A young vendor waits for customers at his stall in a market near the Pul-e Khishti mosque in Kabul on Tuesday. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images) The moves accelerated an economic collapse, fuelling a cash shortage, joblessness and hunger, prompting UN warnings that more than half of the 39 million people faced starvation. Lyons told the council that UN agencies and their partners have supplied aid to nearly 20 million Afghans across the country. "We believe, as the winter season comes to an end, that we have perhaps averted our worst fears of famine and widespread starvation," she said. Lyons, however, said that urgent steps must be taken to address the liquidity crisis, restrictions on international payments and constraints on the central bank. 
An Afghan man carries food supplies in a wheelbarrow during a distribution of humanitarian aid for families in need, in Kabul, Afghanistan, last month. (Hussein Malla/The Associated Press) "Six months of indecision, marked by continued sanctions albeit with some relief, and unstructured political engagement, are eroding the vital social and economic coping systems and pushing the population into greater uncertainty," she said. "What we have done has been only to buy a little time."
