[BinasiDombrs]

Have they found a way to pay for this war???

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...h-2000507.html

Afghanistan's resources could make it the richest mining region on earth

By Kim Sengupta, Diplomatic Correspondent

Tuesday, 15 June 2010

Afghanistan, often dismissed in the West as an impoverished and failed state, is sitting on $1 trillion of untapped minerals, according to new calculations from surveys conducted jointly by the Pentagon and the US Geological Survey.

The sheer size of the deposits – including copper, gold, iron and cobalt as well as vast amounts of lithium, a key component in batteries of Western lifestyle staples such as laptops and BlackBerrys – holds out the possibility that Afghanistan, ravaged by decades of conflict, might become one of the most important and lucrative centres of mining in the world.

President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omar, said last night: "I think it's very, very big news for the people of Afghanistan and we hope it will bring the Afghan people together for a cause that will benefit everyone."

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan, told reporters that the economic value of the deposits may be even higher. "There's ... an indication that even the £1 trn figure underestimates what the true potential might be," he said.

[Goodwin]

As pointed out at TPM, this discovery comes with a lot of question marks. There have been searches for deposits like these undertaken by several governments, including Russia during their occupation. In every case, early hopes of discovering vast mineral riches fizzled under closer inspection.

The other major issue is the vast corruption inherent in the Karzai government, leading observers to wonder any windfall from such a finding here would simply put the Afghans on a fast track to how things have played under under similarly corrupt regimes in Africa with their diamond mines.