‘We Have Nothing:’ Afghan quake survivors despair over recovery

As dawn broke over his village Friday morning, Abdul Qadir dug through the rubble of his family home desperate to find a small sack of flour buried somewhere beneath the piles of wood and dust.
Like many in this desolate stretch of eastern Afghanan, the small bag was the only food his family had before a devastating earthquake decimated half of the village this past week. For nearly a year since the Taliban seized power and an economic crisis engulfed the country, villagers could no longer afford the firewood he once collected and sold for a few dollars a day. The price of food in the local bazaar doubled. He racked up 500,000 Afghanis — more than $5,000 — in debt from shopkeepers until they refused to lend to him anymore.
Then on Wednesday, the mountains around him erupted in a violent rumble that brought the walls of his home crashing down and killed six members of his family. Looking at the remains of his home, he was at a loss.
“This house was the one comfort we still had,” said Qadir, 27. “We have no way to get a loan, no way to get money, no way to rebuild. Nothing.”
The earthquake wreaked havoc on this remote, mountainous region of eastern Afghanan, killing about 1,000 people and destroying the homes of thousands more. It was a devastating blow for a place that has seen unrelenting hardship for decades and had been desperately hoping for any sort of respite after the war ended and the Taliban seized control of the country.
The people of Geyan Drict saw little benefit from the American era in Afghanan. This is among the poorest places in the country, and people survive hand-to-mouth with the little money they earn collecting firewood and harvesting pine nuts each fall. Then, as now, the government was dant, and families have had to rely on one another when times get hard.
The advent of Taliban rule has not changed that here. Although government officials are scrambling to bring aid stores to the area after the quake, it will have little lasting effect on the worsening desperation of daily life or the suffering from widespread death.
The site of a mass grave dug with machinery for 77 people who died in the earthquake, in the Gayan drict of Afghanan, June 24, 2022. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)
During the 20-year-long war between the Taliban insurgency and the previous Western backed government, residents were caught in grueling fighting that tore through villages across this swath of Afghanan. Shelling from Pakan — targeting Pakani militants who have sought refuge along Afghanan’s eastern border — has rained down from the sky, killing civilians and destroying homes. Nature itself has wrought its own violence with frequent floods, hailstorms and deadly earthquakes woven into the fabric of life here.
After the Taliban seized power, many residents hoped that the end of the war would bring some relief. Instead, the shelling from Pakan continued as militants emboldened the Taliban takeover flooded into the area. A dire economic crisis, set off international sanctions and millions in foreign aid vanishing practically overnight, decimated people’s incomes and sent food prices soaring. Today, about half the country’s 39 million people are facing life-threatening levels of food insecurity, according to the World Food Program.
For many in these remote villages, the destruction seemed to offer a heartbreaking reminder that the violence and hardship was far from over despite the end of the war.
“We were very happy that the war ended. We thought that our lives would be better — but things are more dangerous now than during the war because of the economy,” said Sher Mohammad, 60. “We aren’t thinking about bombs now, but we’re dying day day because we don’t have food to eat.”
As he spoke, another small tremor shook the dull, beige earth beneath him.
Wednesday’s earthquake had completely destroyed Mohammad’s home in the Stara Geyan village in Geyan Drict — one of the hardest hit the quake. Without food or shelter, he and his family had come to a near village, Azor Kalai, to stay with his relatives. In many ways, the relatives’ house was his last remaining lifeline.
For years, he and three brothers had lived together, sharing the money they made collecting firewood on the backs of their donkeys and working as laborers on other villagers’ farmland. It was a meager living but enough to buy flour, rice, cooking oil and the other essentials the family needed. They even saved enough to expand their shared home and send Mohammad’s two sons to school in the provincial capital.
