A turbulent world.

FOLLOWING a visit to Gayan, one of the areas in Afghanistan's Paktika province hit by last week's earthquake, a foreign correspondent posted an evocative photograph. A group of sun-dappled Afghan men stand around a bowl of ripe, tempting apricots. The journalist tweeted in praise of Afghan hospitality, explaining that the men were insisting that the media crew have one apricot each. This, despite surviving one of the worst earthquakes in decades, which has left a 1,000 people dead, and over 1,500 injured.

The journalist is not alone in highlighting the beauty of humanity amidst the earthquake's toll. Social media is littered with images of Afghans from neighbouring villages rushing to the aid of the affected, or of street children putting their meagre earnings into donation boxes. They are meant to soothe the pain of tragedy, but instead serve to romanticise it, glossing over the horrors, and once again putting a false sense of hope in 'resilience' - that dreaded euphemism used to describe people who plod on because they have no choice.

Such nuggets prevent us from accepting the real extent of the disaster in Afghanistan. The earthquake was the last thing Afghans needed when their country is facing a humanitarian and economic collapse. Quake survivors were rushed to hospitals that lack funding, equipment or medicine. Those who made it out will resume life in horrifying circumstances. The UN says 97 per cent of Afghans will live below the poverty line this year, and half the population is food insecure.

And while the Taliban has used the earthquake as an opportunity to demonstrate its capacity to govern - organising relief flights to transport survivors to urban hospitals, promising compensation for victims' families - the overall picture is bleak. Women's rights are curtailed, girls remain out of schools, the media is muzzled, and former government officials and other Taliban opponents go missing, are tortured or killed. Minorities remain under threat, as evidenced by the Kabul gurdwara attack.

Afghanistan is not the only country facing a crisis.

Sadly, Afghanistan is not the only country facing such appalling humanitarian and economic conditions, though it is among the worst. A global food shortage is upon us, driven by climate change and fuelled by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Up to 1.6 billion people cannot be sure of getting enough to eat, and hundreds of millions face famine. In Somalia, children are dying of starvation. With...