Former police, soldiers eke out living in Afghanistan's grueling emerald mines

PANJSHIR -- In the bone-splitting chill of the Afghan mountains, Mohammad Israr Muradi digs through coarse earth spilling from the open mouth of an emerald mine.

With an improvised sieve and a few splashes of water, the former police officer scours a slag heap for fragments of the green gemstone, swarmed by dozens of others vying for the same prize.

Measured in a dusty open palm, the emerald pieces, pried from the bowels of the Mikeni Valley 130km northeast of Kabul, are no bigger than peanuts.

But they are just about enough to assuage total poverty in a nation mired in humanitarian catastrophe.

"The emeralds we find, we sell them for 50, 80, 100 or 150 AFN [between 50 cents and $1.50]," Muradi said.

He was once chief of counter-terrorism police in neighbouring Paryan district.

Following the collapse of the Afghan government in August, Muradi initially tried his hand as a secondhand clothing salesman on the streets of Kabul.

"It didn't work out," said the 25-year-old.

Without any source of income, he said he was forced to head for the hills.

Glimmer of hope

Echoing booms roll across the valley, 3,000 metres above sea level, as blasting teams carve out shafts crisscrossing the innards of the mountains.

Locals have known about the presence of emeralds in Panjshir province for thousands of years.

Systematic mining began only in the 1970s and remains largely artisanal, but the gems found here are compared to Colombian emeralds, the most sought after on the planet.

Each shaft is co-owned by several dozen partners and manned by a team of about 10 miners, digging lengths of more than 500 metres in search of glimmering veins of quartz.

But the last workers to arrive at the camp are relegated to the thankless, tedious and low-paid work at the mine entrances, where rickety trolleys tip out mounds of rubble.

It is a far cry from the decent job 27-year-old Gulabuddin Mohammadi previously had earning 35,000 AFN ($340) per month in the now defunct army.

The mines are a two-hour hike from the bottom of the valley up precarious paths of grimy ice, cresting at a mud hut village supplied by donkeys and powered by petrol generators.

But its far-flung location is part of the attraction for Mohammadi, a seven-year veteran who was looking for sanctuary when the previous government collapsed in August.

Many former soldiers and police officers have come here to eke out a living while evading potential reprisals for their roles in the previous Afghan government.

Human rights groups say more than 100 people from those groups have been executed or "disappeared" since the fall of the Afghan government.

But for the moment, the squalor of the camp seems like the greatest injustice on Mohammadi's mind.

"We are treated like cattle," he sighed. "We have no real place to live; we are in tents. We have no water, no fire, no clinic if we get sick."

The withered Afghan economy means he has little choice of how else to feed his 25 family members.

China eyes untapped riches

Afghanistan has long struggled to tap its vast deposits because of wars and poor infrastructure.

The country's resources include bauxite, copper, iron ore, lithium and rare earth elements, according to a January 2021 report by the US Geological Survey (USGS).

Prices for copper, which is needed to make power cables, exceed $9,000 per tonne.

Lithium is a crucial element to make electric car batteries, solar panels and wind farms, and the global demand for it is expected to grow by more than 40-fold by 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

Afghanistan is also home to rare earth elements that are used in the clean energy sector: neodymium, praseodymium and dysprosium.

The country's untapped mineral riches have been estimated at $1 trillion by the USGS, though Afghan officials have estimated the value to be three times higher.

The country also mines for talc, marble, coal and iron.

Although Afghanistan has been more successful digging for precious and semi-precious stones such as emeralds, rubies, tourmaline and lapis lazuli, the business is plagued with illegal smuggling to Pakistan and political instability.

While most countries have shied away from investing in Afghanistan after the fall of the government last August, China has signalled its readiness to overlook political instability for a chance to access the country's untapped riches.

Beijing said it was ready to have "friendly and co-operative" relations with Afghanistan after the previous government fell on August 15.

The Chinese "don't condition their business deals on democratic principles", Guillaume Pitron, author of the book "The Rare Metals War", told AFP last August.

But there is no guarantee that Afghanistan will become a mineral El Dorado, he warned. "For that, you need a very stable political climate."

It can take as long as 20 years between the discovery of a mineral deposit and the start of mining operations, Pitron said.

"No company will want to invest if there is no stable political and legal system."

"China has started a dangerous game in Afghanistan," Tamim Nuristani, the former governor of Nuristan and a US-based political analyst, told Salaam Times in January.

"By exerting its dominance over Afghanistan, China plans to build an economic and political corridor through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia and the Middle East," he said.