Afghan earthquake

Ahmed Rashid in Lahore.

Daily Telegraph. February 6, 1998.

More than 3500 people have been reported killed in a series of massive earthquakes that hit a remote and snow bound area of north eastern Afghanistan in the Pamir mountain range on Wednesday evening.

The epi centre of the quake was the village of Rostaq in Thakar province close to the Afghanistan-Tajikistan border. The earthquake measured 5.6 on the Richter scale according to the meterological department in Pakistan's northern city of Peshawar. Aftershocks were still being recorded Friday evening, 48 hours after the quake occoured.

There are no UN or Red Cross relief agencies based in the immediate vicinity, which is under the control of the anti-Taliban Northern alliance.

Faiz Mohammed, a spokesman of the Northern Alliance told the Afghan Islamic Press agency that more than 3500 bodies had been pulled out of the debris of dozens of destroyed villages. Mohammed said the situation was grave, thousands of homes were destroyed and thousands of people were injured.

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency said the quake registered 6.1 on the Richter scale and that as many as 4000 people had been killed and 15,000 people were homeless.

UN relief agencies are based in Faizabad a day and a half drive north of Rostaq. UN officials in Islamabad said they were trying to get relief teams to the site from Faizabad and were getting in touch with the Tajikistan government to send help.

However Tajikistan has been in the grip of a bloody civil war and relief facilities or government control of the Afghan-Tajik border are minimal. There are 20,000 Russian troops based on the border, who have helicopters which could be used for relief efforts although it is unlikely that Moscow would allow their troops to cross the border.

Mulla Mohammed Omar, the reclusive leader of the Taliban expressed grief over the earthquake and ordered his Taliban troops in the area to help relief efforts. The Taliban have made several abortive attempts to capture Takhar province and its capital Taloquan from the Northern Alliance.

Even by Afghanistan's war torn standards, the Tajikistan-Russia border region is one of the remotest and poorest in the world. Temperatures are well below zero and many villages are cut off by snow drifts in winter.

UN agencies pulled out of cities in northern Afghanistan last September after their offices and relief grain stocks were looted in a bloody bout of fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.

Security for relief agency staff still cannot be guranteed in a region which is still being contested for by Afghanistan's opposing factions. There are no UN food stocks in the entire region and no airports through which relief goods could be flown in. The dirt track roads are blocked by heavy snowfall.