ISLAMABAD, Feb 8: Girls as young as 10 are being offered for marriage in exchange for bags of flour in a desperate struggle for survival in parts of Herat and Farah provinces in Western Afghanistan, a Red Crescent mission reported on Friday.

Describing the shocking poverty in western Afghanistan, a Red Crescent assessment mission reported scenes of great deprivation in villages and remote mountain valleys which have been cut off from the outside world for years. Girls were offered as brides for as little as 100kgs of wheat flour, the mission said.

The combined affects of 23 years of war and the last three years of drought have left many people entirely destitute.

“We saw children digging in the fields for roots to eat and use as firewood. Leaves from the trees were also being eaten,” the operations manager at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said.

The mission said in many of the villages there was no agricultural activity because of the drought, no seeds were available for planting, and much of the livestock had either died or been sold off.

Scenes of shocking poverty greeted the team when they reached the remote mountain valley of Rood Gaz which provides a snapshot of the appalling legacy of war and drought in western Afghanistan.

The assessment team surveyed 12 villages in this remote valley, counting a population of 10,305 people. Among them were 510 orphans, 261 widows and 699 elderly largely dependent on their impoverished neighbours to stay alive and remittances from refugees in Iran.

Following the report of the team, further interventions are planned particularly in bringing mobile health services to rural areas and supporting a revival of agriculture through food-for-work schemes tackling irrigation projects, and the distribution of tools and seeds.