Losing their lives at any time, many Afghans still do dangerous jobs to make money

Collecting landmines and grenades is a dangerous and life-threatening profession, but many Afghans are forced to do it to earn money.

Salim Pandikhell, an Afghan citizen, works as a scrap picker. He often hunts for unexploded mines, grenades and magazines in the Tangi Valley.

What Mr. Pandikhell wants to find is copper in explosives, to sell to scrap yards for $ 2 / 500g. This is exactly how Mr. Pandikhell and many others in Afghanistan are working to earn money for their family’s meals.

Salim Pandikhell collects unexploded landmines and grenades to extract copper. Photo: Business Insider

“The hardest part regarding this job is waking up every morning and asking myself, ‘Should I go to work today?’ We pray every day, because this is a very dangerous job. We deal with explosives 10 times a day,” Pandikhell told Business Insider.

Every time he finds “precious items”, Mr. Pandikhell brings to a secret place nearly 10km away to dismantle weapons. The goal is to avoid injuring others.

“The first thing we did was stay out of the residential area, because we didn’t want anyone else to get hurt if the scrap exploded. Once, I found the bullets, I started to break the copper out of it, and smoke suddenly came up. I threw it away and it blew up. Everyone in the village was screaming at me. At that time, I wished I died so I wouldn’t have to feel so hopeless,” the man said. remember.

After the US military withdrew all its troops in August 2021, the economic crisis in Afghanistan became even more severe. Faced with rising poverty, Mr. Pandikhell said if he didn’t do the dangerous work of collecting scrap, his family wouldn’t have anything to eat.

“Sometimes we don’t even have essentials in the house like flour. We ask our neighbors for loans, but they don’t either. I feel that even if I work to my death, I won’t be able to save much. money. But what else can I do? If I continue this job, I will face a lot of risks. But if I don’t do it, I don’t have any other job, “said Mr. Pandikhell.

After separating the copper, Mr. Pandikhell sold it to scrap yards, including a scrap yard owned by Mr. Mohammad Amin.

“Most scrap pickers don’t even know what they’re bringing to me. I’m forced to check if it’s risky. The valuable scraps are copper and cables. Poverty makes the they have to do risky work, but it is better to have a job than to be a beggar,” Amin said.

Mr. Amin’s scrap yard is the largest in the Tangi Valley. Every day at Mr. Amin’s facility, 25 people go to pick up scrap to sell goods. In addition to the fields, Mr. Amin also buys many other scraps such as rubber, canvas and old buckets.

Valuable metals are then collected and taken to steel mills in Kabul such as the Deli Steel Factory, where Omid Bashir works, to be melted in furnaces and turned into steel for construction.

The Deli Factory does not accept weapons, but accepts metals that are separated from explosives. But unfortunate things still happen.

“Sometimes there were bullets mixed with other metals. They exploded in pipes and injured people in the face, legs and hands,” Mr. Bashir said.

In addition to people picking up scrap for a living, unexploded bombs and grenades in Afghanistan are also searched by demining organizations to collect and dispose of them properly to ensure community safety. residential.

Minh Thu