Feature: Extreme poverty forces Afghan woman to sell her newborn baby

"I have sold my one-month-old baby to help my four other children to survive this harsh winter," a mother in Afghanistan's northern Balkh province told a local television program Thursday evening.

The destitute woman, whose footage was broadcast by Tolo television, said, "I am a teacher and have sold my infant to my colleague for 25,000 Afghanis (about 435 U.S. dollars), just to keep my four other children warm in this freezing weather."

Since there are no heating systems in ordinary homes here, most people in Afghanistan have to keep themselves warm by burning wood on stoves, which many poor families can also not afford.

The impoverished women, Sabza, who, like many Afghans, goes by one name, said, "It is very very difficult to sell your own child to survive, but I had no choice. I had to protect my other four children," Sabza, in tears, said on the TV show.

A mother selling their children might be deemed an unusual business practice in other parts of today's modern world, but in militancy-plagued Afghanistan, the shocking business has been reported several times over the past couple of years.

"Extreme poverty has forced Sabza to sell her one-month-old infant," Sabza's colleague told Tolo, adding that Sabza's husband had also abandoned her, leaving her with little option other than to sell her infant.

Sabza's monthly salary as a teacher, according to her colleague, is 6,000 Afghanis (about 105 U.S. dollars), which is not enough for her to meet the minimum requirements of housing and raising four children, let alone five.

The international community has been pumping aid into Afghanistan over the past 13 years, yet the post-Taliban country is still largely dependent on aid from overseas.

Scores of begging men, women and street children asking for alms to survive are seen all across Afghan cities, including the capital city of Kabul.

Addressing the Wolesi Jirga or Lower House of Parliament on Jan. 20 as he introduced the minister-nominees for confirmation, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani admitted that 36 percent of Afghan people still live below the poverty line.

Ghani vowed to alleviate poverty and lift the living conditions of the Afghan people by improving the economy, inviting foreign investment and increasing the size of the labor market.

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans, particularly the internally displaced people or those without permanent homes, have left their houses to live in safer places, due to the continuing fighting between government security forces and the Taliban militants.

"Life is extremely awful, we have no way of keeping warm in our shanty huts. Simply put, our life is no life," Sabza's elderly father who lives with his impoverished daughter said.

A resident of Balkh provincial capital Mazar-e-Sharif, Ahmad Wali, who knows Sabza, in talks with Xinhua said that Sabza has been living in a rented house in Mazar-e-Sharif city and is hardly able to feed her children and aged father. Endi