Afghanistan's Gold Rush Brings Money but Ruins Land and Lives

In Afghanistan's Badakhshan province, dozens of excavators dig day and night for gold in mountains once used for farming and grazing. Thousands of miners now work the Shiwa area, about 50 kilometres from provincial capital Faizabad, extracting gold for investors nationwide.

While some residents profited early on, many now regret it. Farmer Muhammad Amin(74) said the once-clean river has dried up and grass along its banks is gone also making farming impossible. He can now feed only 15 goats to down from 40 after leasing his land to a mining firm for $20,000 receiving only half the payment and no promised land restoration.

The Taliban government has expanded mining since taking power five years ago, registering nearly 700 companies in Badakhshan alone. The World Bank reports hundreds of new mining contracts since 2021 with the sector growing 25–30% annually.

Jobs remain scarce nationwide with drawing workers from across Afghanistan. Many earn between 10,000 and 25,000 Afghanis monthly operating machinery or loading trucks modest but steady income in a struggling economy.

Officials say mining is now taxed and monitored also unlike the unregulated extraction of previous decades which researchers say mainly benefited insurgents and corrupt officials. Authorities have closed roughly 225 damaging sites including one where a bridge, shops and a school were buried under flood debris.

Some areas remain untouched where herders like Fazil hope mining stays away and saying the industry benefits only "the powerful people" not local communities.