MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan ? The deal was arranged even before the baby’s birth. The price for the infant: enough to feed the family for another month.

In an extraordinary act of desperation, some Afghan parents say they’ve sold their children for about the price of a restaurant meal in the West an amount that even in this impoverished country is not huge but can make the difference between life and death for the poorest of the poor.

“Parting with my baby was hard. But watching my family die slowly of hunger is even worse,” said Agha Mir, 25, who claimed he turned over his 4-day-old son in December to a relatively prosperous Afghan family for the equivalent of $60.

The money, he said, paid for about a month’s worth of food for his wife and six remaining children in the teeming Dashteh Arzana refugee camp outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. He said a middleman from the city’s bazaar made the arrangements while his wife was pregnant.

“And now the money is gone,” moaned Mir’s mother, Oyna Khal. “We’re back to living on wild grass and carrots. Maybe we will have to sell another child.”

It is impossible to independently verify all the claims of baby selling or estimate the number of children sold. There is no record-keeping.

But relief coordinators and others acknowledge the reports and note that setting a price for family members in Afghanistan is not taboo. Traditionally, dowries of several thousands of dollars huge sums for Afghans are paid for brides. Infants especially boys for families with only girls also apparently have commanded a good price in the past.

“We get information about baby selling, but it’s hard to say how widespread it is,” said Mahboob Shareef, head of northern Afghanistan operations for UNICEF. “We knows this happens among the poorest of the poor.”

Mohammed Hashim can only walk a few paces before the pain becomes too much. Severe arthritis has left his joints swollen and misshapen. In mid-January, he set off by car from his villages in the Dar-e-Suf region south of Mazar-e-Sharif for a refugee camp along the main northern roadway. To pay for the journey, he said, he sold his 2-year-old son to a family in a neighboring village with only daughters. He received about $30.

“I was alone. There was no other way,” said Hashim, a 25-year-old widower whose wife died two years ago. “I miss my boy so much.”

Faisal Mohammed, orphanage administrator in Mazar-e-Sharif, said he came across a man in the city begging someone to buy his 6-year-old daughter.

“It struck me how bad our country has become when you can put your child for sale like a piece of fruit,” Mohammed said.