“I have lost nine sons, three granddaughters and one grandson,” says 57-year-old Mahbouba from Kuz Konar, a village near the epicentre of Afghanistan’s latest earthquake.

The 6.0 magnitude quake struck late on Sunday night, its shallow centre just 27 kilometres from Jalalabad in eastern Nangarhar province. A second tremor of magnitude 5.0 shook the same area the following day. The shocks, felt as far as Kabul and across the border in Pakistan, have killed over 1,400 and left many more trapped beneath rubble.

For the Taliban, the tragedy has struck in a place it once considered untouchable. Nangarhar and neighbouring Kunar provinces have long been strongholds. Fighters operated here throughout the Nineties and Jalalabad, the provincial capital, fell to the group in 1996. When the movement returned to power in August 2021, Nangarhar was among the first provinces to collapse. Local Taliban members who had been living there for years paved the way for a swift takeover.

Now survivors in the same valleys accuse the movement of abandoning them in their time of need. “Their priority has never been the people,” said a Jalalabad-based doctor, speaking anonymously for safety. “While people were still alive under the rubble, Taliban vice and virtue officers were patrolling villages to stop male aid workers from helping injured women,” he said.

“In one hospital, six pregnant women died because there were no female doctors available, and male doctors were barred from treating them,” he added. “The Taliban call the dead martyrs a sacred concept in their Islam. Instead of mourning those who died partly because of mismanagement, they glorify them as martyrs.”

Mahbouba, speaking to me from hospital in Jalalabad, said that hours after the chaos and screaming had ended, she heard the Quran pierce the deathly silence from the loudspeakers. “The Taliban thought we were already dead,” she said. “Instead of rescuing us, they began funeral prayers.”

The Taliban, naturally, has appealed for international aid. But as the Jalalabad doctor told me, members of the group “mainly demand cash” and restrict access for foreign aid workers.

This sentiment is echoed by others. Ahmad Zia, an aid worker in Kunar’s Asadabad district, said: “While people here are desperate, the deputy prime minister for economic affairs went north to inaugurate commercial centres instead of visiting the east.” He continued: “They do not even come to see the devastation. They issue statements, then carry on in their safe havens as if nothing has happened.”

“Our houses are so badly damaged they can no longer be lived in,” Ahmad claimed. “The Islamic Emirate promised us a better life, yet instead the Supreme Leader issues decrees like last week’s ban on poetry, while our families are buried under rubble.”

Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, international aid has largely dried up. Western donors cut off most funding and banking access, while aid agencies face Taliban restrictions that prevent them from reaching women and many vulnerable groups. Survivors of disasters such as this earthquake are left with little outside support and a government unable or unwilling to deliver meaningful relief.

Criticism of Taliban governance is nothing new in Afghanistan’s cities. Urban elites have long accused the movement of prioritising ideology over service. But hearing such anger in Nangarhar and Kunar, areas once seen as the heart of Taliban support, signals a deeper rupture. This earthquake has destroyed thousands of homes and lives, but it may also break the fragile bond between the rulers and the ruled.