International Glance
On weekdays, when most kids around the world are at school, 12-year-old Mansour is in the middle of a grueling shift at the coal mines.
Deep inside a tunnel carved into the side of a blackened mountain, the young boy waits under the flickering glow of his headlamp as older boys pry coal out of the earth by pickaxe and hand, while others shovel the piles into sacks strapped onto the backs of donkeys.
From there, it is Mansour's job — from dawn until dusk — to lead the coal-laden donkeys out of a labyrinth of crumbling tunnels down the mountain in this remote part of Baghlan province, 180 miles north of Kabul. Here, the so-called black gold is bagged and loaded onto trucks, mostly bound for neighboring countries.
"My family sent me to work here last year," he says. He's wearing no protective equipment — no mask, no goggles, just a pair of cheap rubber shoes he's sliced open to let his feet breathe, with toes blackened by coal dust peeking out. "What they pay me goes directly to my family."
B/cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/UMG34BMY2RNSJFFHO2R5VL5LLM.jpg)
The United States is considering sending older HAWK air defense equipment from storage to Ukraine to help it defend against Russian drone and cruise missile attacks, two U.S. officials told Reuters.
