Days after the devastating earthquake, many Afghans are still waiting for help

When the ground erupted from an earthquake in Afghanistan earlier this week, the stone and mud house of Naim Gul on top of it collapsed.

He cracked the rubble in the darkness of dawn, suffocating in the dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He does not know how many hours of digging passed before he glimpsed their bodies in the rubble. they died.

Now, days after the 6.0-magnitude earthquake devastated a remote region of southeastern Afghanistan on Wednesday and killed at least 1,150 people according to authorities’ estimates, Gul sees devastation everywhere and aid in short supplies. His niece and nephew were also killed in the earthquake, after they were crushed by the walls of their home.

The United Nations estimated the death toll at 770, but warned that it could rise further. Both would make the earthquake in Afghanistan the deadliest in two decades.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to us or how we should start our lives over,” Gul told The Associated Press on Sunday, his hands and shoulder injured. “We don’t have any money to rebuild.”

Taliban demands international aid

It’s a fear shared by thousands in poor villages where anger over the earthquake has been intense – in the provinces of Paktika and Khost, along the jagged mountains that straddle the country’s border with Pakistan.

Those who were hardly striving lost everything. Many aid groups and authorities have yet to be visited, who are struggling to reach the stricken area on dilapidated roads – some made inaccessible by landslides and damage.

Aware of its limitations, the cash-strapped Taliban called for foreign help and on Saturday appealed to Washington to unfreeze billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s currency reserves. The United Nations and a host of international aid groups and countries have mobilized to send assistance.

Afghan children remove rice from pots at a camp in Jayan district on Sunday following the earthquake, the deadliest in the country in two decades. Even before the earthquake, about half of the country’s 39 million people were facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity due to poverty. (Ibrahim Norouzi/The Associated Press)

China pledged $7.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid on Saturday, joining countries such as Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in sending a plane loaded with tents, towels, beds and other much-needed supplies to the quake-hit region. .

Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Ramiz Alakbarov toured the hard-hit Paktika province on Saturday to assess the damage and distribute food, medicine and tents. Helicopters and UN trucks carrying bread, flour, rice and blankets rolled into the affected areas.

“Yesterday’s visit confirmed to me both the intense suffering of the people in Afghanistan and their tremendous determination to face great tribulations,” Al Akbarov said, calling for repairing damaged water pipelines, roads and transportation lines in the region.

Without support, he added, Afghans “will continue to endure needless and unimaginable hardships.”

Watch | Rescue workers search for earthquake survivors: Rescuers in Afghanistan search for survivors of the deadly earthquake People have been hand-digged in villages in eastern Afghanistan that have been reduced to rubble by a powerful earthquake that killed at least 1,000 people. An estimated 1,500 others have been infected, the state news agency said, and hundreds of families are living in the open

But relief efforts remain incomplete and limited by funding and access constraints. The Taliban, which seized power last August from a government set up by a US-led military coalition for 20 years, appears mired in the logistical complexities of issues such as clearing rubble in what is shaping up to be a major test of their ability to govern. .

Villagers took out their dead loved ones with their own hands, buried them in mass graves, and slept in the forest despite the rain. Nearly 800 families live in the open, according to the United Nations humanitarian coordination agency, OCHA.

Gul received a tent and blankets from a local charity in the Jayan region, but he and his surviving relatives had to fend for themselves. Terrified that the earth is still rolling in aftershocks like the one on Friday that killed five others, he said his children in Gayan are refusing to go home.

Afghans walk past destroyed homes in Jayan district on Sunday. Relief efforts have been erratic and limited by funding and access restrictions. (Ibrahim Norouzi/The Associated Press)

The earthquake was the latest disaster to hit Afghanistan, which has been suffering from a severe economic crisis since the Taliban took control of the country while the United States and its NATO allies were withdrawing their forces. Foreign aid – a mainstay of Afghanistan’s economy for decades – ceased practically overnight.

The world’s governments have increased sanctions, halted bank transfers, paralyzed commerce, and refused to recognize the Taliban government. The Biden administration cut off Taliban access to $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States

While touring the disaster site, Acting Afghan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mottaki urged the White House to release the money “at a time when Afghanistan is in the grip of earthquakes and floods” and lift banking restrictions so charities can provide assistance more easily.

‘We have nothing left’

Western donors have withheld long-term aid because they are demanding the Taliban allow for more inclusive governance and respect for human rights. Former insurgents resisted pressure, placing restrictions on the freedoms of women and girls that are remembered for their first time in power in the late 1990s.

Now, about half of the country’s 39 million people face life-threatening levels of food insecurity due to poverty. Most civil servants, including doctors, nurses and teachers, have not been paid in months.

Taliban fighters stand next to relief supplies for earthquake victims in Jayan district on Saturday. (Sahel Arman/AFP/Getty Images)

The United Nations and other remaining organizations scrambled to keep Afghanistan on the brink of famine with a humanitarian program that has fed millions and kept the medical system in place. But with international donors lagging behind, UN agencies face a $3 billion US funding shortfall this year.

On Sunday, the World Health Organization said it was stepping up infectious disease surveillance in the quake-hit regions of Afghanistan. Afghanistan is one of the two remaining polio endemic countries in the world.

The remote areas that were hit by last Wednesday’s earthquake are war-torn and impoverished long before the Taliban took over, and they are not particularly equipped to deal with it.

Some local businessmen have switched to business. The Afghan Chamber of Commerce and Investment said on Sunday that it has raised more than 1.5 million US dollars for Pakitka and Khost provinces.

However, for those whose homes have been destroyed, help may not be enough.

“We have nothing left,” Gul said.

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