In the year since the Americans left Kabul, giving way to the Taliban waiting at the gate, Afghanistan’s economy has headed in a distinctly old-fashioned direction.
The country is increasingly reliant on the export of coal, a non-renewable fossil fuel that is considered the dirtiest, most polluting way of producing energy – the complete antithesis of a green, sustainable strategy for a country’s future.
What’s more, Afghanistan’s coal mines are not up to modern safety “standards”, according to an Afghan official in Kabul who requested anonymity. Media reports from the northern Afghan province of Samangan describe conditions from a bygone age, with adolescent miners spending between 12 and 15 hours a day crouched in six-foot-wide tunnels, “chipping away at the coal by hand”.
