Nuristan's most famous gemstone locality, in a side valley of the Kolum in Du Ab: the kunzite and tourmaline it has given since 1970, how the men work it today, what the auctions pay, and how to buy its rough from people with a share in it.
Mawi is the best-known gemstone mine in Nuristan, and the one whose name travels furthest: kunzite labelled Mawi sits in the Sorbonne's collection in Paris, in the American Museum of Natural History, and in dealers' cases from Tucson to Hong Kong. The workings lie in the Mawi valley, a small western branch of the Kolum valley in Du Ab district, at about 2,000 metres. Soviet geologists found the pegmatite in 1970, Afghan miners have dug it by hand since 1973, and in 2026 it is still producing.
This page is written from Nuristan. The photographs are our own, taken in 2026 at a working at Mawi run by partners of ours, in which Obaid Nuristani, our founder, holds a share, and we sell its rough to buyers abroad. The geology and the history come from the published surveys, listed at the foot, and where the sources disagree we say so.
Mawi is in Du Ab, the district of western Nuristan where the Ramgal and Kolum rivers meet to make the Alingar. The pegmatite lies in the Mawi valley, a small side valley on the western side of the Kolum, at about 35.20 north and 70.34 east. The Kolum workings are about a kilometre and a half to the north-east in the same vein system, and Nilaw, the third name in the field, is over the ridge to the west, just inside Mandol district. The mine sits at about 2,000 metres, under peaks of more than 4,500 metres on the valley's rim.
The labels say otherwise. Specimens from Mawi are sold as Laghman as often as Nuristan, because the Soviet surveys of the 1970s were made before Nuristan became a province, when these valleys were governed from Mihtarlam, and the American tables built on them kept the old name. A United States Geological Survey table of 2002 even gives Mawi a coordinate thirteen kilometres to the west, in Mandol, which Mindat flags as wrong. The auction houses have caught up: Heritage listed a Mawi kunzite in 2013 under Du Ab district, Nuristan. On the government's own district map the Mawi and Kolum points fall inside Du Ab.
Getting there has changed more than the mine has. In 1978 the French mineralogists who first described the deposit left the jeep road at Mihtarlam, drove 70 kilometres up the Alingar to the bridge at Gandalabuk, and walked: a day of gorges to the houses near Dahan-e Piar, another day to Nilaw, and half a day over the Koh-e Sagoli ridge to Mawi, with no mule to be hired. In 1985 the passable road ended a few kilometres past the village the miners called Nuristan, and everything beyond was on foot. Satellite imagery shows a graded road reaching the mine by 2021, with vehicles parked near the top of the workings. The road up the Alingar through Nurgaram is described on our Du Ab page.
The Mawi pegmatite belongs to the Nilaw-Kolum field, one of six pegmatite fields on the western flank of the Alingar granite and one of the richest of the twenty-one fields that Soviet geologists mapped in eastern Afghanistan between 1971 and 1976. The pegmatites are rare-metal veins, rich in lithium, caesium, tantalum, beryllium, niobium and rubidium, formed from the two-mica granites of the Oligocene Laghman intrusive complex and injected as gently dipping sills into the gabbro and diorite of the Early Cretaceous Nilaw complex. Veins in the diorite run to more than two kilometres long and twenty metres thick.
The principal Mawi vein was measured by the Soviet survey at about 40 metres thick and 1,200 metres long. The field is zoned from the bottom up: lepidolite-spodumene-albite pegmatites first; then albite pegmatites with spodumene, polychrome tourmaline and lepidolite; then the albitised microcline pegmatites that carry the kunzite and morganite; and at the top plagioclase-microcline pegmatites with black tourmaline and beryl. The gem crystals grow in pockets, from ten centimetres to three metres across, most of them under the hanging wall of the gently sloping bodies. The Soviet geologist who studied them concluded that most jewellery kunzite formed by the regrowth of earlier spodumene at 160 to 270 degrees.
Mindat records sixteen minerals at Mawi: spodumene in all its colours, elbaite tourmaline, beryl as aquamarine and morganite, quartz, albite as cleavelandite, microcline, lepidolite and muscovite, topaz, spessartine garnet, fluorapatite, cassiterite, the columbite and tantalite series, stibiotantalite, pollucite and the rare caesium mica nanpingite. Pollucite, the caesium mineral first reported from Afghanistan in 1977, is the find that marks these pegmatites out for the chemist as much as the jeweller. The dumps, the French visitors noted, were littered with balls of botryoidal muscovite thirty centimetres across.
1970
Soviet geologists find the Mawi pegmatite during their survey of the rare-metal fields of eastern Afghanistan.
1973
The first recorded output: 420 kilograms of spodumene in July and 176 kilograms in October and November, dug by employees of the Ministry of Mines, the only people the law allowed to work it, while smugglers worked it too. Between 1973 and 1975 more than 1,260 kilograms of gem kunzite came out of the Kolum district.
