraph. 

As extreme hunger tightens its grip on Afghanistan, more parents are sacrificing their bodies in order to feed their children.

Illegal organ trading existed before the Taliban takeover in August 2021, but the black market has exploded after millions more were plunged into poverty due to international sanctions. 

Current United Nations estimates suggest more than 24 million people – 59 per cent of the population – are in need of lifesaving humanitarian aid, 30 per cent higher than in 2021. 

“I had to do it for the sake of my children,” 32-year-old Nooruddin, pictured, told news agency AFP from Herat, a city close to the border with Iran. “I didn’t have any other option.” 

“​​I regret it now,” he said outside his home, where clothes hang from a tree and a plastic sheet serves as a window pane. “I can no longer work. I’m in pain and I cannot lift anything heavy.” 

The practice has become so widespread in the western city that a nearby settlement has been nicknamed “one kidney village”. 

The price of a kidney, which once ranged from $3,500 to $4,000 (£2,600 to £3,000), has dropped to less than $1,500 (£1,100) since the Taliban took over.

Mother-of-three Aziza said that she is waiting to be matched with a patient who needs a kidney. 

“My children roam on the streets begging,” she said. “If I don’t sell my kidney, I will be forced to sell my one-year-old daughter.” 

After the Taliban takeover, the international community froze Afghanistan’s assets abroad and halted all funding. Foreign aid which once propped up the country has been slow to return. 

The consequences of the economic sanctions, combined with one of the country’s worst droughts, and Covid-19 have devastated the country. On top of selling organs, in recent months, reports have surfaced of parents offering daughters into marriage or to childless couples for money because they can no longer afford to feed them. 

The aim of the sanctions was to punish the Taliban and hopefully disincentivize them from carrying out rights abuses as they did when they were last in power in the 1990s.

But it has not worked. On Monday, it was reported that the Taliban had begun extensive house searches around the capital Kabul.

Taliban administration spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the searches were part of a “clearing operation”, and that houses were only raided if there was a specific report of possible criminal activity.

“The operation is not against just anyone, it is against kidnappers, professional thieves and crime groups,” he said. 

But several residents around Kabul said the searches appeared indiscriminate and were spreading fear. One resident in the north-west of the city said he was expecting the Taliban to visit. 

“We are not happy… I don’t want them to enter our house, I don’t want them to see my sisters, I don’t want them to search my clothing cabinet and my documents. I don’t want them to disturb my mother,” he said. 

The Taliban denies targeted reprisals and says it is investigating reports of violence and disappearances.