‘Our children are hungry’: economic crisis pushes Afghans to desperation

Afghans forced to sell possessions on streets of Mazar-e-Sharif as fragile economy buckles under instability

Yasemeen sits in the back of an open trailer with a bundle of her family's old clothes wrapped in scarves and some used notebooks already full of a child's handwriting. The vehicle pulls over in a busy roundabout in central Mazar-e-Sharif, a city that until the Taliban takeover last month was known as the economic powerhouse of northern Afghanistan.

Now, it is a scene of desperation as Afghanistan's economic crisis sends ordinary people like Yasemeen on to the street to sell their last possessions.