A collection of poetry and novels, which had been years in the making, was offered to be sold for a mere 4,000 Afghanis, or $38.
On December 4th, he posted another offer: "one organ for sale."
Immediately, the novelist and teacher was bombarded with messages of shock and disbelief, discouraging his plan.
He said in an interview that no one could believe it. They all thought I was joking. None of them took it seriously.
Like many Afghans this winter, he was growing desperate.
Afghans have shared pictures of signs that say "kidneys for sale." When Insider tried the number provided, it appeared to not be working. A single draw at a blood bank can earn a donor $47, enough to feed a family for a few weeks. People have reported donating their blood at a rate well beyond what is considered healthy and safe.
In cities, streets are lined with household items that are for sale.
The Taliban took control of Afghanistan on August 15th, but before that, Samir taught Dari literature at a private school and was a member of the Kabul's Pen Society, a collective of poets and writers. Since the school closed, it has become harder to find money to feed his family.
A UNHCR worker pushes a wheelbarrow with aid supplies outside of a distribution center.
Zohra Bensemra.
He said that life has become a daily challenge. The costs keep going up. Food, rent, and finding ways to keep warm are just so much.
A year ago, residents of Kabul were navigating blast walls and roadside bombs. Afghans fear hunger.
The UN warns that nearly nine million people are at risk of famine and up to one million children could die from the cold. According to the World Food Programme, 98 percent of Afghans don't have enough to eat.
We are afraid of dying of hunger.
The young people of Afghanistan were held up as models of the future and now feel abandoned by the international community. They were forced to resort to previously unimaginable measures to make money as winter descended.
The economy was the number one issue in the first weeks after the Taliban takeover. According to the International Labor Organization, half a million Afghans lost their jobs overnight. Taxi drivers, money exchangers, and shop owners all said the same thing when asked about the arrival of the Taliban: "We're afraid of dying of hunger."
With banks limiting withdrawals to $400 a week due to a shortage of paper money, Afghans can no longer turn to family and neighbors for short-term loans. Changing policies from services like Western Union and MoneyGram have made it difficult for Afghans abroad to send money home.
A money exchanger on a street in central Kabul holds a stack of Afghan currency.
Tim Wimborne is a photographer.
One young Afghan-American said that he was turned away from Western Union every day because they couldn't send money to Afghanistan.
Shops have been struggling to stay open as the value of the currency has fallen and the prices of basic groceries continue to rise.
After the Taliban takeover, Samir put aside the novel he was working on and began selling energy drinks on the streets. Business was slow because many Afghans hunkered down at home or lined up at the airport to board flights. The majority of people didn't have the money to buy energy drinks.
He remembers that it was difficult to find money.
He decided to use shoe polishing as a cheaper alternative. That didn't work.
A few weeks ago, he might have been seen taking pictures on the streets of Kabul. It was a different world now.
The United Nations requested $4.4 billion to address the humanitarian situation over the next year. The US Agency for International Development has pledged $308 million to support vulnerable Afghans. The money is needed to "stave off wide-spread hunger, disease, malnutrition and ultimately death" according to the Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs at UNOCHA.
Boys are willing to carry goods with wheelbarrows to earn money near an aid distribution site in Kabul.
The Anadolu Agency has a photographer.
Though there has been an organ trade in Afghanistan for a decade or more, it was usually an option for the poor and most desperate people that was largely hidden from public view. Afghans who had a degree of economic stability less than a year ago are now thinking about becoming donors to cash.
Despite billions in foreign aid, at least 47 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2020. The current crisis has hit the entire population, even those who used to have steady jobs and reliable incomes.
There is a village called the 'One kidneys'.
A few years ago, one village in the outskirts of Herat became known as the "one kidneys village" because so many people there had become donors.
Some of those who were interviewed said that for men who couldn't find work in Herat city or across the border in Iran, selling a kidneys became a last resort, earning them thousands of dollars.
At least 200 kidneys were sold illegally in the province of Herat in the last two years, according to Tolo News.
A nurse checks the weight of a child in a makeshift clinic near Herat.
Mstyslav Chernov/AP Photo
Poverty caused by the war was the main cause of people selling their organs. According to interviews, the main cause is the twin crises of unemployment and access to cash that have come since the Taliban takeover. People said that women are now coming forward as donors.
The black market for kidneys is still going strong.
The receptionist at the Afghan Arya hospital in Herat said that they do transplants every week. People sell their organs to make money. Poverty is real here.
One activist in Herat who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted said she was aware of three men and two women who underwent the surgery in the last week.
I kept going back to put food on the table.
For years, Ali Reza's job in a local salt factory in Mazar-e Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, earned him more than $150 a month, which was just enough to provide for his seven-person household.
The city was taken over by the Taliban on August 14. The city that used to be a hub for local and global business became a center for Afghans to be evacuated.
Thousands of people were leaving the country on a daily basis. The business people who helped sustain the city's status as Afghanistan's economic hub in the North were among them.
As business owners left the country, their offices, factories and shops began to shut their doors, leaving tens of thousands of people without a reliable income. The owner of the salt factory left the country shortly after the Taliban took control of the government in Kabul, and the business was one of the first to close.
Ali Reza liked millions of Afghans before him, so he turned to day labor as a source of income in hard times. The competition for menial, physically-grueling work is high with the United Nations warning that male unemployment may double to 29 percent by 2023. At one of Mazar's busiest roundabouts, long lines of men were advertising their desire for work.
He said that there were hundreds of people lined up and only a few got work.
Ali Reza was growing desperate as Mazar's harsh winter approached. A friend told him that people were selling their blood.
He was not sure. He had some skills and a few years of education, but donating his blood seemed shameful. The need to feed his kids and elderly mother was more important than his reservations.
It was [.
There is a link to this website on the Insider.com website.
A man waits for a job in Afghanistan.
IANS via Getty Images.
He was a universal donor because of his blood type. Ali Reza has sold more than 1,500ccs of blood at a rate of 5,000 Afghanis or $47, which is enough to provide for his family for three weeks.
He said that the nurses told him that they didn't have enough O donors.
He is giving at a dangerous rate. The Red Cross recommends that donors wait at least eight weeks between donations, and that they should not donate more than six times a year. Since October, Ali Reza has donated three times.
If the economic situation doesn't improve, more people will be forced to follow him in selling their blood products, and more Afghans will have to sell their body parts.
Nematullah has made a similar calculation in Mazar.
He has donated his blood twice in the last two months. He was unable to feed his family after construction work dried up in Mazar and he had no formal education to fall back on.
In the past, he was able to travel to Iran for construction and interior design work, but the decline in the value of the Iranian riyal has made that much more difficult.
He has to wait for the phone to ring when it's needed.
Nematullah was put on the blood donation list by a relative of his work at the private hospital.
He said he knows about the donation of a kidneys.
If the situation doesn't get better, I'm thinking about it.
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