[forexsoft]

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency. U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com

[Ekrbcbvh]

I'm sure this was previously "unknown" to the Pentagon....another example of U.S. "interests". Maybe when they start mining they will fall upon Bin Laden in one of the caverns.....

[allmyflights]

I'm willing to give the US the benefit of the doubt, against my better judgement, but the article notes that natural resources are not a key to stability. copper wasn't the only thing contributing to chile's success...just look at nigeria, among others. It is certainly possible the US did not know of this, and since the US forces Afghanistan to keep drugs illegal, they've likely been frantically looking for anything afghanistan can sell to build an economy, without which the country will never stabilize.

[Ekrbcbvh]

Actually...if one understood the real politik of U.S. "interests" whether one agreed with them or not....you would indeed give them the benefit of the doubt. The whole Bin Laden narrative for those more versed in geopolitics is one that should not be given the benefit of the doubt IMO....

[flnastyax]

Right, and this was all based on a 2007 survey.

What, things are going as planned in Marja or Kandahar? Look over there: lots of minerals!!

[Zarekylin75]

How lucky are the Afghans, huh? First they get to live on a major strategic crossroads, so everyone and his brother wants to march across their territory. Then air and sea travel make their crossroads a backwater and nobody cares, so they can enjoy decades of bloody civil war. And now they can enjoy all the blessings of the loving attention of major powers and international mining companies vying for mineral rights.

Does it get any better than that?

[Wahwlsnt]

How lucky are the Afghans, huh? First they get to live on a major strategic crossroads, so everyone and his brother wants to march across their territory. Then air and sea travel make their crossroads a backwater and nobody cares, so they can enjoy decades of bloody civil war. And now they can enjoy all the blessings of the loving attention of major powers and international mining companies vying for mineral rights.

Does it get any better than that?

Don't forget the locust.
Reuters AlertNet - NW Afghanistan hit by plague of locusts

[Ekrbcbvh]

Geopolitics..what else...


So, the question for many observers was why the article, which dominated much of the foreign news in the network and cable broadcast media during Monday's news cycle, was published now?

The Pentagon memo may have been an effort to attract international interest in the mining sector before the auction in the next few weeks of the 1.8 billion-ton iron-ore field in Ha***ak, which could be worth $5 billion to $6 billion, according to the British-based Times. The development of the country's largest known iron deposit has been hampered by the war and weak institutions.

The memo coincided with a visit to India by Wahidullah Shahrani, the new Afghan minister of mines, to solicit bids for Ha***ak after a planned tender was canceled last year because of a lack of international interest, the Times reported. Shahrani was appointed with US backing in January after his predecessor was sacked for allegedly taking bribes from a Chinese mining company - a charge he denies.

Afghan and Western officials want more companies to bid for Ha***ak and other deposits to prevent China from gaining control over Afghanistan’s natural resources through bids subsidized heavily by Beijing, the Times said. American and European companies have alleged that underhand methods were used by Beijing to get contracts, it said.

China’s state-owned Metallurgical Corp of China won a license in 2007 to develop the Aynak copper field, Afghanistan's richest known deposit of the metal, where mining had been blocked by war in the 1980s, Bloomberg reported. The deposit holds 11 million tons of copper metal, according to a 2008 statement from Jiangxi Copper, a partner in the project, cited by Bloomberg.

The existence of the minerals also raises questions about foreign motives for involvement in the Afghan conflict. Afghans have complained that the West is really after its natural resources, just as many Iraqis contended that the US invasion of their country was about controlling the oil wealth (115 billion barrels of proven reserves, third in the world after Saudi Arabia and Iran).

The New York Times' Risen suggested an answer in his story to the question of the timing of the Pentagon memo, noting "American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan".

Indeed, US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) casualties have risen sharply in recent weeks; a four-month-old counter-insurgency offensive to "clear, hold and build" in the strategic region around Marjah in Pashtun-dominated Helmand province appears to have stalled badly; and a planned campaign in and around the critical city of Kandahar has been delayed for at least two months.

The latest polling shows a noticeable erosion of support for Washington's commitment to the war compared to eight months ago, when President Barack Obama agreed to the Pentagon's recommendations to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan to bring the total US military presence there to around 100,000 later this summer.

Moreover, what little support for the war remains among the publics of Washington's NATO allies - never as high as in the US in any event - is also fading quickly. NATO and non-NATO countries, excluding the US, currently have about 34,000 troops deployed to Afghanistan.

On the eve of a NATO ministerial conference in Brussels last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that Washington and its NATO allies had very little time to convince their publics that their strategy against the Taliban was working - a message that has since been strongly echoed by the coalition's commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, and by Petraeus.

Indeed, the administration is committed to a major review of its strategy in Afghanistan at the end of the year, and Obama has pledged to begin withdrawing US troops in July 2011.

Obama is already coming under pressure from right-wing and neo-conservative media - some of which have been cultivated by Petraeus, in particular - and Republican lawmakers to delay that date.

That view was seconded last week by former Petraeus aide, Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl (retired), a counter-insurgency specialist who is now president of the influential Center for a New American Security.

Nagl worked closely with Petraeus in authoring the much-lauded 2006 US Counter-Insurgency Field Manual, which stressed the importance of efforts to influence media perceptions in any counter-insurgency campaign.

"The media directly influence the attitude of key audiences toward counter-insurgents, their operations and the opposing insurgency," they wrote. "This situation creates a war of perceptions between insurgents and counter-insurgents conducted continuously using the news media."

In that respect, the appearance of the Times story on Monday looked to many observers like part of an effort to strengthen the case for giving the counter-insurgency effort more time.

In an interview with Politico's Laura Rozen on Monday, former Afghan finance minister Ashraf Ghani said he had commissioned the assessment of Afghanistan's mineral wealth. "As to why it came out today ... I cannot explain," he said.

Asia Times Online :: South Asia news, business and economy from India and Pakistan

[Quigoxito]

We should go conquer them and seize the minerals!!!

[Siliespiriulk]

If the minerals are there, are they attainable. I remember President Reagan stating that there was more oil under the State of New York than Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

[Arrectiff]

The discovery of the minerals is new. The iron and copper deposits have been known for a long time but the others - all new discoveries.

At first, I thought this is what England and Czarist through USSR had been fighting over but it wasn't.

England and Russia disputes and wars in the later part of the 19th century were part of the "great game" and the stuff with the USSR was just what that was.