GEYAN, Afghanistan — As dawn broke over his village on Friday morning, Abdul Qadir dug through the rubble of his family home desperate to find a small sack of flour buried somewhere beneath the piles of wood and dust.

Like many in this desolate stretch of eastern Afghanistan, the small bag was the only food his family had before a devastating earthquake decimated half of the village last week. For nearly a year since the Taliban seized power and an economic crisis engulfed the country, villagers could no longer afford the firewood he once collected and sold for a few dollars a day. The price of food in the local bazaar doubled. He racked up 500,000 Afghanis — over $5,000 — in debt from shopkeepers until they refused to lend to him anymore.

Then on Wednesday, the mountains around him erupted in a violent rumble that brought the walls of his home crashing down and killed six members of his family. Looking at the remains of his home, he was at a loss.

“This house was the one comfort we still had,” Mr. Qadir, 27, said. “We have no way to get a loan, no way to get money, no way to rebuild. Nothing.”

The earthquake this past week wreaked havoc on this remote, mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing around 1,000 people and destroying the homes of thousands more. It was a devastating blow for a place that has seen unrelenting hardship for decades, and had been desperately hoping for any sort of respite after the war ended and the Taliban seized control of the country.The people of Geyan District saw little benefit from the American era in Afghanistan. This is among the poorest places in the country, and people survive hand-to-mouth with the little money they earn collecting firewood and harvesting pine nuts each fall. Then, as now, the government was distant, and families have had to rely on each other when times get hard.

For many in these remote villages, the destruction seemed to offer a heartbreaking reminder that the violence and hardship was far from over despite the end of the two decade-long war.

“We were very happy that the war ended, we thought that our lives would be better — but things are more dangerous now than during the war because of the economy,” said Sher Mohammad, 60. “We aren’t thinking about bombs now, but we’re dying day by day because we don’t have food to eat.”