Urvashi J Kumar
Research Officer, IPCS
e-mail: urvashi@ipcs.org
Afghanistan’s Taliban have poppy’s lucre to fund their operations and their Pakistani brethren have found a friend in emeralds. Swat’s emeralds, some of the finest available in the world and next only to the ones mined in Colombia, are now under the control of the Taliban, who in a span of four months have occupied two of the largest mines in Swat and in a remarkable show of efficiency, have already started round-the-clock mining operations where workers share up to 50 per cent of their daily find with the Taliban. Most emeralds mined here range from just under a carat to over five and fetch anywhere between US$1,000 to over US$100,000 in the international market. What funds like these can do for the coffers of the Taliban is not very hard to imagine. What is hard to imagine is the complete absence of alarm and state inaction over these rich mines being taken over by the Taliban.
Interestingly and rather disturbingly, Pakistan press coverage on the issue has remained low, just like it had been when the Taliban meticulously defaced a 23-foot high statue of a meditating Buddha, dating back to the 7th century, carved in a rock at a Jehanabad village in October 2007 which led to an international outrage. Swat’s emerald mines are seemingly the latest victims of state apathy and media disregard.
Reports of the Fiza Ghat mines falling in the hands of the Taliban first appeared in the international press almost four months after the takeover and were subsequently published by the Pakistan press as a truncated news item 48 hours later. The Gojaro Killay Amnavi mine takeover was reported by an Indian news agency and found space in Pakistan’s press, exactly as it was published, over 24 hours after the first report; a clear indication of the seriousness or the lack of it attached to these events in Pakistan.
It was about four months ago that the Taliban reportedly took control of the mines in Fiza Ghat, said to hold largest deposits of emeralds in South Asia along with the Panjshir mines in Afghanistan, located in the mountains that ring Mingora. These mines, said to have been under government control before violent unrest swept through the Swat Valley, have in their heyday between 1978 and 1988 yielded a quarter of a million carats of emeralds. The second takeover took place on 1 April, when over 70 armed militants stormed into the mine at Gojaro Killay Amnavi area in Shangla district which had been leased by the Pakistan government to the US firm Luxury International for Rs.40 million a year but the firm discontinued their work at the mine when violence in Swat saw an upsurge. Within a day armed militants reportedly started mining operations after employing about a 1000 local people as workers and have also built trenches and bunkers.
According to reports, the costs of mining at both locations are being split equally between the workers and the Taliban who run the operations based on Sharia; which translates into clear threat of amputation for theft and harsh punishment for breaking any other rules laid down by the Taliban. This in effect means that only those with strong Taliban sympathies have been allowed to work in the mines, giving the lie to the Taliban argument that the mines have been reopened to ensure employment and a better life for the local people.
These mines now represent another Pandora’s Box of troubles for Islamabad. Not only does it lose out on revenue that is now in the hands of the Taliban for financing their operations, the emeralds now being mined here are nothing less than conflict emeralds and should ideally come under sharp international scrutiny which can only mean more pressure on the Pakistan political top brass.
Africa’s conflict diamonds resulted in an international campaign that resulted in the Kimberly Process, initiated in May 2000 and finalised in November 2002, proving that consensus can be reached and action taken within a short span of time if the will to do so exists. The vast misuse of precious metals and stones to fund conflict subsequently led to the Madison Dialogue, launched in August 2006 that aims at promoting verified sources of precious metal, diamonds and other minerals.
Members of the international community and even the Pakistan government have the means and know the ways to take action against what can possibly be as troublesome a thorn as the illegal poppy trade of Afghanistan. Exploitation of these mines and their fine emeralds to fund bloodshed is not a far-fetched plausibility but a reality that needs to be faced and for this the Pakistan media, civil society, government and international community need to come together in a concerted effort to save Swat’s fine emeralds from the tinge of blood.
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