Afghanistan gold rush reshapes Badakhshan mountains

Afghanistan gold rush in Badakhshan transforms land and livelihoods

In Afghanistan’s northeastern Badakhshan province, a fast-growing gold rush is changing both the landscape and the lives of people who live around it. In the Shiwa area, about 50 kilometres northeast of Faizabad, excavators are working day and night to pull gold from mountain terrain that was once used by villagers and their livestock.

The expansion of mining has brought money into the region, but it has also raised serious concerns about water, farmland and grazing land. According to AFP, some residents have leased land to mining firms in hopes of benefiting from the boom. For others, the costs have become harder to ignore.

Environmental damage and lost farmland

One of the clearest signs of change is along the riverbanks, where local farmer Muhammad Amin says the impact has been severe. The 74-year-old from Pul-i-Ziri Ban valley told AFP that the river water is no longer safe to drink and cannot even be used to wash. He said grass along the riverbank has disappeared and that farming is no longer possible because of wind and dust.

Amin also said the mining work has reduced the number of goats he can keep. He said he can now feed up to 15 goats, compared with as many as 40 before the gold extraction intensified nearby. He added that he was paid only half of the $20,000 he agreed to accept for leasing his land to a mining company, and that the firm did not restore his fields after the work stopped.

Mining sector expansion under the Taliban

The wider boom is part of a broader push by the Afghan Taliban to expand mining since returning to power five years ago. The authorities have said they want to use Afghanistan’s underground resources to strengthen state finances.

Badakhshan’s mines department chief, Abdul Mateen Rahimzai, said the province has registered almost 650 to 700 companies and that thousands of people are working manually. The scale of activity shows how deeply the gold rush has spread across the area, with both mechanized extraction and hand labor involved.

The World Bank has said hundreds of mining contracts have been signed since 2021, and it has described annual real growth as averaging 25 to 30 per cent, according to the supplied source material. Those figures underline why mining has become a major part of Afghanistan’s economic story, even as local communities absorb the environmental and social effects.

Why the Badakhshan gold rush matters

The experience in Badakhshan shows the divide between short-term income and long-term damage. Some landowners and workers are benefiting from the demand for gold, but others are seeing cleaner water, productive fields and pastureland disappear.

For communities that rely on rivers, grazing and small-scale farming, those changes can be difficult to reverse. The situation in Shiwa highlights a broader question facing Afghanistan: whether mineral extraction can bring lasting gains without leaving rural areas worse off than before.

As mining continues to expand, the effects on land, water and local livelihoods are likely to remain central to the debate over Afghanistan’s resource development.