BARMAL DISTRICT, Afghanistan: Labourer Rasool Badshah has moved into a new home six months after a deadly earthquake rocked eastern Afghanistan, but without his mother, who was killed by collapsing walls.
More than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands made homeless after the 5.9-magnitude quake — the deadliest in Afghanistan in nearly a quarter of a century — struck the impoverished province of Paktika on June 22.
“When I reached here, my mother, brothers, everyone was already buried,” Badshah, 21, told AFP, explaining how he rushed back to his village from Pakistan, where he was working.
Hundreds of earthquake-resilient concrete homes, many built by local laborers with the support of the United Nations refugee agency, have now been handed over to survivors who were until now living in makeshift tent cities.
“We couldn’t have built these houses, not even our children or grandchildren (could have)... we could not afford it. We were living in huts,” Badshah said.
The UNHCR said the new homes are equipped with solar panels, independent toilets and traditional heaters to help residents face harsh winters.
Even before the earthquake, Afghanistan was in the grip of a humanitarian disaster made worse by the Taliban takeover in August 2021.
International development funding on which the South Asian country relied dried up after the takeover and assets held abroad were frozen.
The remote east where the quake struck had been neglected by authorities for years, said survivor Bara Khan.
“After the earthquake, people came and saw that residents of the area were in trouble. We don’t even have a clinic or a school,” Khan said.
“Everybody has grown up illiterate.”
The UNHCR will start work to build two schools and a clinic in the area, still strewn with rubble, after the winter.
Afghanistan is frequently hit by earthquakes, especially in the Hindu Kush mountain range, which lies near the junction of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates.
Afghan survivors get new homes six months after deadly quake
https://arab.news/c5cj8
Afghan survivors get new homes six months after deadly quake
- More than 1,000 people were killed and tens of thousands made homeless after quake struck impoverished province of Paktika on June 22
- Hundreds of earthquake-resilient concrete homes, many built by local laborers with UN support, now handed over to quake survivors
France’s Le Pen insists party acted in ‘good faith’ at EU fraud appeal
- Le Pen said on her second day of questioning that even if her party broke the law, it was unintentional
- She also argued that the passage of time made it “extremely difficult” for her to prove her innocence
PARIS: French far-right leader Marine Le Pen told an appeals trial on Wednesday that her party acted in “good faith,” denying an effort to embezzle European Parliament funds as she fights to keep her 2027 presidential bid alive.
A French court last year barred Le Pen, a three-time presidential candidate from the far-right National Rally (RN), from running for office for five years over a fake jobs scam at the European institution.
It found her, along with 24 former European Parliament lawmakers, assistants and accountants as well as the party itself, guilty of operating a “system” from 2004 to 2016 using European Parliament funds to employ party staff in France.
Le Pen — who on Tuesday rejected the idea of an organized scheme — said on her second day of questioning that even if her party broke the law, it was unintentional.
“We were acting in complete good faith,” she said in the dock on Wednesday.
“We can undoubtedly be criticized,” the 57-year-old said, shifting instead the blame to the legislature’s alleged lack of information and oversight.
“The European Parliament’s administration was much more lenient than it is today,” she said.
Le Pen also argued that the passage of time made it “extremely difficult” for her to prove her innocence.
“I don’t know how to prove to you what I can’t prove to you, what I have to prove to you,” she told the court.
Eleven others and the party are also appealing in a trial to last until mid-February, with a decision expected this summer.
- Rules were ‘clear’ -
Le Pen was also handed a four-year prison sentence, with two years suspended, and fined 100,000 euros ($116,000) in the initial trial.
She now again risks the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a one-million-euro ($1.16 million) fine if the appeal fails.
Le Pen is hoping to be acquitted — or at least for a shorter election ban and no time under house arrest.
On Tuesday, Le Pen pushed back against the argument that there was an organized operation to funnel EU funds to the far-right party.
“The term ‘system’ bothers me because it gives the impression of manipulation,” she said.
EU Parliament official Didier Klethi last week said the legislature’s rules were “clear.”
EU lawmakers could employ assistants, who were allowed to engage in political activism, but this was forbidden “during working hours,” he said.
If the court upholds the first ruling, Le Pen will be prevented from running in the 2027 election, widely seen as her best chance to win the country’s top job.
She made it to the second round in the 2017 and 2022 presidential polls, before losing to Emmanuel Macron. But he cannot run this time after two consecutive terms in office.
