Large deposits in Aynak and Hajigak are mined illegally and smuggled out of the country by local criminal networks due to Pakistan military campaign in Afghan-Pak tribal areas and government failure to control. 

Afghanistan's soil holds an enormous wealth in untapped mineral resources such as iron, cobalt, gold, copper and industrially important metals like lithium. Kabul is optimistically projecting a rise in annual income from those mines to 2.4 billion dollars by 2022. 

Mira Jan, a resident of the Tani district of Khost province, described the smuggling routes: “First these stones are transported to Miranshah (in Pakistan) and then to Karachi, and subsequently from there they are exported to China where they are used for the production of weaponry and other technical equipment.” 

Khost with its long border has dozens of side roads, and controlling all these roads is an extremely difficult task for the police,” says Sardar Mohammad Zazai, the head of Khost's security department.

According to Matthew Du Pée, an analyst with the US Department of Defense, the Afghan government estimates that about 20,000 dollars in revenues are lost every day to illegal chromite excavations in Khost.

According to analysts' estimates, the Afghan government loses 20 thousand dollars a day in revenue from illegal chromite excavation in Khost (Afghan Today News).