When a massive earthquake struck western Afghanistan on 7 October, thousands of mud houses collapsed, crushing and killing the people inside. Many of them were women, confined indoors by tradition, religion and Taliban edict, and their young children.
Over the weeks that followed, Herat province, which borders Iran, has been shaken by three more huge earthquakes, measuring magnitudes of 6.3, and multiple aftershocks almost as devastating. Like most of Afghanistan, the area is poor and facilities are few. People were digging bodies out of the rubble by hand for days. Entire villages have been flattened.
Pledges of aid are falling short amid concerns about the Taliban’s theft of food, money and medicines
Aftershocks continue, so even in the provincial capital – also Herat – about 30 miles from the worst-affected region, residents are sleeping outside for fear their homes might fall in on them during the night. The weather is still warm, but winter will come fast. Soon, sickness and hunger will take hold, and the death toll will climb as severe cold sets in. Some men, especially those who have lost their families, may leave, joining the internally displaced or those flowing out over the border looking for work, money and food they cannot find at home. Others will remain on their farms to wait for the Spring.
Local and international charities are warning that an already bad situation can only get worse for survivors. More than a year after a 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit the other side of the country, in the Khost and Paktika provinces near Pakistan, many are still living on handouts and in tents.
The world’s bandwidth for disaster and suffering is limited. The first quake shook Herat around the same time as Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing civilians and taking hostages. So now Afghanistan’s latest tragedy is competing for attention and resources with another, higher-profile emergency unfolding in the Middle East.
Afghanistan has been in crisis for decades, and since the Taliban took control more than two years ago, things have become more desperate. Development money and aid distributed during the 20 years of the republic, while the United States and Nato fought a bitter war against the Taliban, was halted when the terrorist-led group took control. Washington has since relaxed some sanctions, however, and pumped about $2 billion (£1.65 billion) into the country since the government fell in August 2021.
It’s not nearly enough to alleviate the poverty that makes Afghanistan one of the poorest countries on earth. The economy is close to collapse as the Taliban don’t know how to govern, and have other priorities, like internal power struggles and the elimination of rivals. Pledges of aid are falling short amid international donors’ concerns about the Taliban’s theft of food, money and medicines. This happens wherever there is free and unaccountable cash; as one UN official said, it would be news if it wasn’t happening.
The World Health Organisation have said that more than 1,400 people have died in the Herat earthquakes, with 2,100 injured; almost a quarter of the 43,400 people directly affected were children younger than five years old. The UN has said that the quakes, aftershocks and tremors between 7 and 15 October affected 1.6 million people, with ‘at least 114,000 in urgent need of humanitarian assistance’.
Satellite images assessed by the UN showed that 513 villages were impacted and 21,300 buildings, including schools, health facilities and water and sanitation infrastructure, were damaged. ‘Families are living in the open, in makeshift shelters, or in informal settlement sites, leaving them vulnerable to weather, health and other protection hazards,’ it said.
Ahmad Abid Humayun, the head of a local charity called Sanayee Development Organisation, visited the affected area on Sunday. He said that the Taliban authorities in Herat have centralised cash distribution from all NGOs to people in the earthquake zone. According to him, local businessmen and traders are funding the rebuilding of 650 homes and other infrastructure.
He described the international response as ‘chaotic’. One example he referenced was of UN agencies sometimes making their daily water deliveries to affected villages in trucks previously used to transport oil, contaminating the water and rendering it useless. Humayun said each delivery of water costs about $200 (£165), while the cost of repairing the water supply system in one village he visited would be around $1,000 (£825) – equivalent to five days of water deliveries.
Many of the tents delivered as alternative shelter in the aftermath of the quakes were not suitable to local weather conditions, Humayun said, and had already disintegrated in the dust and rain storms than followed. Some villages had been given latrines, but not in adequate numbers to divide up for use separately by men and women. ‘These are very traditional and conservative communities, and it is definitely the women who are being negatively impacted by this,’ he said. Some villages were being delivered food once a day, so survivors were going without breakfast and dinner.
Most international agencies took two days to reach the villages in the worst affected district of Zindajan. In the meantime, local people responded in their own ‘traditional, resilient ways,’ Humayun said, working together to identify priorities and ‘helping each other, in a very organised, efficient and timely manner’.
‘No one was sitting there waiting for the UN and other agencies to turn up; people mobilised to help themselves and each other. This is exactly why the traditional, grassroots approaches have to be respected and the communities empowered,’ he said.
‘The international agencies see their plans and the actual needs of communities as clashing priorities, and the internationals always prevail. By doing that, they make disaster out of disasters; they just never learn.’
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