Destruction everywhere, help scarce after quake

GAYAN (AP):

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 predawn darkness, choking on dust as he searched for his father and two sisters. He doesn’t know how many hours of digging passed before he caught a glimpse of their bodies under the ruins. They were dead.

Now, days after a magnitude-six quake that devastated a remote region of southeast Afghanistan and killed at 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 AP, his hands bruised and his shoulder injured. “We don’t have any money to rebuild.”

It’s a fear shared among thousands in the impoverished villages where the 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 and authorities, which are struggling to reach the afflicted area on rutted roads — some made impassable by landslides and damage.

UNFREEZE CURRENCY RESERVES

Aware of its constraints, the cash-strapped Taliban have called for foreign assistance and appealed to Washington to unfreeze billions of dollars in Afghanistan’s currency reserves. The United Nations and an array of international aid groups and countries have mobilised to send help.

China pledged on Saturday 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 the quake-hit area.

UN Deputy Special Representative Ramiz Alakbarov toured the affected Paktika province on Saturday to assess the damage and distribute food, medicine and tents. UN helicopters and trucks laden with bread, flour, rice and blankets have trickled into the stricken areas.

But 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 US-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.

Villagers 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 UN’s humanitarian coordination organisation OCHA.