“So what’s the situation in Afghanistan like? Just like in the news?”, friends and colleagues ask me after a recent visit. I tell them about the small area we visited in the north of Afghanistan, Badakhshan, where Oxfam has been working for many years.

Where to begin? Rural life in Afghanistan is not easy at the best of times - generally speaking, most communities do not have access to water for drinking or irrigation, fertile land or fuel for cooking and keeping the family warm in the winter. Basic services like schools, clinics and hospitals are remote and this means that children, the elderly and the infirm need to walk for hours to the clinic, or if they can afford it, they use a donkey. There are not many jobs available with most people relying on agricultural activities for work, which are very labour intensive, seasonal and not well paid.

This year, with a drought and a rise in food prices, life is especially hard, and I wonder how households will cope in the months to come - especially over the winter when there is less work available and roads are blocked by snow. We were particularly worried about landless households that are completely reliant on employment. There are many such households - up to 50 -70 per cent in some communities. The rise in food prices has meant that people in these households cannot buy enough food and basic hygiene items. On average, prices of basic food items have increased by 242 per cent since this time last year - but the average daily wage rate, what people rely on most for an income has stayed the same. This means that although a typical family of about seven people needs £3.50-4.00 to buy enough food for a good basic diet (bread, some vegetables and a little meat), soap and firewood, one working man can only earn £1.50 - not enough to feed the family.

So to exist, most households need more than one person to work or they sell their belongings - any livestock, jewellery or land that they have. In families with a few young men who can work, it is common for at least one of them to migrate to Kabul and other cities or countries such as Iran to seek work. These young men enter and work in Iran illegally - and it costs about £250 just to cross the border, so large loans are taken to finance this. In some villages, it was common for women to work; in others less so, depending on the type of work and whether they could work as part of a family group or not. When times get very tough, it is not unusual for the whole household to migrate in winter to a warmer place where most family members, including women and children, can find work.

In addition to the food price increases, the households we visited are also suffering from a drought that has reduced wheat yields and vegetation growth significantly - in some places it was not worth harvesting at all. The drought has reduced the demand for agricultural labour and lowered the amount of food farming households have available to eat over the winter, meaning that they have to purchase more and also reduced the amount of animal fodder available for the winter. Some people also said that the lack of local wheat in local markets was also increasing prices further - at a time in the year when prices are normally at their lowest.

When we left the area, I knew that this winter would be very difficult for the households we visited and I was preoccupied as to how they would manage through the winter and into the spring, especially those most reliant on daily labour and buying their food. The Oxfam team shares these concerns and in response have been raising awareness of the seriousness of the situation to the British public and Government. We are also trying to raise funds for a winter and spring programme so that poor households will get the support they need over the winter and in the spring. We know that longer-term solutions are also required if people are going to manage on their own, so we’re also developing proposals and looking for long-term funding.

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