Across continents, an earthquake’s echoes: Afghan villages flattened, diaspora left to grieve
One week after a late‑night earthquake tore through the steep valleys of eastern Afghanistan, survivors still sift through mud and stone, looking for the impossible — the bodies of loved ones, the foundations of a life. In Ireland, a man named Raoof Safi repeated the same ritual of pale modern grief: scrolling through videos, answering phone calls, counting names.
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The quake, measured at about magnitude 6.0 and striking around 11:45 p.m. local time on Aug. 31 in the Noorgal area of Kunar province, was described by Taliban authorities as one of the deadliest in decades in the impoverished country. Scores — and as relatives tally them, increasingly hundreds — were killed; thousands were injured; whole villages were reduced to rubble. Remote valleys, where houses are made of mud and stone and roads are often tracks carved into the mountainsides, could only be reached on foot by journalists and rescue teams.
From Roscrea to Noorgal: a global grief
Safi has lived in Ireland for 17 years and now calls Roscrea, County Tipperary, home. But his childhood is in the shattered lanes of Noorgal. “People just told me that first they heard a deep rumbling sound and after that the ground began to shake, and the houses made of mud and stone started to collapse immediately,” he said. “They had little or no time to escape. It was terrifying to know that while they were in danger, I was so far away.”
In the days that followed Safi learned that extended family members were among the dead. “About five days ago I had a figure of 38, but it’s gone to 50 … unfortunately, it is rising day by day,” he told reporters in Ireland. Videos sent by friends and cousins show collapsed courtyards, ruined trees and mass graves — images that testify to the speed with which a mountain town can be unmade.
These are not abstract statistics but the story of houses that once resonated with daily life. “There is a total destruction,” Safi said. “These are the places where I grew up, where we used to play.”
Journalists who go home
One of the most striking images to emerge came from Sangar Hashimi, the vice president of Kabul’s 1TV Media, who insisted on returning to his native Noorgal to report. He filmed scenes few outsiders will see: men burying relatives in mass graves, a girl who alone survived her family, and fathers whose children were still trapped under rubble.
“One of my cousins lost five of his family members — four sons and one daughter — and his mother was very badly injured,” Hashimi said. “I cried a lot when I came back. My family, my sisters and brothers and parents, they were watching these reports and they were crying a lot because this was our own village.”
For journalists like Hashimi, reporting is also an act of communal mourning, a way to tell the story of those who remain inaccessible to international aid agencies and global press desks. But reporting from remote districts under Taliban rule poses practical challenges: access is limited, communication lines are disrupted, and humanitarian corridors are sparse.
Living in fields as winter approaches
In Bar Noorgal village, Abdul Hadi Sarwari and 21 relatives now shelter on his uncle’s farm. Their house was damaged beyond repair; they plan to demolish the remains and rebuild. “Together we are 22 people who live here in my uncle’s fields,” Sarwari said. “Most people don’t have any tent or shelter. There are some trees left and so they sit under the trees.”
Those images raise urgent questions: how will families survive the implacable Afghan winter in tents or under trees? Kunar is a mountainous province where temperatures plunge and life without walls becomes a test of endurance. Safi — who feels a responsibility as a member of the diaspora to amplify the pleas of his community — warned that the coming months could be brutal. “Children and the elderly are living in tents and open fields; I think it is going to be very, very difficult for them,” he said.
Why the death toll was so high
Experts say the scale of the tragedy reflects several intersecting vulnerabilities: homes built of mud brick and rubble that do not withstand shaking, hillside settlements exposed to landslides, and a lack of robust emergency services in remote districts. Afghanistan’s successive crises — decades of conflict, chronic poverty and underinvestment in infrastructure — mean that natural hazards become catastrophes at a much higher human cost.
Another factor is access. With many of the worst‑hit villages reachable only on foot, and with international humanitarian operations constrained by the political situation since the Taliban takeover, getting medical help, blankets and shelter materials to survivors is slow and inefficient. Even before the quake, much of rural Afghanistan depended on cross‑border aid and informal remittances from relatives abroad — channels now strained by global geopolitical tensions and banking restrictions.
What comes next — and who will help?
The scenes from Noorgal are familiar too in a wider, unsettling pattern: natural disasters in low‑income, conflict‑affected countries claim disproportionate numbers of lives. They test not just national capacities but the international community’s ability to deliver timely, neutral life‑saving aid under complex political constraints. The presence or absence of effective winterization programs — tents, heating, warm blankets and shelter repairs — will determine whether the next few months are measured in incremental recovery or escalating calamity.
For Afghan diaspora members like Safi, the earthquake has provoked a question that echoes across many migrant communities: what responsibilities does distance create? He said he feels duty‑bound to “become the voice of the people whose voice cannot be heard.” That impulse has compelled Afghans abroad to raise funds, lobby politicians, and funnel aid through local networks. But can diaspora activism substitute for coordinated international relief and reconstruction?
As the aftershocks continue and the numbers climb, the images from Noorgal — children huddled under trees, journalists filming mass graves, entire families counted among the dead — demand a twofold response: urgent humanitarian relief and a longer‑term commitment to building resilience in places that geography and politics have left dangerously exposed.
In the end, the quake has done more than unmoor homes; it has exposed the fragile threads that bind communities across borders. How the world responds in the coming weeks — not just with condolences but with warm tents, medical teams and winter supplies — will be the real measure of its compassion.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
