A coal miner eats his dinner after a 12-hour shift in an illegal mine in southern Kyrgyzstan, Kok-Janak, Friday, Dec. 21, 2007. Here in the impoverished Ferghana Valley, illegal coal mining is a dirty, dangerous part of the underground economy. After the region's huge Soviet coal mines closed in the 1990s, jobless men and boys started their own small mining operations, using picks and shovels to claw the fuel out of the mountains. Some are as young as 11, miners say. (AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev)