Emerald mining resumes in Pakistan

(20 Jun 2010)
STORYLINE:
An area of astounding natural beauty, the Swat Valley in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan is located around 160 km/100 miles from the capital Islamabad.
A year after the Pakistani army ousted militants from these peaks, emerald miners are once again working in the Shamozai mountaintop mine once used by insurgents as a base.
It's a sign of progress in a region struggling to recover from conflict.
Dusty and exhausted, miners emerge from tunnels, blinking in the sunlight of this formerly Taliban-controlled valley.
Gem mining, along with marble and granite quarrying, are some of the only industries save smuggling in many parts of the northwest.
The United States is helping these sectors as part of a $7.5 billion package to create jobs in the region, dry up support for extremism and stop militants from returning.
"The quality is triple A quality known in all the world," says mine owner Hikmat Ullah.
He says there are acres of untapped reserves beneath the rocky, arid soil.
Ullah employs around 30 men who work tunnels that zigzag some 60 feet into the mountain, following the emerald deposits wherever nature has left them.
But production at Shamozai is threatened because of an ownership dispute that alleges Ullah mined hand-in-hand with the militants when they were in control, handing them over a chunk of the proceeds. Ullah denies the charges.
Mining officials in Mingora declined to comment on those allegations and denied corruption within the industry.
Swat's two other emerald mines remain closed amid allegations of chronic corruption and mismanagement that miners and gem traders say have dogged the industry since the early 1980s.
Indeed, many say it was in better shape when the Taliban were in control of the valley.
Aside from emeralds, gems locked away in Pakistani mountains include pink and golden topaz, aquamarine and many others.
The business is worth an estimated $200 million a year. It's modest compared to neighbouring India, but with the potential for large growth.
"The people who are working in (the) mine, this is our property. Whatever they dig out from (the) mine, we keep records of. Sometimes we earn up to 4 million rupees (50,000 US dollars) from stones (emeralds). We always get something almost daily. The record that we dug out is rupees 10 million (125,000 US Dollars) worth of emeralds in a day," says Haji Rasul Khan, President of the Mines Association.
But due to a lack of skilled labour, most Pakistani stones are exported to Bangkok or Amsterdam, where teams of cutters polish and make them into much more valuable gems.
A major focus of the U.S. aid is developing that side of the industry in Pakistan.
It has trained dozens of men and women from the tribal regions in cutting and polishing and is establishing a centre for gem certification in Peshawar, the main northwestern town, something that would dramatically increase the value of the product.
On the other side of the valley in Buner, a team of men are using Italian wire saws to cleave from a quarry what few in the region have ever seen: a perfectly-cut block of marble the size of a small car, its straight edges standing out against a backdrop of shattered and jagged rock.
Almost all quarries in northwest Pakistan use explosives to extract the marble.
It's a wasteful, dangerous technique used in few other places, because it produces irregularly-shaped stones that international buyers will not touch.
Like many in the valley, he is having trouble adapting, but believes that within five years the explosives will be obsolete and profits 150 percent higher.
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