1978
Pierre Bariand and Jean-Paul Poullen publish the first description of the mine in the Mineralogical Record, after two days on foot from the road: spodumene crystals up to two metres long in five colours, tricoloured tourmaline, and about fifty tonnes of beryl judged ready to work. Their specimens went to the Sorbonne, among them a 20 centimetre kunzite, a 15 centimetre twin, and a 60 centimetre doubly terminated green spodumene they called probably the finest crystal yet recovered.
1984
A 69.8 carat step-cut Mawi kunzite is photographed for the gem collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
1985
Gary Bowersox reports for the Gemological Institute of America that Mawi and Suraj are the most active mines in the region, with about five hundred miners working the Nuristan fields daily, meeting the gem zones eleven to twenty metres below the surface, and carrying the rough into Bajaur and on to Peshawar.
1995
A United Nations compilation lists Mawi as an active mine for morganite, aquamarine, garnet, spodumene and tourmaline.
2009 to 2010
Photographs of hand-mucked pockets of spodumene and morganite at Mawi circulate among mineral collectors, and a correspondent for a Californian dealer visits the next year, meeting a miner who has worked there for forty years and miners from the village of Gaamata.
2018 to 2022
Satellite imagery shows most of the buildings at the mine collapsed or destroyed between April 2018 and July 2019; then a graded road, parked vehicles and new tailings by September 2021; and more than sixteen new buildings put up between September 2021 and April 2022, with the Kolum workings growing at the same time.
2025
The provincial mines directorate begins selling Mawi rough by open auction in Du Ab: kunzite, beryl and morganite for 64.8 million afghanis in March, about 9,000 kilograms for 95.1 million in September, and 8,785 kilograms for 111.6 million in November.
2026
11,687 kilograms sell for more than 113 million afghanis in February, a further lot for 52.6 million in May, and about two tonnes of kunzite with beryl, quartz and morganite for 122.5 million in September. In July a dealer lists 164 crystals of lilac, purplish, greenish and yellow spodumene from new finds at Mawi. The working photographed on this page, in which our founder holds a share, is bringing out tourmaline, kunzite and beryl.
The mine is worked by hand, as it was in 1973. The adits follow the vein into the mountain, and the men who dig them live inside it: a chamber cut from the rock, carpets on the floor, bedding against the wall, one lamp run from a solar panel at the mouth. Outside, the camp sits on the slope of broken pegmatite tipped out of the workings, white feldspar and quartz with the black of tourmaline through it.
When a pocket is cleared the rough is carried out and laid on a white cloth on the floor of the chamber. It is sorted by grade into heaps, the best crystals set apart in a patch of their own, the specimen pieces still on their rock wrapped in tissue. The buyers sit round the cloth, hold each crystal to a torch for colour and cracks, and the weights go into a notebook. The price is agreed there, and the lot goes down the valley.
The working photographed here is run by partners of ours, people we know, and it is financed the way mining in Nuristan is financed: a group of men puts up the money and the labour for a season's digging, and each takes a share of what the pockets give. Obaid Nuristani, our founder, is one of those shareholders. In 2026 the working is bringing out tourmaline, kunzite and the other spodumenes, beryl as aquamarine and morganite, and quartz, and Nuristani sells that rough to buyers at home and abroad.
The mountain itself belongs to someone. In Du Ab, as across Nuristan, the mountains are owned by local families and villages, and a party from outside the district, as we are, must buy or rent the ground, or work it on terms: dig at its own cost and, if a pocket is found, give the owner of the mountain a share, with the rest divided among those who put up the money. In our own valley, Waygal, our family holds mountains of its own, and a working there owes no owner's share.
Pink to lilac kunzite is what made the name. Mawi spodumene comes in five colours, pink, green, blue, yellow and colourless, in flat, striated, often twinned crystals that Bowersox saw up to a metre long and the Soviet survey measured at two. The colour is strongest down the length of the crystal, which is why cutters orient Mawi kunzite as they do, and the pink fades in strong sun. Dealers' prices in 2026 for fine crystals ran from 250 to nearly 10,000 dollars.
Elbaite in green, pink and tricolour, the stone in most of our photographs from the working. The 1978 visitors recorded tricoloured crystals; the lots that reached dealers in 2010 and the heaps on the cloth in 2026 are mostly green, with pink.
Pale blue aquamarine, and the pink to peach morganite that the miners of 1985 reported from Mawi; the British Geological Survey records morganite mined there in small quantities. Beryl makes up much of the weight of the auction lots.
Rock crystal from the pockets, sold by the kilogram at the auctions; and for collectors, cleavelandite, lepidolite, pollucite, the tantalum and tin minerals and the caesium mica nanpingite, which can make a Mawi specimen on its rock worth more than the gem in it.
