Kidneys selling like ‘hotcakes’ in Afghanistan

Jobless, debt-ridden, and struggling to feed his children, Nooruddin felt he had no choice but to sell a kidney – one of a growing number of Afghans willing to sacrifice an organ to save their families.

The practice has become so widespread in the western city of Herat that a nearby settlement is bleakly nicknamed “one-kidney village”.

“I had to do it for the sake of my children,” Nooruddin told AFP in the city, close to the border with Iran.

“I didn’t have any other option.”

Afghanistan has been plunged into financial crisis following the Taliban takeover six months ago, worsening an already dire humanitarian situation after 20 years of war and United States occupation.

More than half of the country’s 38 million population suffers from acute hunger, with nearly 9 million Afghans at risk of famine, according to the United Nations.

The foreign aid that once propped up the country has been slow to return in the wake of US sanctions. The country’s economy is near collapse after international financial institutions cut funding and the US froze Afghanistan assets. US President Joe Biden earlier this month decided to withhold about $7bn in Afgan assets, repurposing half of the money as compensation to the victims of the 9/11 attacks.

Aid agencies and experts have called for the lifting of sanctions against the Taliban, saying the measures are worsening the humanitarian crisis.

The trickle-down effect has particularly hurt Afghans like Nooruddin, 32, who quit his factory job when his salary was slashed to 3,000 Afghanis (about $30) soon after the Taliban’s return, mistakenly believing he would find something better.

But, with hundreds of thousands unemployed across the country, nothing else was available.

In desperation, he sold a kidney as a short-term fix.

“I regret it now,” he said outside his home, where faded clothes hang from a tree, and a plastic sheet serves as a windowpane.

“I can no longer work. I’m in pain and I cannot lift anything heavy.”
His family now relies for money on his 12-year-old son, who polishes shoes for 70 cents a day.

Nooruddin was among eight people AFP spoke to who had sold a kidney to feed their families or pay off debt – some for as little as $1,500.

In Afghanistan, however, the practice is unregulated.