“At first, they didn’t tell us what they wanted. “The Chinese were unbelievable,” Sajid said, chuckling at the memory. The newcomers, Sajid recalled, were giddy, persistent, almost single-minded in their quest for something few locals believed held any value at all. Another time, five men and women evaded Sajid’s soldiers in the dark to scour the mountain. Once, Sajid spotted a foreigner hiking alone along a path where Islamic State extremists were known to kidnap outsiders. But nothing confounded the Taliban commander, he said, like the new wave of foreigners who began showing up, one after another, in late 2021. Shih is The Washington Post’s New Delhi bureau chief, responsible for covering much of South Asia, and Tugnoli is a Pulitzer Prize-winning contract photographer for The Post based in Barcelona.ĬHAPA DARA, Afghanistan - Sayed Wali Sajid spent years fighting American soldiers in the barren hills and fertile fields of the Pech River Valley, one of the deadliest theaters of the 20-year insurgency. Correspondent Gerry Shih and photographer Lorenzo Tugnoli drove 15 hours from Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, along boulder-strewn roads to the remote northeast of the country to explore its lithium industry, hiking two hours up a mountain to reach the mine shafts.
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