Desperate pictures of starving children in Afghanistan

The sight of babies and children suffering from the most appalling malnutrition and lying in hospitals seemingly near to death in Herat, western Afghanistan, is desperately sad. That poor country went through decades of vicious war and now because the new rulers are the Taliban, hated enemy of the United States, all international money has stopped and what assets the Kabul government had have been frozen. There is simply no money for people to buy food. The appalling story on the BBC last night of a family selling their latest baby for $500 just so that they can survive for the next three months is so tragic the whole world needs to take note and start pouring in donations to save the people of this wretched nation. The war is over, all foreign troops and official aid agencies such as USAID have gone and it's time Washington and every other capital involved in the 20-year war provide the means of keeping Afghan families alive as winter appoaches, otherwise tens of thousands of Afghans, young and old, are going to die. We, the West, invaded Afghanistan to rid the country of al-Qaeda and took on a much bigger task of trying to defeat the Taliban and build a new nation blessed with the finest human rights and freedom for everyone and prosperity. And tragically failed! The Taliban are only interested in forging an extreme Islamic state where women have no rights. It's our responsibility now to save Afghanistan, not from the Taliban, but with money and a system to distribute the funds to those who need them and to stop children dying from malnutrition.