In biting cold at over 3000 m altitude, Mohammad Israr Muradi scrapes the ground with a little water and an improvised sieve. If he is lucky, the former policeman will find a few emerald crumbs which he will resell for a handful of Afghanis.
Like him, there are dozens of them rushing every time a trolley filled with rocks emerges from one of the countless wells sinking into this mountain in the Mikeni valley, in the Panshir, about 130 kilometers northeast of Kabul.
“The emeralds that we find, we sell them for 50, 80, 100 or 150 afghanis [0,65 à 1,90 dollar canadien au taux actuel] Calmly explains 25-year-old Mohammad Israr Muradi, who until six months ago was the head of the counter-terrorism police in the neighboring district of Paryan.
Like many former police officers and former soldiers, he found himself suddenly out of work when the Taliban came to power in mid-August, after the fall of the former US-backed government.
Mohammad Israr Muradi then invested a few thousand Afghanis and tried his luck as an itinerant seller of second-hand clothes in Kabul. But “it didn’t work” and, without money, he was “forced” to go to the mine, where, like all newcomers, he is content with the most thankless and the least well paid work.
Explosively dug
While the presence of emeralds in the Panshir has been known for millennia, serious exploitation only dates from the 1970s and remains largely artisanal, although the quality and purity of the stone is often compared to that of Colombian emerald. , the most sought after on the planet.
At Mikeni, as in the other mines in the region, each shaft is jointly owned by several dozen associates and operated by a team of around ten miners.
The wells, which sometimes sink more than 500 m, are dug with explosives. To access the site from the bottom of the valley, you have to climb along a track traced in the snow, crisscrossed by horses and donkeys bringing the necessary, from food to the motors of the electric generators.
It was this difficulty of access, among other things, that convinced Gulabuddin Mohammadi to work at Mikeni. Of the Afghan army, where he served for seven years, he recalls that it was “a very good job paid 35,000 Afghanis (445 Canadian dollars at the current rate) per month.
At the mine, in comparison, “we are treated like cattle,” sighs the 27-year-old man. “We don’t have a real place to live, we are in tents,” he explains. We have no water, no fire, no clinic if we get sick. »
But Gulabuddin Mohammadi had no choice: “I have the responsibility to feed the 25 members of my family. »
According to him, many other former soldiers or police went to work there, not knowing very well what the attitude of the new masters of the country was going to be towards them.
Upon their return to power, they decreed a general amnesty, but several NGOs have since reported the execution or disappearance of former members of the security forces.
Hand inspection
The Taliban rode well once to the mine. It was shortly after they came to power, recalls Mohammad Riyah Nizami, a senior Kabul police officer who worked in Mikeni. “They gathered the workers in their rooms”, examined their hands to identify the newcomers and embarked about twenty who would later be released, he says, explaining that the Taliban were looking for “fighters”.
A deep and difficult-to-access valley, the Panshir is a historic bastion of resistance against the Taliban and the last region to fall under the total control of the Islamists, at the end of September.
Mohammad Riyah Nizami also remembers his agonizing trip from Kabul to Panshir, his “fear of misunderstanding” at the many roadblocks where travelers’ phones were inspected.
He was lucky: his job, found by a friend, was to push the cart. A little more stability, 400 afghanis a day, and a small bonus if he strikes a vein. But as soon as he was able, called back to Kabul by the Taliban needing his computer knowledge, he returned.
What Mohammad Israr Muradi is also ready to do, given that the Taliban have said they want to rebuild the Afghan army and police. For years, his job was to go after the Taliban, but today, he says, “if they call me back to work, I go.”