Afghanistan’s coal mines depend on youngster labor : NPR

NAHRIN, Afghanistan — On weekdays, when most youngsters world wide are at college, 12-year-old Mansour is in the midst of a grueling shift on the coal mines.

Deep inside a tunnel carved into the facet of a blackened mountain, the younger boy waits underneath the flickering glow of his headlamp as older boys pry coal out of the earth by pickaxe and hand, whereas others shovel the piles into sacks strapped onto the backs of donkeys.

From there, it’s Mansour’s job — from daybreak till nightfall — to steer the coal-laden donkeys out of a labyrinth of crumbling tunnels down the mountain on this distant a part of Baghlan province, 180 miles north of Kabul. Right here, the so-called black gold is bagged and loaded onto vans, principally sure for neighboring nations.

“My household despatched me to work right here final yr,” he says. He is carrying no protecting tools — no masks, no goggles, only a pair of low-cost rubber sneakers he is sliced open to let his toes breathe, with toes blackened by coal mud peeking out. “What they pay me goes on to my household.”

The boys earn between $3 and $8 for a day’s work, relying on how strenuous their assigned duties are. Digging for coal, lining the brittle tunnel partitions with rickety wooden frames, loading the vans all earn prime greenback on the government-run mines.

They’re enviable wages in merciless financial instances.

Even in rich, developed nations with superior applied sciences, heavy equipment and available protecting tools, mining could be a harmful and generally lethal job. In Afghanistan, the place a lot of the coal is mined by hand, each descent into the bowels of this mountain is a big gamble.

A dozen staff have been killed in January, after one of many mines collapsed as a result of heavy rains. Nobody, from the younger miners to mining officers and labor and humanitarian teams, appears to know or is keen to say whether or not any of those that perished have been children. However the accident was sufficient to encourage a brand new ritual among the many boys working right here.

At any time when one among them emerges from the tunnels, the others greet him with a tune from a toy flute the boys go round throughout breaks — a humble celebration for making it out alive.

Coal manufacturing is rising — and so is the variety of youngster miners

Afghanistan’s state-run coal business is a uncommon vibrant spot in an in any other case shattered financial system.

When the Taliban returned to energy final yr, donor governments and worldwide establishments withdrew billions of {dollars} in help, triggering an financial and humanitarian disaster. Months of isolation prompted the cash-strapped Taliban authorities to ramp up manufacturing and export of one among Afghanistan’s extra ample commodities to nations like Pakistan to assist resuscitate the financial system, which contracted final yr by about 20%.

Coal exports elevated by almost as a lot within the first yr underneath Taliban rule, in accordance with the Ministry of Finance. Roughly 10,000 tons of coal are exported day by day, in accordance with the Ministry of Mining and Petroleum.

The Taliban authorities additionally obtained an sudden increase earlier this yr from Russia’s battle in Ukraine. Disruptions in fuel and provides despatched world demand for coal surging, bringing consumption to ranges not seen since a decade in the past, in accordance with the Worldwide Power Company.

This cleared the way in which for the Taliban to considerably enhance duties on exports in addition to the value of coal — “from what was $90 per ton underneath the earlier authorities to $200 now,” says Esmatullah Burhan, spokesman for the Ministry of Mining and Petroleum.

Not solely does the federal government have plans to construct new roads for higher entry to China’s markets, it is also wanting to welcome international funding within the mining sector — for coal and particularly uncommon minerals and metals, together with lithium.

“Our doorways are open, particularly for American and European firms,” says Burhan. “The one situation we’ve got: If a international firm comes right here, they should have an Afghan partnership.”

The funding has been sluggish to materialize. However with greater than 90% of Afghans missing sufficient to eat, many impoverished households are seizing the chance to ship their kids to work within the one business that may nonetheless provide jobs and a gradual wage. Kids are extra simply in a position than grown males to squeeze into the slim mining tunnels and shafts.

“Enterprise is superb, it is rising,” says Jawad Jahed, the top engineer who began managing the coal mines underneath the earlier authorities.

Aside from the rise in manufacturing, the one change he is seen because the return of the Taliban is the variety of minors who’ve been despatched to work.

“Youngsters underneath 18 aren’t purported to work right here, however our individuals are so poor, households haven’t any alternative,” he says. “They ship their kids to work as a result of they want the cash and it is exhausting for us to show them away.”

The Taliban say they wish to remove youngster labor, however it’s risen since they returned to energy

In Kabul, an outdated banner from the earlier authorities declaring a mission to finish youngster labor nonetheless hangs within the entrance of the Ministry of Labor.

Ramin Behzad, the Worldwide Labor Group’s Kabul-based senior coordinator for Afghanistan, says it is a mission the Taliban authorities has inherited and now helps, though the group has a previous file of recruiting youngster troopers.

“They spotlight that the elimination of kid labor is essential they usually wish to proceed to work on that,” says Behzad. “It is come up in all of the conversations we have had.”

However underneath each the present and former authorities, motion and enforcement have lagged. A U.S. Labor Division report printed in 2021 discovered that “Afghanistan made no development in efforts to remove the worst types of youngster labor.”

Whereas it is unclear what number of kids at the moment work in Afghanistan’s mining business, what is understood is that youngster labor general has grown considerably within the final yr. A survey of greater than 10,000 households by a coalition of support organizations discovered that the variety of Afghan households with male heads of family reporting not less than one youngster working jumped from 13% in 2021 to 21% in 2022. For households with feminine heads of family, these figures elevated from 19% in 2021 to 29% in 2022.

Some kids have ended up on the coal mines, working across the clock with no safety or promise for a unique life forward.

A number of of the older boys on the Baghlan mine say they’ve come to phrases with no matter destiny awaits them.

“It’s the work of future,” says 17-year-old Abdul Salaam. He is been working right here since he was 9. “Whether it is my future to die in these mines, then so be it.”

However that future has already began taking form.

On the finish of a 10-hour work day, a couple of younger miners sit on a ledge overlooking this huge, blackened panorama. One in every of them pulls out the flute.

He performs a mellifluous trill for a couple of seconds, then stops.

“Keep it up!” the opposite boys urge him, however he cannot.

He does not have the breath to go on.