People digging with ‘bare hands’ following avalanches in Nuristan, the Fondazione Pangea says
Dozens of houses collapsed from landslides caused by heavy snow. For Luca Lo Presti, head of Fondazione Pangea Onlus, “we will never know the real number of victims”. The Italian non-profit has been in Afghanistan for decades supporting the local population, while many NGOs have been unable to send aid due to the lack of infrastructure in the mountainous province, which has no hospitals.
Kabul (AsiaNews) – The situation in the Afghan province of Nuristan is desperate after heavy snowfall caused major landslides this week.
“The region is not covered by international cooperation. Only we have a presence here, in Noorgram district, and the means available to the Taliban are inadequate to meet all the needs," said Luca Lo Presti, president of the Fondazione Pangea Onlus, a non-profit organisation present in Afghanistan for decades, speaking to AsiaNews.
“It is hard to get information out and no one is doing anything. People are digging through the rubble with their bare hands in search of family members,” Lo Presti said.
“This morning, village leaders met to count the missing and decide how to deal with the situation.” Five days after the disaster, the only aid that has come from Taliban authorities is "biscuits".
Recent official reports mention 30 deaths, "but we will never know the real number of victims" Lo Presti noted. "It is likely that most are women and children at home” at the time of the avalanche, "but many bodies will not likely be found."
Hydro-geological instability is nothing new in Afghanistan, whose infrastructure is inadequate and tragedies of this type are frequent.
"Village houses are nestled in the mountains. At the first failure, everything collapses. They are very beautiful areas from a scenic point of view, but life is hard."
The Fondazione Pangea, which runs schools for children in Nuristan, is planning to build a local clinic, but has, in the meantime, organised lorries with humanitarian aid, bringing tents, blankets, and food.
“We are waiting for Taliban approval to send vehicles from Kabul because there are many checkpoints," the president of the non-profit organisation said. “I don't think we'll have any problems getting the necessary passes. In other emergencies, like earthquakes, we had none.”
Short of funds, even the Taliban probably recognise the importance of international cooperation groups working on the ground.
After the Taliban came back to power in August 2021, Afghanistan fell off the radar. International funds intended for the previous government were frozen, because the United States and the international community refuse to recognise the Taliban government.
Most of the population today lives below the poverty line, while bans imposed by the Taliban prevent women and girls from accessing education and jobs outside the home.
Yet, “Paradoxically, despite the presence of Islamic State fighters in the country, with the end of the war, we have access to areas that were previously hard to reach because of the fighting, while little has changed for the local population,” Lo Presti explained.
“The men and women affected by the landslides are strangers to international affairs. They were born in these villages and have always lived there,” on the margins of the world politics that touched Afghanistan for many years.
Despite the tragedy, Pangea has been lucky enough to have “a stable presence thanks to the ties built over the years, whereas other NGOs are unable to send aid. Nuristan is a mountainous and remote region and roads are often impassable; some villages can only be reached on foot.”
There are no hospitals either. “We presented a project to build a clinic because it is too tiring, in particular for women in labour, to be taken down into the valley, so childbirth mortality rates are very high.”
For Afghans, left to fend for themselves, Pangea’s presence is crucial. The non-profit foundation works to protect and support women in India and Italy as well.
"Every donation, which can be made through our website, is very important to us,” Lo Presti said, “because we are depleting our reserves to cope with the emergency.”
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24/10/2019 17:56
11/01/2023 17:15
