Afghanistan earthquake: ‘What do we do when another disaster hits?’ Afghans face crises on all fronts
The slow response, exacerbated by international sanctions and decades of mismanagement, has involved those working in the humanitarian space, such as Obaidullah Baheer, a lecturer in Transitional Justice at the University of study American Afghanistan. “This is a very patchy, band-aided solution to a problem that we need to start thinking about (about) the mid to long term… what do we do when (another disaster) strikes? ?” he told CNN by phone.
A 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck in the early hours of Wednesday near the city of Khost next to the Pakistani border and the death toll is expected to rise as many homes in the area are flimsy made of wood. , mud and other materials are easily damaged .
Humanitarian agencies are focusing on the area, but it could take several days for aid to reach the affected areas, one of the most remote in the country.
According to Anita Dullard, ICRC spokesperson for the Asia Pacific region, the teams deployed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have yet to arrive. Shelley Thakral, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) in Kabul, said efforts to get aid to affected areas were being slowed due to road conditions.
“The challenges that we are facing are first of all geographical and logistical challenges because the area is so remote, rural and mountainous. Yesterday we had a lot of rain here and The combination of rain and earthquakes has resulted in landslides in some areas, making travel difficult,” UNICEF Afghanistan Communications Director Sam Mort told CNN from Kabul.
The quake was accompanied by heavy rains and monsoons between June 20 and 22, which hampered search efforts and helicopter evacuations.
As paramedics and emergency personnel across the country struggle to reach the site, help is expected to be limited as some organizations have withdrawn from the aid-dependent country as the Taliban took power last August.
The rest are thinned. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was mobilizing “all resources” from around the country, with teams on the ground delivering medicine and emergency assistance. However, as one WHO official put it, “resources here are used too much, not just for this region.”
‘Very bleak’
The international community’s reluctance to deal with the Taliban and “a very messy bureaucracy where it is difficult to gather information from one source” has led to a communication gap in rescue efforts, Baheer said. – who is also the founder of the rescue group. Afghans from Hunger – said.
“At the core of everything is the way politics creates this communication gap, not only between countries and the Taliban, but also international aid organizations and the Taliban,” he added.
Baheer gave an example of how he had acted as an informant for WFP and other aid organizations, informing them that the Afghan Ministry of Defense was offering to airlift aid from the organizations. humanitarian aid to the severely affected areas.
Meanwhile, some people spent the night sleeping in makeshift tents outdoors, as rescuers scanned survivors with flashlights. The United Nations says 2,000 homes are believed to have been destroyed. Images from the hard-hit Paktika province, where most of the deaths have been reported, show houses reduced to dust and rubble.
Hsiao-Wei Lee, WFP deputy country director for Afghanistan, described the situation on the ground as “very bleak”, where some villages in the hard-hit districts were “completely devastated or 70% destroyed. collapsed,” she said.
“There will be months and years of rebuilding,” she said. “The need is so much bigger than just food… For example, it could be a shelter, to be able to facilitate the transportation of that food as well as customs and logistics. would be very helpful.”
Officials say aid is reaching the affected areas.
According to the official Twitter account of the Afghan Ministry of Defense, the government has distributed food, tents, clothing and other supplies to the quake-hit provinces. Aid and medical teams deployed by the Afghan government were present in the earthquake affected areas and attempted to transport the injured to medical facilities and medical centers by land and air. .
‘The tragedy of the whole country, the whole people’
Although the economic crisis in Afghanistan has dragged on for years, as a result of conflict and drought, it fell to new depths after the Taliban took over, leaving the US and its allies frozen around $7 billion. foreign exchange reserves of the country and cut off international sources. expense.
The US is no longer present in Afghanistan after the hasty withdrawal of its troops and the collapse of the former US-backed Afghan government. Like nearly all other countries, it has no official ties to the Taliban government.
Sanctions have crippled Afghanistan’s economy and plunged many of the country’s 20 million people into severe starvation. Millions of Afghans are out of work, government employees are not being paid, and food prices are skyrocketing.
According to the draft comment by Martin Griffiths, head of the Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), humanitarian aid is not excluded from the sanctions, but there are obstacles, according to the project. discussion by Martin Griffiths, head of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) before the UN Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan.
This includes a massive need for funding, the Taliban government “seeking to play a role in selecting beneficiaries and transferring support to those on its own priority list”, and the “banking system”. Officially continue to block money transfers,” he wrote.
This means that “approximately 80% of institutions (who responded to the OCHA surveillance survey) are facing delays in remittances, with two-thirds reporting that their international banks continue to continue to refuse to transfer money. More than 60% of organizations consider the lack of available cash in the country as a programmed obstacle.”
Baheer said the sanctions “are hurting us a lot”, Afghans are struggling to send money to families affected by the earthquake.
“The fact that we have almost no banking system, the fact that we have had no new money printed or brought into the country in the last 9 to 10 months, our assets are frozen … the This sanction doesn’t work.” he say.
He added: “The only sanctions that make moral sense are those that target specific individuals rather than the catastrophic punishment of an entire country and entire people.”
Mort, from UNICEF, told CNN that “sanctions have hit the country a lot, but humanitarian aid is exempt so we’re going to support those who need it most.”
The Taliban “are not preventing us from distributing anything like that, on the contrary they are facilitating us,” she added.
Experts and officials say the most pressing immediate needs include medical care and transportation for the injured, shelter and supplies for displaced people, food and water, and clothes.
The UN has distributed medical supplies and sent mobile medical teams to Afghanistan – but warned that the country does not have search and rescue capabilities.
According to Mohammad Ali Saif, regional government spokesman, Pakistan has offered to help, opening the border gate in Khyber Pakhtunkwa province in the north of the country and allowing injured Afghans to enter the country visa-free for treatment.
“400 injured Afghans were transferred to Pakistan this morning for treatment and the flow is continuing,” Saif told CNN.
Pakistan has tightly restricted entry of Afghans across its land border since the Taliban came to power.
CNN’s Richard Roth, Robert Shackleford, Yong Xiong, Jessie Yeung, Sophia Saifi, Mohammed Shafi Kakar and Aliza Kassim contributed to this report.
