This week, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit Afghanistan’s mountainous Kunar province, located along its eastern border with Pakistan. Two subsequent earthquakes, measuring 5.5 magnitude and 6.2, inflicted further devastation. Early reports from the Taliban count 2,205 dead, with the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) estimating that 1.3 million people are affected by the initial earthquake and its aftershocks.
Tens of thousands of people are displaced; their clay homes ripped to rubble. Landslides have obscured road access from emergency responders, rendering many of the towns affected by the earthquake stranded from aid.
Afghanistan is already a country engulfed in a series of humanitarian emergencies. 22.9 million Afghans are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. An estimated 3 million children are severely malnourished.
After the United States’ evacuation in 2021, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. Their regime of gender apartheid silences women and girls in public, prohibiting them from working in most sectors and depriving their families of a livelihood. Drastic cuts to humanitarian aid in 2025, prompted by the withdrawal of American foreign assistance, inflame the country’s predicament. Overnight, approximately 700 million USD in assistance vanished. 220 health facilities have closed, as have 400 nutrition sites. Collapsing water and sanitation facilities make the population more at risk of infectious disease.
This earthquake is not just a natural disaster, but a man-made emergency. Crises compound: natural hazards like earthquakes, tornadoes, and tsunamis expose pre-existing vulnerabilities.
The aftermath of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake is a classic example of how ‘natural disasters’ are the product not just of nature, but of human failure. A 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit sixteen miles outside of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, resulted in millions displaced, and over 300,000 dead. Aid flooded the country. But Haiti has never fully recovered. Long the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere—the product of the entwined forces of racism and colonialism—the earthquake’s devastating toll was the outcome of decades of foreign intervention, government mismanagement, and poor infrastructure.
Natural hazards like this earthquake are devastating, but it is human failure that turns them into disasters. The same year as Haiti’s earthquake, Chile was hit with one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, at a magnitude of 8.8. The shock resonated from its central coastline outwards, resulting in tremors reaching as far as Buenos Aires. The government, however, rallied quickly to provide emergency services, minimizing the loss of life. 500 people, compared to Haiti’s 300,000, died.
Afghanistan, much like Haiti, faced profound vulnerabilities even before the earthquake struck. Without urgent and sustained humanitarian assistance, future natural disasters will result in loss and displacement on a scale far greater than nature would inflict. Natural hazards are a part of life—humanitarian crisis is not.
