In a chilly hall in Afghanistan, piles of freshly mined green emeralds sparkled under bright table lamps as bearded gem dealers inspected them for purity and quality.
The auctioneer asked for bids for the first lot, which weighed 256 cards. Thus began the Taliban’s weekly auction of precious stones.
The sales, in eastern Afghanistan’s emerald-rich Panjshir province, are part of an effort by the Taliban government to cash in on the country’s vast ore and gemstone potential.
Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban say they have signed contracts with scores of investors to mine for precious stones, gold, copper, iron and other valuable minerals, such as chromite. These buried treasures offer a potentially lucrative lifeline to a weak economy.
China has led the way in investment under its Belt and Road Initiative, an aggressive push to expand Chinese influence around the world. Russian and Iranian investors have also signed mining licenses, filling the void left by a chaotic US withdrawal in 2021.
The US government estimates that at least $1 trillion in mineral deposits lie beneath Afghanistan’s rugged landscape. The country is rich in copper, gold, zinc, chromite, cobalt, lithium and industrial minerals, as well as precious and semi-precious stones such as emeralds, rubies, sapphires, garnets and lapis lazuli.
Afghanistan also has a wealth of rare earth elements, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a US agency which will close this year. Such elements are used in a number of modern technologies, such as mobile phones, laptops and electric vehicles.
The Taliban are trying to do what the United States was unable to do during its 20-year occupation. The U.S. government has spent nearly $1 billion developing mining projects in Afghanistan, but “tangible progress has been negligible and not sustained,” concluded the special inspector general in report published in January 2023.
Many obstacles from that time may still apply: lack of security, poor infrastructure, corruption, inconsistent government policies and regulations, and frequent changes in government officials.
The Taliban are trying anyway, desperate for revenue after the sudden loss of aid to Afghanistan with the US withdrawal.
During the war, the United States provided a rough 143 billion dollars in development and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, supporting a US-aligned government. From 2021, the United States gives 2.6 billion dollars in such aid, delivered by a private contractor in bundles of money on flights to Kabul, according to the special inspector general.
Afghanistan’s economy has shrunk by 26 percent in the past two years, the World Bank reported in April. A sharp drop in international aid, the bank said, has left Afghanistan “without any internal drivers of growth”.
On top of that, the Taliban prohibition of opium production cost farmers 1.3 billion dollars in income, or 8 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, the World Bank announced. The ban has led to a loss 450,000 jobs and reduced the area under poppy cultivation by 95 percent, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime reported.
Mining could help replace the poppy as a stable source of income. Turkey and Qatar, along with China and Iran, invested in iron, copper, gold and cement mines. Uzbek companies have signed mining contracts oil in northern Afghanistan, according to the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.
The Taliban already collect tax from the sale of emeralds.
Under the previous government, the emerald trade was a corrupt free-for-all. Warlords and politically connected dealers dominated trade, and tax collection was haphazard at best.
But as the Taliban government instituted weekly emerald auctions, it controlled and taxed all sales. Merchants who buy emeralds at auctions do not receive the gems until they pay a 10 percent tax.
The Taliban also tax other precious stones, including rubies and sapphires.
Rahmatullah Sharifi, a gem dealer who bought two sets of emeralds at the auction, said he did not mind paying the tax.
“The government needs money to develop the country,” he said. “The question is: Will they spend it on helping the Afghan people?”
In Panjshir province, where most of Afghanistan’s emeralds are mined, the government has issued 560 emerald licenses to foreign and Afghan investors, said Hamayoon Afghan, a spokesman for the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum.
The ministry also issued permits for ruby mining in Panjshir and Kabul provinces, Mr. Afghan, and plans are underway for emerald and gemstone licenses in three other provinces.
But many of the new permits are for mines that have yet to open. And many existing mines are hampered by poor infrastructure and a lack of experienced engineers and technical experts.
Mr. Afghan acknowledged that the country needs more engineers and technicians. Foreign investors bring in experienced experts, he said, and they are required to employ Afghans under licenses and teach them technical and engineering skills.
Most of the emeralds bought at the weekly auctions are resold to foreign buyers, traders said. Among the merchants buying emeralds one day in November was Haji Ghazi, who sells the precious stones from a tiny cell-like room inside a darkened chain store in central Kabul.
Two days after the auction, Mr. Ghazi locked the door of his shop, closed the curtains and unlocked the ancient safe. He pulled out several caches of emeralds and rubies, each wrapped in a plain white sheet of paper.
Mr. Ghazi’s largest emerald set was worth perhaps $250,000, he said. He estimated that a much smaller cache of bright rubies was worth $20,000.
In the corner is Mr. Ghazi stacked heavy pieces of rock with thick blue veins of lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone. Much of the world’s supply of lapis is mined in northern Afghanistan.
Mr. Ghazi sells most of his gemstones to customers in the United Arab Emirates, India, Iran and Thailand. He said he missed the days, before the Taliban took over, when the occupation brought eager buyers from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Australia.
In the shop next door, Azizullah Niyazi turned on a table lamp to illuminate the collection of lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires and emeralds arranged on a small table. He was still waiting for his first customer of the morning.
Mr Niyazi said sales were not as strong as during the 13 years he was allowed to sell gemstones one day a week from a small shop at a US coalition military base. His earnings soared as soldiers and civilian entrepreneurs lined up to buy the gemstones every Friday — and rarely haggled over prices, unlike Afghan or Arab buyers, he said. He paid a 7 percent tax on his profits, he said.
These days, Mr. Niyazi has to travel to increase sales: he said he opened a store in China, where he visited regularly. In Kabul, he sells to customers from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, as well as from Pakistan, Iran and several other countries.
He has several customers from Afghanistan.
“There aren’t many Afghans who can afford to pay $1,000 or $2,000 for a stone to make a ring,” he said with a shrug.
Safiullah PadshahYaqoob Akbary and Najim Rahim contributed reporting.
