In a chilly auditorium in Afghanistan, piles of freshly mined green emeralds gleamed under bright table lamps as bearded gem dealers inspected them for purity and quality.
An auctioneer asked for bids on the first lot, which weighed 256 carats. And with that, the Taliban's weekly gem auction continued.
The sales in eastern Afghanistan's emerald-rich Panjshir province are part of the Taliban government's efforts to cash in on the country's vast mineral and gemstone potential.
Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban say they have signed deals with many investors to mine gemstones, gold, copper, iron and other valuable minerals such as chromite. These buried treasures offer a potentially lucrative lifeline to a weak economy.
China is leading investments under the Belt and Road initiative, an aggressive effort to spread Chinese influence around the world. Russian and Iranian investors also signed mining licenses in 2021, filling the void left by the chaotic US withdrawal.
The U.S. government estimates that Afghanistan's rugged landscape holds at least $1 trillion in mineral deposits. The country is rich in copper, gold, zinc, chromite, cobalt, lithium and industrial minerals, as well as precious and semi-precious gems such as emeralds, rubies, sapphires, garnets and lapis lazuli.
According to the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a US agency, Afghanistan also has rare earth elements. will be closed this year. Such elements are used in a number of modern technologies such as mobile phones, laptops and electric cars.
The Taliban is trying to do what the US failed to do during its 20-year occupation. The US government has spent nearly a billion dollars to develop mining projects in Afghanistan, but “moral progress has been negligible and unsustainable,” the special inspector general concluded. report Published in January 2023.
Many of the obstacles from that time still apply: lack of security, poor infrastructure, corruption, inconsistent government policies and regulations, and frequent changes in government officials.
The Taliban, however, are desperate for revenue after Afghanistan lost emergency aid with the US withdrawal.
During the war, the US provided approx 143 billion dollars to support the US-aligned government in development and humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. Since 2021, the United States has given 2.6 billion dollars in such aid delivered by a private contractor in shrink-wrapped packets on flights to Kabul, according to the special inspector general.
According to the World Bank in April, Afghanistan's economy has shrunk by 26 percent in the last two years. A sharp drop in international aid has left Afghanistan “without any domestic growth engine,” according to the bank.
On top of that, the Taliban prohibition of opium production spent on farmers 1.3 billion dollars According to the World Bank, this is 8 percent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. The prohibition caused the loss 450 thousand jobs According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, poppy cultivation has decreased by 95 percent.
Mining can help replace poppies as a steady income stream. Turkey and Qatar, along with China and Iran, have invested in iron, copper, gold and cement mines. Uzbekistan has signed contracts to withdraw companies oil In northern Afghanistan, according to the Ministry of Mines and Oil.
The Taliban already collects taxes on the sale of emeralds.
Under the previous government, the emerald trade was a free-for-all. Warlords and politically connected dealers dominated trade, and tax collection was haphazard at best.
But the Taliban government controlled and taxed all sales as it instituted weekly emerald auctions. Dealers who buy emeralds at auctions do not buy the gems until they pay a 10 percent fee.
The Taliban also impose taxes on other precious stones, including rubies and sapphires.
Rahmatullah Sharifi, a gem dealer who bought two sets of emeralds at the auction, said that he had no objection to paying the tax.
“The government needs money to develop the country,” he said. “The question is: Will they spend this money on helping the Afghan people?”
In Panjshir province, where most Afghan 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 Oil.
The ministry has also issued licenses for ruby mining in Panjshir and Kabul provinces, Mr. Afghan said, and plans are underway for emerald and gemstone licenses in three more provinces.
However, many new licenses are for mines that have not yet been opened. And many existing mines are bogged down by poor infrastructure and a lack of experienced engineers and technical experts.
Mr. Afghan admitted that the country needs more engineers and technicians. According to him, foreign investors bring experienced experts and they have to hire Afghans under license and train them in technical and engineering skills.
Dealers said that most of the emeralds bought at the weekly auctions are resold to foreign buyers. Among the dealers buying emeralds one November day was Haji Ghazi, who sold gems from a small cell-like room in a dark shop in central Kabul.
Two days after the auction, Mr. Ghazi bolted the door to his shop, closed the curtains and unlocked the ancient safe. He picked up several emerald and ruby containers, each wrapped in plain white paper.
Mr. Ghazi's largest emerald set was worth perhaps $250,000, he said. He estimated that a smaller brilliant ruby was worth $20,000.
In one corner, Mr. Ghazi had piled heavy pieces of rock with thick blue veins of lapis lazuli, a semi-precious stone. Most of the world's lapis reserves are mined in northern Afghanistan.
Mr Ghazi sells most of his gems to buyers from the United Arab Emirates, India, Iran and Thailand. He said he misses the days before the Taliban takeover, when the occupation brought eager buyers from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Australia.
In a nearby shop, Azizullah Niyazi turned on a table lamp to illuminate a collection of lapis lazuli, rubies, sapphires and emeralds scattered on a small table. He was still waiting for his first customer of the morning.
Mr Niyazi said sales had not been strong in the 13 years he had been allowed to sell gems from a small shop on a US coalition military base one day a week. Soldiers and civilian contractors lined up every Friday to buy gems, he said, and unlike Afghan or Arab buyers, they rarely haggled over prices. He said that he pays 7 percent tax on his earnings.
These days Mr. Niyazi has to travel to increase sales: he said that he has opened a store in China, he goes there regularly. In Kabul, he sells to buyers from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, as well as Pakistan, Iran and several other countries.
He has few Afghan customers.
“A lot of Afghans can't afford to pay $1,000 or $2,000 for a stone to make a ring,” he said with a shrug.
Safiullah KingYaqoob Akbary and Najim Rahim contributed to the report.