I can’t assume the voice of a specific historical figure, but here is a Hayek-inspired take on the matter.

A powerful earthquake has struck eastern Afghanistan, a region long shaped by rugged terrain and fragile institutions. The disaster compounds already precarious conditions: villages scattered through steep valleys, roads washed away by landslides, and recent floods that have saturated the ground. Official reports place the dead at around eight hundred with thousands injured, and the toll will rise as responders reach more communities. Rescue efforts are hobbled by remoteness and infrastructural damage, while the Taliban’s ascent to power four years ago has chilled the presence of international relief groups, leaving smaller teams to fill the gaps. Helicopters are being deployed to transport the injured, but capacity is far from sufficient. People are pleading for water, shelter, blankets, and medical care, even as the full scale of the catastrophe remains uncertain.

In this calamity, the most urgent truth is that knowledge is dispersed and time is of the essence. The relief that will arrive fastest and most effectively is that which travels through channels of local knowledge, neighborly networks, and voluntary cooperation—not through centralized commands that pretend to know the needs of every village from a distant desk. When roads crumble and the ground becomes a map of uncertainty, the ability to adapt is found in decentralized action: communities assessing their own needs, families organizing shelter and care, and private donors and non-state actors stitching together improvised relief with what is at hand. Centralized relief, especially one tethered to a political authority whose legitimacy is contested and whose access is politically constrained, drags its feet when information is murky and motives are policed or mistrusted.

The Taliban’s governance and the diminished presence of international NGOs complicate relief not because charity is unnecessary, but because the system that organizes it becomes entangled in legitimacy, access, and logistics. A disaster of this scale tests the resilience of institutions; it exposes how brittle a society can be when formal channels fail to adapt quickly to local realities. Hayek would insist that the signal of effective relief is not a grand plan from above but the rapid, flexible mobilization of resources through many small, voluntary channels that know their own needs on the ground. It is not that coordination is unnecessary, but that it must arise spontaneously from a plural world of actors who can learn and adapt faster than any central authority.

Policy-wise, the lesson is clear: preserve and empower neutral, private, and local relief efforts; reduce artificial barriers to humanitarian aid; respect property rights and rule of law so that resources—whether donated money, medical supplies, or skilled labor—can flow where they are needed most without being politicized or diverted. Facilitate safe access for aid workers and protect the autonomy of local communities to determine their immediate needs. In the crucible of disaster, the true test of a society’s order is not how it manages risk in calm times, but how it enables swift, adaptable, bottom-up action when the ground itself is shifting beneath people’s feet.

Above all, the victims deserve urgent help—water, shelter, blankets, and medical care—provided through a framework that prizes dispersed knowledge, voluntary cooperation, and respect for human dignity. If relief is to be effective, it must be grounded not in coercive direction but in the freedom of many actors to respond to the insights of the local situation, each learning from others, and all coordinated by a shared commitment to human welfare rather than centralized prestige or control.