How quickly we forget

BETWEEN new strains of Covid, more travel restrictions and global vaccination concerns, it is easy to see why other major happenings around the world might take a back seat.

But for those of us who listened to John Simpson’s heart-breaking reports from Afghanistan for the BBC last month, it’s difficult to understand why this story is not getting more coverage.

Reminiscent of Michael Buerk’s reports from Ethiopia in 1984, John Simpson’s story of families reduced to selling their children, and one young baby girl in particular, who will be sold once she can walk, was powerful listening.

The country is teetering on the brink of complete collapse, and now an approximate 23m Afghans are about to fall victim to a devastating famine. The World Food Programme has said Afghanistan is facing the ‘worst humanitarian crisis on Earth’.

Yet there is little of it in the global media right now.

By withdrawing from the country at breakneck speed in August, the West abandoned the country’s poor to a brutal Taliban regime that cares little for its citizens.

It looks like the entire world is about to abandon them again.