Earthquake in Afghanistan
At least 1,000 people were killed and 1,500 more injured when a mountainous region in eastern Afghanistan was hit by a major earthquake on Wednesday morning. Rescue efforts are complicated by the inaccessibility of the affected region and a lack of equipment. Who has a responsibility to help?
Take care not to enrich the Taliban
The ruling Islamists must not be given direct access to the goods sent to help the Afghan people, warns The Times:
“Maintaining a flow of aid without clear purposes and controls will provide the Taliban with a perverse incentive to enrich themselves at the expense of the population, in a country that has long had an endemic problem of corruption. ... The western democracies have failed Afghanistan's people already through a hasty withdrawal last year. To enrich the oppressors, having handed over the country to them, would be a betrayal beyond even this.”
Not even Muslims are helping
The Kurdish-Islamist newspaper Doğru Haber is dismayed by the Islamic world's failure to provide aid to the Afghan people:
“Muslims should have mobilised all their resources for the people of Afghanistan who are suffering the consequences of the earthquake, and who are also struggling with limited resources, economic hardship and serious problems such as poverty and drought. ... One would have expected the Islamic world, which is far removed from Western understanding, to react more sensitively to the earthquake in Afghanistan and to defend its own values. But unfortunately that has not happened.”