The population of Kabul is growing poorer with every passing day. A further 20,000 people displaced by the recent fighting have added their numbers in the past week to the thousands of destitute people already living in the Afghan capital. The new arrivals are made up of families who have fled the Mir Bachakot area, the scene of the latest Taliban offensive. The ICRC distributed food aid (flour, beans and vegetable oil) where needed and provided them with blankets, soap and charcoal. The number of poverty-stricken people living in Kabul and receiving regular ICRC assistance is constantly rising: last autumn it stood at 180,000 and has now increased to 216,000 - about a fifth of the city's current population. With the breakdown of the local economy, the severity of the winter weather and the effects of a never-ending conflict, it is now up to international organizations to meet the needs of an increasingly exhausted populace.
In December alone, prices rose in Kabul by 25%. Some provinces in the north saw inflation rates of 140%, prompting demonstrations, in Kunduz for example. The devaluation of the afghani, the local currency, is one reason for the increase in the cost of living. A week before Ramadan it lost 16% of its value, an event which had a serious impact on the price of staple foods, with tea, flour, sugar and rice suddenly becoming unaffordable. The purchasing power of civil servants (whose monthly salaries range from four to five US dollars) is now equivalent to the price of a single 7-kg bag of rice per month.

With poverty spreading and most of Kabul's districts still without electricity, the ICRC is making a special effort to provide the people assisted by it with the means to keep warm. It is continuing to distribute blankets, candles, charcoal and wood stoves to the disabled, war widows and orphans, who are among the most vulnerable inhabitants of the Afghan capital.