Five years have now passed since the new authorities reshaped Afghanistan in 2021. While the open conflict ended, the humanitarian crisis persists, with an estimated 21.9 million people still in need of humanitarian assistance. In this article, Maher Alshoun, Country Director of INTERSOS in Afghanistan, reflects on the current situation and the challenges facing millions of Afghans today.
Afghanistan is a country of extraordinary beauty and diversity—of cultures, languages, traditions, landscapes and people. Yet for millions of Afghans, the past five years have been defined by uncertainty and by one crisis following another.
When I travel to the communities where INTERSOS works, particularly in some of the country’s most remote areas, I am often struck by how ordinary life can look from a distance. A mother carries her child to a health centre. Children wait to be vaccinated. Families search for work. Farmers try to make a living from increasingly fragile land.
But behind these ordinary scenes is a country that has spent years living through overlapping crises.
The political changes of 2021 did not bring an end to Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis. They changed its shape. Conflict, poverty, restrictions on women and girls, food insecurity, malnutrition, climate shocks and displacement have continued to affect people’s lives, while humanitarian funding has become increasingly limited.
For an Afghan family, however, these crises are not separate. They are part of everyday life.
A mother living in a remote village may have to travel for hours to reach a health facility. A family may struggle to afford enough food while their child becomes malnourished. A drought may destroy a family’s livelihood, while a flood or earthquake can take away the little they have left.
For a family already struggling to survive, a natural disaster does not arrive as a separate crisis. It arrives on top of everything else.
The consequences of crises in healthcare facilities
This is where the humanitarian situation becomes visible.
In the remote provinces where INTERSOS works, access to healthcare can be difficult. The restrictions affecting women’s education and participation have also created longer-term challenges for humanitarian operations, including difficulties in finding qualified female health workers in some remote areas.
This matters because for many women, having access to women health workers can make it easier and more comfortable to seek the care they need.
At an INTERSOS health facility, the consequences of these overlapping crises can be seen every day: a pregnant woman seeking maternal care, a child needing treatment for malnutrition, a family seeking protection assistance, or a child receiving a vaccine against a preventable disease.
For people living far from major towns, a local health centre is more than a building. It can be the difference between receiving treatment and going without it.
INTERSOS has been present in Afghanistan since 2001, supporting communities that are often among the hardest to reach. Our teams provide healthcare, maternal and newborn care, nutrition treatment, immunisation, protection and mental health support where these services are often extremely limited or unavailable.
A country receiving people who have nowhere else to go
In recent years, another major challenge has emerged with the return of more than six million of Afghans from neighbouring countries. For many families, returning to Afghanistan does not mean returning to stability. They arrive with children and few belongings, without employment, housing or reliable access to basic services, and no support for reintegration. They return to communities that are themselves struggling.
For humanitarian organisations, this means adapting constantly. We must respond to immediate needs while prioritising people facing the most severe vulnerabilities, often in places where other services are limited or absent.
At the same time, international humanitarian assistance has declined. This has changed the nature of humanitarian work in Afghanistan. It is no longer simply about reaching as many people as possible. Increasingly, organisations are forced to prioritise between needs that are all urgent. We find ourselves asking not only, who needs assistance? but also, who needs it most urgently? This is one of the hardest realities for humanitarian workers to accept.
Funding gaps are not simply numbers. They can mean health facilities closing down, fewer health workers being available, fewer communities being reached, and families being left without support when there is nowhere else to turn.
Five years later, Afghans are still trying to live
And yet, what strikes me most when I meet people in the communities where we work is not only their vulnerability. It is their determination. Parents continue to care for their children. Mothers continue to seek healthcare. Families continue to rebuild after disasters. People returning to Afghanistan continue to search for a place to live and a way to earn a living.
Afghans are not simply waiting for humanitarian assistance. They are trying to live, work, raise their families, and build a future.
Humanitarian assistance cannot solve all of Afghanistan’s challenges. But it can keep a child alive. It can ensure that a pregnant woman receives care. It can treat a severely malnourished child. It can keep an essential health facility open in a remote community. Five years of crisis should not make Afghanistan less visible. The needs have not disappeared because the crisis has lasted longer.
Sustained humanitarian funding is essential to ensure that life-saving services remain available to the people who need them most. At the same time, achieving lasting recovery will require the restoration of a degree of targeted development support and investment in livelihoods, basic services, and community resilience.
For INTERSOS, this means continuing to stand alongside communities that have endured years of hardship and ensuring that, even as resources become more limited, the most vulnerable are not left behind.
Afghans are still here, they are still rebuilding, they are still caring for their families. And, despite everything, they are still hoping for a future beyond survival.