21 Years After the 2005 Earthquake, Pakistan Still Rebuilds — and Still Remembers

 Twenty-one years ago, on the morning of 8 October 2005, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake tore through northern Pakistan, devastating Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. More than 85,000 people were killed. Entire towns were flattened. Homes, schools and hospitals collapsed within seconds, leaving millions homeless in one of the worst natural disasters in the country's history.

This week, Pakistan marks 21 years since that terrible day — and the anniversary carries a sobering message: reconstruction is still not finished. Authorities estimate that nearly Rs 44 billion is still required to complete the remaining rebuilding work in Azad Kashmir alone. Two decades on, the physical scars of the earthquake remain part of the region's daily reality.

The 2005 disaster was felt far beyond Pakistan. Tremors rattled buildings across northern India and Afghanistan, and the scale of the destruction drew one of the largest international relief efforts of the decade. Rescue teams and aid flowed in from around the world, and for a generation of Pakistanis, the earthquake became a defining memory of both national grief and extraordinary solidarity — neighbours digging through rubble with their hands, strangers sharing whatever they had.

But the anniversary is not only about grief. It is also a checkpoint on one of the hardest questions in disaster management: how does a country rebuild when the damage is so vast that it outlives news cycles, governments and funding promises? The fact that billions of rupees of reconstruction work remain incomplete after 21 years tells a story that international development experts will recognise — initial pledges fade, attention moves on, and the last mile of recovery becomes the longest.

For readers outside Pakistan, there is a direct lesson here. Earthquakes do not respect borders or budgets. The same Himalayan fault system that ruptured in 2005 runs through some of the most densely populated regions of South Asia. Seismologists have long warned that a major quake in a crowded city anywhere along this belt could be catastrophic. Preparedness — building codes, emergency drills, resilient hospitals and schools — is the cheapest insurance any government can buy, and the 2005 earthquake remains one of the starkest arguments for it.

There is also a human thread that no policy document captures. In the villages of Azad Kashmir and the valleys of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, families still speak of the morning the ground shook as though it were yesterday. Children who survived are now adults raising their own families in rebuilt homes. Memorials and remembrance ceremonies this week honour the more than 85,000 lives lost — and remind the living of a promise made in the rubble: that the country would rebuild, fully, for those who remained.

That promise is still, technically, unfinished. The Rs 44 billion still needed for reconstruction in AJK is not just a number on a government estimate; it represents schools, health facilities and homes that communities are still waiting for. As Pakistan remembers, the most meaningful tribute to the victims would be to finish the work.

Twenty-one years on, the earthquake of 2005 remains Pakistan's deadliest natural disaster in living memory. Remembering it is easy. Completing its lessons is the harder, more important task.

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