The earthquake that has shaken Afghanistan is the deadliest in the quake-prone country in over two decades. Estimates of a death toll of 1,000 and casualties of more than 1,600 are certain to be raised as rescuers get to hard-to-reach villages in the mountains. More than 25 villages have been all but destroyed.
The quake was centered near the Pakistan border, southwest of the provincial capital Khost, with the neighbouring province of Paktika suffering the worst damage. It struck areas already suffering the effects of heavy rain, causing rockfalls and mudslides, and reports have come in of entire families, some numbering 15 to 18, crushed to death in their crumbling mud homes.
The hardline Taliban-led government has immediately appealed for international aid. Crippling economic, food and health service crises, exacerbated by western sanctions over, among other things, the regime reneging on promises about treatment of women and girls, have severely hobbled the country’s ability to respond.
Taliban rule is patchy, brutal and incompetent. Armed attacks by rival extremist groups have surged in a sign of rising insecurity while exiled warlords and ethnic leaders who fled Afghanistan last year ahead of the Taliban’s victory are threatening civil war unless the Islamists let them return home and reclaim their power. Aid groups have so far been able to prevent mass famine, but the World Food Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimate that 19 million Afghans – more than half the population – are facing acute food insecurity. While major international agencies still operate in Afghanistan – humanitarian aid is exempt from sanctions that have cut off almost all development aid – the Taliban takeover led other agencies and governments to reduce their assistance programmes in a country where about 80 per cent of the budget came from foreign assistance.
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The international response to the quake appeal has rightly been immediate, apparently generous, and without strings. Afghanistan has already suffered too much.
