AFGHANISTAN-UNREST-MINING-GOLD

TO GO WITH Afghanistan-unrest-mining-gold FEATURE by Ben Sheppard Afghan policemen keep watch as miners work at the gold mine in a mountainside in the village of Qara Zaghan Baghlan province on May 6, 2013. After scrambling up a steep mountainside in north Afghanistan, Morad Ali crouches beside a gap cut in the slope and touches some reddish-brown rock. "The gold is in here," he says. Ali was one of generations of local men who used chisels and pickaxes to extract small amounts of gold from the forbidding peaks above the village of Qara Zaghan on the edge of the Hindu Kush mountains. Now a dirt track has been carved up to the spot, and professional surveying is underway as part of efforts to assess how Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth could be exploited as the country seeks a more stable and prosperous future. AFP PHOTO/ SHAH Marai (Photo credit should read SHAH MARAI/AFP via Getty Images)