Afghan miners dream of fortune in emerald mountains

By Robert Birsel

KAMAR SAFAID, Afghanistan (Reuters) - An explosion booms across the Afghan mountains, bouncing off jagged ridges and setting a clatter of stones off down a slope. But this is not a Taliban bomb or a NATO strike.

Miners in the peaks above the Panjshir Valley are blowing their way into the rocks, hunting for emeralds that could make them a fortune in one of the world's poorest countries.

"If you're lucky, you could find something that would set you up for the rest of your life," Mohammad Noor, a lean miner with a whispy beard, said at his camp on a ledge above a snowfield in the Hindu Kush mountains.

Hundreds of men like Noor are searching for the green stones locked in seams of rock in the Panjshir Valley northeast of Kabul, the old stronghold of the anti-Soviet and anti-Taliban hero Ahmed Shah Masood, a man still widely revered.

Discovered by Russian geologists in the 1970s, the emeralds are found at high elevations above the valley but only on its east side. No one seems to know why.

With four brothers and only a small piece of land to share, Noor began mining 18 years ago. He went off to fight in the war and to work in Kabul but now he's back, dreaming of striking it rich: "That's what all the fuss is about."

TREASURE HUNT

Independent operators have hunted the green stones through years of war, first against the Soviets and later the Taliban.