After the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan last year, the Taliban regime took over but has not received international recognition. Afghans are now resorting to desperate measures to feed themselves as aid struggles to reach them.

Warning: This article contains distressing content. Sky News content.

This is Afghanistan post-pull out for foreign troops. This is the country in which a coalition of nations spent 20 years, shelling out billions of dollars to “rebuild it”. This is the nation where so many lives were sacrificed – thousands – both foreign troops and ordinary Afghans. This is the part of the world that the United Nations now says is fast becoming the centre of the globe's worst humanitarian disaster.

Afghanistan was poor and in difficulties before the chaotic withdrawal of foreign troops last August.

Now, with the Taliban in power and the rest of the world still not officially recognising the legitimacy of their government, it's the Afghan people who're having to resort to ever more extreme measures to survive.

The United Nations is seeking a record $5bn (£3.7bn) in aid for Afghanistan this year to help protect the country's future after the Taliban's seizure of power.

The appeal includes $4.4bn (£3.3bn) in humanitarian aid alone which amounts to nearly a quarter of Afghanistan's GDP and is triple the figure it received in 2021. A further $623m (£458m) is being sought to support refugees.

Rows of people of varying ages and with a variety of chronic diseases and disabilities were lined up – each one with a relative urging us to somehow deliver some hope and relief to them. This area seems to us utterly barren, with no water or shrubbery for miles around. In many cases, the only currency these families have is their organs – and with so many having already resorted to selling them, it's now their young who are being put on the market.

Sky News reporters spoke to a mother and father who've both sold their kidneys.

All they'd got left to sell now was one of their eight children – so they were thinking the unthinkable. The 25-year-old mother told: “About six months ago, my three-year-old son died of hunger. I can't see them all lose their lives… at least this way, someone else will feed them.”

Taliban say it is a ‘myth’

The Taliban says this is all a Western myth, dreamed up by evil, dishonest Western media to discredit them.

They also say all girls in the country are in education, that schools and universities are all open and they're not rounding up female activists or carrying out vendettas against those who worked with the foreign troops once stationed here for two decades. The Taliban appear to have “alternative facts” to what many others are living through on the ground in Afghanistan. The rapid withdrawal of foreign troops in August saw the Taliban sweep into power. The international community imposed sanctions and billions of dollars-worth of assets were frozen in overseas bank accounts, mostly American. It's meant the economy has virtually collapsed with few jobs and very little hard currency available for ordinary Afghans.

The lack of worldwide recognition of the Taliban government has meant a country that was previously almost wholly dependent on foreign aid has seen that all but dry up. And respect for women's rights has repeatedly been cited by global donors as a condition for restoring that aid. But the dilemma for the international community is trying to balance the pressure exerted on the Taliban to respect human rights, against the obvious and deepening suffering of the Afghan people.

The little aid which is seeping in is not nearly adequate for the millions who need it.

N1 Special on Afghanistan

What's next for Afghanistan? Is this country becoming the centre of the greatest global humanitarian catastrophe?

Speakers: Fatimah Hossaini, Afghan artist and journalist, now a refugee with an address in France, Emir Hadzic, an American veteran with several tours in Afghanistan, police officer and human rights activist.