Afghanistan's gold rush upends lives, landscapes in northeastern Badakhshan province

In Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province, dozens of excavators operate day and night to extract gold from the mountains where villagers and their livestock once roamed. Thousands of miners are deployed across the Shiwa area, about 50 kilometres northeast of the provincial capital Faizabad, extracting gold for investors nationwide. Some residents in the area have profited from the gold rush, only to regret it later, such as farmer Muhammad Amin. “Before, the river was deep, the water was clean,” said the 74-year-old from Pul-i-Ziri Ban valley. Since mining got under way, “the water of the river is not drinkable; you can’t even wash your body with that water”, he told AFP. This…