Ali Marjana, left, a daughter and other family who relocated, for fear of their home collapsing, to a spot where they keep livestock, in the Gayan drict of Afghanan, June 24, 2022. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)
But after the economy all but collapsed following the Taliban takeover in August, suddenly each brother could barely earn enough to feed their own children, much less share with one another. Unable to provide more than stale bread and tea for his family, Mohammad summoned his 22-year-old and 20-year-old home from school to help makes ends meet selling whatever they could in a near bazaar.
“Their future is gone,” he said. “If they studied, they could find a good job. But now, with the economy, they left everything. I doubt they’ll ever be able to continue their education.”
On Friday morning, Mohammad joined hundreds of people crowded around a makeshift aid dribution site in Azor Kalai village, where international humanitarian organizations and Taliban officials had set up tents to arrange and dribute food aid.
As men waited to reger their family’s names to receive help, military helicopters ferrying Taliban officials buzzed overhead while trucks loaded with supplies from the capital, Kabul, trickled into the village. It took more than 24 hours for many of the vehicles to make the 150-mile trek down the unpaved roads that wind through the rugged terrain dotted with shrubs, damp riverbeds, beige mud-brick homes that protrude from the hillside and a patchwork of farmland that blankets the valleys in between.
Two days after the earthquake, most residents interviewed The New York Times said they had not received any aid from the government. Instead, just as they had during crises under the previous Western-backed government, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, they relied mostly on one another.
A local charity organization cooks vats of food to aid people affected the earthquake, in the Gayan drict of Afghanan, June 24, 2022. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)
Villagers from neighboring dricts whose homes remained intact led the efforts to rescue people trapped under the rubble — digging with little more than their bare hands — and purchased burial shrouds, 20 meters of white linen, for the hundreds of people killed. They drove severely injured victims to hospitals hours away in their small, rundown Toyota Corollas. Relatives from across the province brought bread, rice and plastic tarps to build makeshift shelters. Dazed residents shuffled through the debris of their homes desperate to recover what they could: a bag of rice here, a teakettle there.
Up a winding riverbed from the aid dribution site, Sharif, 25, started sifting through the rubble of his family home around 4:30 a.m. Friday, looking for any kitchen supplies and food he could find. Two hours later, as he pulled their freezer from the remains of one room, the wall of another came crashing down — drawing dozens of his neighbors who feared he had been trapped under the rubble.
Despite it all, he counted himself lucky. His entire family survived the earthquake after he woke up when the first tremors struck and told everyone to run to the yard — a lesson his parents had ingrained in him growing up in the mountains where nature itself waged a war on its residents.
“Many times, they gathered us and told us if there is heavy rain or hail, do not leave our rooms, stay safe inside, but if the ground begins to shake, go outside because the walls of dust and wood can collapse,” he said.
A family sets up tents near where their house had stood in the village of Azore Kalai, Afghanan, on Thursday, June 23, 2022. A second temblor hit the region on Friday, killing at least five more people and injuring another 11. (Kiana Hayeri/The New York Times)
As he shifted through the rubble, the gratitude he felt for the safety of his family was giving way to despair over what they would do now.
For two years, they had barely earned enough to eat after travel restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic prevented his father from going to Saudi Arabia for work — an income stream that sustained his family for decades. Even after those restrictions loosened, the Taliban takeover pushed up the price of obtaining a visa beyond what his father could afford as hundreds of thousands of Afghans look to leave the country to find employment.
He and his brothers tried to make up the lost income selling firewood, but as the economy worsened, they could not find anyone to buy it. Shopkeepers stopped agreeing to give them food on credit. He stopped spending as much time in his home; the cries of his children begging for food he did not have broke his heart, he said.
After the earthquake, he built a small tent for his family from tarps that his relatives in a near drict brought them. Next to it, their two cows and three goats milled about while his wife and their children sorted through the few pots and pans they had recovered from the rubble.
“After this earthquake, I totally lost control,” said Sharif’s wife, Ali Marjana, 22, sitting on the ground in their makeshift home.
“I can’t explain it. We have nothing to eat, no money, no way to find money,” she added. “Look at us. We’re living like animals now.”