When 🃏the ground heaved from last week's earthquake in Afghanistan, Nahim Gul's stone-and-mud house collapsed on top of him.
He clawed through the rubble in the pre-dawn darkness, choking on dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He doesn't know how many hours of digging pass💛ed before he caught a glimpse of their bodies under the ruins. They were dead.
Now, days after a 6 mꦅagnitude quake that devastated a remote region of southeast Afghanistan and killed 𒁃at least 1,150 people and injured hundreds more, Gul sees destruction everywhere and help in short supply. His niece and nephew were also killed in the quake, crushed by the walls of their house.
“I don't know what will happen to us or how we should restart our lives,” Gul told The Associated Press on Sunday, his hands bruised and his shoulder injured. “We don't have any money toꦗ rebuild.”
It's a fear shared among thousands in the impoverished villages where the𝓀 fury of the quake has fallen most heavily — in Paktika and Khost provinces, along the jagged mountains that straddle the country's border with Pakistan.
Those who were barely scraping by have lost everything. Many have yet to be visited by aid groups, which are struggling to reach the afflicted area on rutted roads — some made impassable by la♛ndslides and damage.
Aware of its constraints, the cash-strapped Taliban have called for foreign assistance. The United Nations and an array of international aid groups and countries have mobilized꧟ to send help.
China pledged Saturday to send nearly $7.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid, joining nations including Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in dispatching a planeload of tents, towels, beds and other badly needed supplies to th🗹e quake-hit area.
U.N. Deputy Special Representative Ramiz Alakbarov toured the affected Paktika province on Saturday to assess the damage and distribute food🔴, medicine and tents. U.ꦡN. helicopters and trucks laden with bread, flour, rice and blankets have trickled into the stricken areas.
B♑ut the relief effort remains patchy due to funding and access constraints. The Taliban, which seized power last August from a government sustained for 20 years by a U.S.-led military coalition, appears overwhelmed by the logistical complexities of issues like debris removal in what is shaping up to be a major test of its capacity to govern.
Villꦜagers have dug out their dead loved ones with their bare hands, buried them in mass graves and slept in the woods despite the rain. Nearly 800 families are living out in the open, according to the U.N.'s humanitarian c🍰oordination organization OCHA.
Gul received a tent and bla𒈔nkets from a local charity in the Gayan district, but he and his surviving relatives have had to fend for themselves. Terrified as the earth still rumbles from aftershocks like one on Friday that claimed five more lives, he said his children in Gayan refuse to go indoors.
The earthquake was the latest calamity to convulse Afghanistan, which has been reeling from a dire economic crisis since the Taliban took control of the country as the U.S. and its NATO allies were withdrawing their forces⛄. Foreign aid — a mai❀nstay of Afghanistan's economy for decades — stopped practically overnight.
World governments piled on sanctions, halted bank transfers and paralyzed trade, refusing to recognize the Taliban government and demanding they allow a more inclusive rule and respect human rights. The Biden ad🔴ministration cut off the Taliban's access to $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States.
The former insurgents have resisted the pressཧure, imposing restrictions on the freedoms of women and girls that🧸 recall their first time in power in the late 1990s.
Now, around half the country's 39 million people are facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity because of poverty. Most civil se𓄧rvants, including doctors, nurs♉es and teachers, have not been paid for months.
U.N. agencies and other remaining organizations have scrambled to keep Afghanistan from the brink of starvation with a humanitarian program that has fed millions and kept the medical system afloat. But w𒐪ith international donors lagging, U.N. agencies face a $3 billion funding shortfall this year.
Reel♏ing from war and impoverished long before the Taliban takeover, the far-flung areas hit by last Wednesday's earthquake are pa♐rticularly ill-equipped to cope.
Some local businessmen have swung into action. The Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce and Investmen🥂t said on Sunday it had raised over $1.5 million for Pakitka and Khost provinces.
꧟Still, for those whose homes have b▨een obliterated, the help may not be enough.
