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 photograph taken on July 28, 2026 shows an Afghan miner pouring water over a sieve to separate dirt and stones from gold nuggets at Gulak-Dara valley in Shiwa area of Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province. — AFP With tears in his eyes, Amin said the grass along t...
As dark plumes billow from overhead smokestacks, brickmakers at a kiln in Sheikhupura district crush coal through small holes beneath their feet into the fiery chambers below. Workers already have to endure extreme conditions at traditional brick kilns, which burn at over 1,000°C and demand constant monitoring to ensure they remain hot enough. But they are becoming almost unbearable as climate change makes summers even hotter in a country already used to temperatures well over 40°C . A man works at a brick kiln in Sheikhupura, Punjab on July 20, 2026. —AFP Abid Hussain, a 35-year-old labourer whose clothes were covered in dark soot, told AFP the work felt like being trapped between fire below and, increasingly, above. He is one of hundreds of thousands working in an industry that labour advocates say is poorly regulated, badly paid and becoming more dangerous as temperatures rise. “The heat is undoubtedly extreme but when you think about the financial ...