Over an hour’s drive through the bush from the nearest dirt road, a lunar landscape of deep mine shafts lies between two hills. Shot through the middle is a strip of tents and shacks selling coffee, candy and cigarettes. Rock breaking machines drone and from the plumes of dirt they throw out, young men and boys emerge like ghosts, tip to toe in dust. Trapped in poverty cycles, hundreds, possibly thousands, of children are stuck working in gold mines in Burkina Faso, regarded as the War on Terror’s newest front line.ft. At the mine VICE News visited, children already lived and worked in extreme conditions. Now they ... (full story)