Sitting on the floor in the stifling heat of a dilapidated workshop in Spin Boldak, on the border with Pakistan, Afghans recycle gold from electronic waste from rich countries, a profitable but doomed business.
Without gloves or protective masks, armed with pliers or bare hands, these men, sitting cross-legged in their traditional outfit, the shalwar kameez, dismantle old televisions, computers or mobile phones arriving by the truckload from Japan, Hong Kong or Dubai.
But increasingly, these devices no longer have gold to offer because electronics use less, or even none at all, of this precious metal due to its cost.
It is a painstaking task in one of the least “digital” countries in the world: only 18.4% of Afghans had access to the internet at the start of 2024.
“In one month, we recover 150 grams of gold,” Sayed Wali Agha, a fifty-year-old owner of a workshop in the border town teeming with all kinds of businesses and traffic, where tricycles, minibuses and rickety heavy goods vehicles compete for the dusty roads, told AFP.
“We sell each gram for 5,600 afghanis,” or 72 euros, he says.
– “A very tiring job” –
This trade was able to revive with the return of the Taliban to power in 2021, because the use of acid, which allows gold to be separated from other metals, “was prohibited by the previous government,” he recalls. The rise in gold prices has also been an incentive.
But extracting this precious metal – a good thermal and electrical conductor – from electronic components “takes a lot of time because we don’t have a lot of equipment,” continues Mr. Wali Agha.
“It’s very tiring work,” not to mention the acid fumes, says the boss, one of whose 20 employees says he earns 150 euros a month, an income generally considered decent in the country.
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After extracting the gold, workers throw away old computer circuit boards that form a small mountain, while other piles are piled up with the remains of cell phones or GPS casings – the other metals will be resold to other recyclers.
At the end of the chain, a worker has accumulated micrograms of gold in a tin basin, and another treats it with acid.
Outside the workshop, a highly toxic yellow smoke rises into the azure sky: the gold is freed from its impurities.
In rich countries, all these operations are carried out with cutting-edge technology, quickly, effortlessly and safely.
In the neighbouring workshop, Rahmatullah also employs around twenty men, in equally difficult working conditions.
“You have to (dismantle) 10 televisions to find one gram of gold,” explains the 28-year-old boss. Like his competitor, he believes that recycling gold “is good business.”
But, he adds, “this profession has no future.”
The gold from Spin Boldak arrives a hundred kilometers away, in the jewelers’ workshops in the center of Kandahar, the provincial capital. And in particular that of Mohammad Yaseen.
“It’s very good quality gold, 24 carats,” says the 34-year-old jeweler, while melting the precious metal in terracotta cups with a blowtorch on an antediluvian brazier.
– Golden weddings –
But the market receives “less and less gold from Spin Boldak”, only “30 to 40 grams per week”, says the jeweller who melts down 1 or 1.2 kilos of yellow metal every day thanks to other suppliers or the purchase of old jewellery.
“Japanese electronics contain gold, Chinese electronics do not,” he explains. And “the share of Japanese electronics is decreasing day by day while that of Chinese electronics is increasing.”
So the recycling of Spin Boldak, which is “already suffering”, “will stop”, he also predicts.
In one of the world’s poorest countries, trade in the precious metal is booming, driven by celebrations such as weddings, for which even the poorest Afghans often go into debt for years.
“The more weddings we have, the better our business is,” says Mohammad Reza, a 36-year-old jeweller, who is crafting a rose gold tiara for an engagement party behind a tiny workbench in his workshop.
For the vice-president of the Kandahar Jewelers Association union, Ahmed Shekeb Mushfiqi, “the tradition in Afghanistan is to own gold.”
In his shop near Kandahar’s old bazaar, “we have two types of customers,” says the 38-year-old, “people from the city who appreciate elaborate designs, and those from the countryside who like simpler designs.”
“If necessary, they can resell their gold.”
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