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US funds run Pakistan emerald mines
Dusty and exhausted, the miners emerge from tunnels, blinking in the sunlight of this formerly Taleban-controlled valley.
They carefully drop their emeralds into a hole in a padlocked wooden box and trudge home to their villages down below.
A year after the Pakistani Army ousted the militants from the Swat Valley, emerald miners again work in this mountaintop mine once used by insurgents as a base - a sign of progress in a region struggling to recover from conflict.
Mining - for gems, marble, granite, chromite and coal - is one of the only industries, save for smuggling, in many parts of the northwest.
The United States is helping the industry as part of a US$7.5 billion ($10.5 billion) package to Pakistan that it hopes will create jobs, dry up support for extremism and stop militants from returning.