Since 2025 the provincial Directorate of Mines and Petroleum has sold Mawi rough by open auction in Du Ab, to domestic traders. These are the announced results.
| Date | Lot | Price | To the treasury |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 March 2025 | Kunzite, beryl and morganite | 64,768,000 afghanis | Not announced |
| 16 September 2025 | About 9,000 kilograms of beryl, kunzite, morganite and quartz | 95,123,500 afghanis | 9.5 million |
| 27 November 2025 | 8,785 kilograms of beryl, kunzite and morganite | 111,557,000 afghanis | 11.155 million |
| 18 February 2026 | 11,687 kilograms of kunzite, beryl, quartz and morganite | More than 113 million afghanis | 11.356 million |
| 16 May 2026 | Beryl, kunzite and morganite | 52,620,000 afghanis | 5.226 million |
| 2 September 2026 | About two tonnes of kunzite with beryl, quartz and morganite | 122,500,000 afghanis | 12,250,910 |
The figures are the directorate's own announcements and have not been audited. By weight, the mixed lots of September 2025 to February 2026 fetched roughly 10,000 to 13,000 afghanis a kilogram, around 140 to 180 US dollars at the time; the two-tonne lot of September 2026, at about 61,000 afghanis a kilogram, was a better grade. About ten per cent of each sale goes to the treasury.
We sell rough from the Mawi working: tourmaline, kunzite and the other spodumenes, aquamarine, morganite and quartz, as run-of-mine lots sorted by grade or as selected crystals, in whatever quantity a buyer needs. Prices are given against a quotation, because they depend on the grade, the weight and the month. There is no list price for Mawi rough, and anyone who offers one has not seen the lot.
Tell us what you buy and for what: cutting rough, specimen crystals, or mixed lots by the kilogram, and the colours and sizes you want. We send photographs and weights of what is on the cloth, and video of the crystals under light, before any money moves. Payment is agreed with the buyer and made before shipment, as on all our sales; the terms, the paperwork and what a laboratory report can and cannot say about origin are on our wholesale and buying pages.
A buyer who wants to see the working can be taken there. Du Ab is reached by road from Laghman up the Alingar, our guides are from the province, and the same team takes film crews and researchers to the mines.
In the Mawi valley, a small western branch of the Kolum valley in Du Ab district, western Nuristan, at about 2,000 metres, roughly 60 kilometres north-east of Mihtarlam in Laghman and 90 kilometres north of Jalalabad. The Kolum workings are about a kilometre and a half away, and Nilaw is over the ridge to the west in Mandol. It is reached by road up the Alingar from Laghman.
Nuristan. Mawi is sold as Laghman because the Soviet surveys of the 1970s were made before Nuristan became a province in the late 1980s, when the Alingar valleys were governed from Mihtarlam, and dealers copy the old labels. One American table of 2002 even places Mawi thirteen kilometres west of where it is. On the government's district map the Mawi and Kolum points fall inside Du Ab.
Spodumene above all: kunzite in pink and lilac, and the green, yellow, blue and colourless crystals of the same mineral. Then tourmaline in green, pink and tricolour, beryl as aquamarine and morganite, and quartz. For collectors there are cleavelandite, lepidolite, pollucite, the tantalum and tin minerals and the caesium mica nanpingite. Sixteen minerals are recorded at the locality.
The Soviet survey measured spodumene crystals up to two metres long in the lower zone of the vein, and Bowersox saw gem crystals up to a metre. The Sorbonne holds a 60 centimetre green spodumene and 20 and 15 centimetre kunzites from Mawi, and a specimen of kunzite with pink tourmaline, 28 by 14 centimetres and about ten kilograms, was estimated at 150,000 to 180,000 dollars at Bonhams in 2018. Most gem crystals offered today are five to fifteen centimetres.
No company owns it. The mountains at Mawi, like most in Nuristan, belong to the local families and villages of Du Ab. Groups of miners and investors work them by agreement with the owners: they buy or rent the ground, or dig at their own cost and give the owner a share of what is found, with the rest divided among the investors. Much of the rough is then sold at the provincial directorate's auctions in Du Ab. The working on this page is run by partners of ours, with our founder among the shareholders.
Yes. We sell rough from a working at Mawi in which our founder holds a share: tourmaline, kunzite and spodumene, aquamarine, morganite and quartz, as graded lots by the kilogram or as selected crystals, in any quantity. Prices are quoted against the lot, with photographs, weights and video sent first, and payment is made before shipment.
There is no list price. At the provincial auctions the mixed lots of 2025 and 2026 fetched roughly 10,000 to 13,000 afghanis a kilogram, about 140 to 180 US dollars, and a better two-tonne lot in September 2026 about 61,000 afghanis a kilogram. Selected kunzite crystals were offered by dealers in 2026 at 250 to nearly 10,000 dollars each. A quotation from us is priced on the grade and weight of the actual lot.
Yes, with us. Du Ab is reached by road from Laghman up the Alingar, and a graded road has run to the mine since 2021. Our guides are from the province and arrange the journey and the stay; the same team takes film crews and researchers. Read our page on whether Nuristan is safe before you plan it.
All the photographs on this page are our own, taken in 2026 at the working at Mawi in Du Ab. They can be licensed for publication; see our photo licensing page.
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