Afghanistan’s Chinarak Coal Mine — Dust-suffocated Mir Abdul Hadi emerged from a narrow mine with a bag of coal hanging heavily on his back and his skin dyed black. For hours he hacked coal in a dark tunnel and was afraid it might collapse to him, and now he’s relieved to return to Nikko.
Hadi, a 29-year-old former government soldier, was among the thousands who flocked to the infamous and dangerous mines of northern Afghanistan after the Taliban seized power last year.
The breakthrough job provides a few dollars a day, just enough to buy bread and tea for his family to survive. But it’s expensive. Since his arrival in October, three mines on the mountain have collapsed. The recent collapse last month killed 10 miners, all of whom were suffocated in mining tunnels for several days.
“That night I wanted to quit this job and never return to the mine,” Hadi said. “But then I went home and saw nothing to eat.”
For more than six months, Afghanistan has been hit by a catastrophic economic crisis that has wiped out income, soared food prices and starved millions of people. Now desperate to achieve their goals, many Afghans are likely to become increasingly dramatic in length to survive.
Rural families pay back their debts to children who cannot afford to feed and sell them to wealthy families and local bosses. In the northwestern city of Herat, men sell their kidneys in the black market. And along the Iranian border, thousands of people looking for work abroad have endured brutal beatings by security forces.
In the mountainous region of northern Afghanistan, the Chinarak mine in Baghlan, three times as many men have been working in recent months as before the Taliban hijacked, according to mine operators. They are former soldiers, police officers, NGO workers and shopkeepers among the millions of people who have lost their income in recent months.
For decades, informal mining operations have been a dangerous option for poor villagers eager to earn a few dollars a day. According to the village elder, about 200 people have died in the mine since the discovery of coal here 50 years ago.
Report from Afghanistan
But mines have become even more deadly since the Taliban took power, miners say. Unlike the previous administration, the Taliban does not provide engineers to monitor toxic gas or lumber to support hundreds of yards of tunnels. The result is a deadly combination of structurally unhealthy mines and inexperienced miners who are unable to find signs of danger.
“Economic conditions are forcing everyone here, but they know they can die. One miner, Buzz Mohammad, who has been working in the mine since the age of 15. “It’s more dangerous than ever,” said 35.
Work on Chinarack begins at dawn. The taste of smoke from the wood stove floats in the air, and the morning mist dyes the hills into a cloud-like haze. With a shovel and a pickaxe, miners descend the winding roads of reddish clay to a coal-filled mountain.
From the foot of the mountain, a dark earth path (a sign of coal) zigzags across its face like a treasure map. The man turns on his headlamps, sneaks into the mine openings scattered on the hillside, and crawls through an underground tunnel that stretches up to 300 yards.
Zahir Kajimi, 33, sitting on a rock outside a mine, said he had barely been able to move since the first day at the mine in January. Kajimi, a trade tailor, worked at a garment store at the age of 13 and decided to save money to marry her favorite girl. Ten years later, he got married and opened his own tailor shop. He said he was happy at that time.
However, after the Taliban seized power, his once stable flow of customers was exhausted, and soon his savings were exhausted. So he took his brother donkey to the mine and joined a swarm of sweaty men with black dust on their skin. Twelve hours later, he hurt his back and cursed himself for getting married and went home. If you were single, you didn’t have to make much money to feed your four mouths at home.
“”If you come here and work, you can get some money to buy food for your family. Otherwise, they would be hungry, “said Kajimi. “There is no other way to go. We have to work.”
Standing outside the mine entrance, Hadi, a former soldier, wiped his shirt and saw an unfriendly palm. His father, a farmer, always rebuked him to go to school as a kid, dreaming that one day his son would become a district governor or commander. For a while, Mr. Hadi wanted him to be able to do that too. At the age of 18, he joined the Afghan army and earned a decent salary.
However, after the collapse of the previous administration, he was unemployed and went bankrupt, selling a large carpet in the living room and buying a donkey that he could use to bring to the mine. In a dark tunnel, he overcomes the pain of piercing his back and his arms, slamming the pickaxe against the coal wall over and over again.
Labor is tough, he says, but what’s worse is fear. Fear of suffocation with poisonous gas, fear of rocks hitting the back being the beginning of collapse, fear of being buried alive without hope of rescue.
“Every time I enter the tunnel, I’m afraid,” Hadi said. “Whenever I choose coal, I always tell myself that this is the last thing I have today.”
By noon in Chinarak, the mine is crowded with hundreds of miners. Some are in their 60s and some are 10 years old. When they work, the sound echoes in the mountains. Coal hiss poured from a bag. A cry from children soothing a donkey carrying a large amount of coal down the mountain.
Coal is unloaded on a truck and follows a rough road to the Taliban checkpoint. The Taliban checkpoint is a one-story building overlooking a large riverbed and snow-covered mountain peaks. The building was once owned by a businessman who operated these mines under an arrangement like the Mafia with the previous government. At that time, coal trucks leaving the mine were first taxed by those companies and then again by the Taliban. The Taliban have collected informal taxes to fund their rebellion.
Taliban officials say they have “nationalized” the mining industry by expelling these influential people since they seized power. Avid Atura, the mine manager in the Taliban’s Nahaline district, said he is collecting $ 16,000 to $ 30,000 daily in tax revenues from the Chinarak mine. This is a modest but welcome source of income for underfunded governments.
Still, miners are dissatisfied with the lack of government support. For months, they say their petition to local governments to provide engineers, oxygen cylinders, toxic gas meters, and wooden support beams could not be answered. Some people who run mines informally bought their own timber. You can get it by reducing the daily salary of miners by about 40%. Others have forgotten it and forced miners to dig narrow tunnels that are difficult and structurally unhealthy.
The collapse of the mine last month symbolizes increased risk. Miners said inexperienced workers had extended the tunnel too much and had no beams to support it. For two days, almost everyone in the mountains helped break through the walls of the Earth, trapping nearly 20 miners, driven by the muffled screams of men asking for help. Seventeen hours later, their voices faded as the oxygen ran out. No one did it.
Their fate afflicts men who have to keep returning.
Taza, 30, who came out of the mine entrance, slammed a bag of coal into the ground and coughed loudly. A police officer under the previous administration and a six-year-old father, he started working in the mine in September, and there were many horrifying stories he grew up there …
