Afghan Tech Minerals — Cure, Curse, Or Hype? 184
Gooseygoose writes "The Pentagon revealed recently that Afghanistan has as much as $1 trillion in mineral wealth, a potential game changer in the ongoing conflict there. Many news outlets have picked up this story, some simply repeating the official talking points, while others raise serious concerns. Is this 'discovery' just hype, or will it truly alter the landscape of the Afghan war? Perhaps more importantly, can this mineral wealth (whether real or illusory) pave the way to a peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan, or is it more likely to drive geopolitical feedback loops that plunge the region further into turmoil?"
Relatedly, Marc Ambinder wrote a few days ago in the Atlantic that the US had knowledge of vast mineral deposits in Afghanistan several years ago, giving the recent announcement the appearance of a PR campaign.
Do I have to choose? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've heard some of the surveys (Score:3, Insightful)
go back to the Soviet occupation days.
proving once again that some governments are simply so corrupt they can't sell anything because the bribes are too complex to figure out, even with computers.
Annoucements are PR (Score:4, Insightful)
That much is true. However accounting requires discovery, then investigation.
If the US government had announced three years ago a large estimate of mineral wealth based on the fact that some soldiers noticed a lot of ore lying around, would we be saying "at least they are not trying to make a big deal out of 3 year old news!"?
My impression is politically, POTUS would rather be saying "so Afghanistan, you got the check? I'm outta here" as opposed to "great another set of targets to defend!".
Re:Might as well try this too (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No choice - its FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
The more the merrier (Score:2, Insightful)
You know what would pave the way? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about turning back the clock to 1978 and stopping Afghanistan from winding up in the middle of the US/Soviet pissing contest? Don't get me wrong, I fully think the Soviets are to blame for spoiling a hundred years of hard work by the Afghanis. But, it's all too easy to wonder what the world would have been like if the "communist threat" could have stayed inside Russia's borders, through decisive action instead of slow, "cold" influences on the region. Heck, in hindsight they may have been better off just becoming a part of the Soviet Union; we see a lot less terrorism and unrest out of the former Soviet states than this one that "won" against them. It's hard to argue that Afghanistan of today is in any better shape than the Soviet Union was at any point in it's past; if they had started rebuilding in 1991 instead of 20?? who knows how close they could be to a functioning country again.
For a look into what Afghanistan was like (and in all likelihood would still be like without direct foreign intervention) see this story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127914602 [npr.org]
Even if it is true... (Score:5, Insightful)
not that much money (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imperialism, schmerialism. It's a loaded word anyhow. The question is, did anyone over there ask for our help? If not, their problems (and their mineral assets) are none of our concern.
Re:We're forgetting someone (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We're forgetting someone (Score:3, Insightful)
These are the same "Taliban" that the US funded for decades and for whom they provided training and other non-munition resources.
Yes, and that was a mistake. It was a worse mistake than that -- we gave them training in weapons and explosives as well. Much of the know-how in Taliban IEDs traces its source to the CIA. That said, the fact that we made mistakes in the 1980s does not preclude us from ever acting in Afghanistan again. If anything, it increases our duty to eliminate the monsters we created.
It is beyond question that American foreign policy over the past 50 years has been a mixed bag. To my mind, that truth does not help one whit in making policy for today. The consequences of those mistakes are real and we need to make policy based on what will lead to the best outcome given the facts as they are now, not how the facts may have been if we had done things differently (even if, as I've said numerous times here, we absolutely should have done things differently).
The history of the US is one of hypocrisy and so many double standards that I wonder if you are on no one elses side other than your own perverted sense of morality and ethics.
Like every other country, we bungle incompetently from time to time. Our imperfection is not the same as perverted morality -- had we foreseen in the 1980s what would come of supporting Bin Laden and the Taliban, we would have declined to get involved.
The intersection of morality and the fog of war -- the inability to reliably predict the likely outcomes of any particular act or strategy -- is a complex one. In retrospect, the War in Vietnam was profoundly immoral both in conception and execution (and the vast majority of moderate America concurs in that sentiment). Placing yourself, however, behind JFK's (that neoconservative monster!) desk and restricting yourself to the facts that he knew at the time, however, and the calculus changes.
*sigh* Here's how it works (Score:3, Insightful)
Because they do not possess the resources, infrastructure, or expertise to mine these minerals, they will have to contract a foreign (probably US) company to do so. To finance the operation, Afghanistan will have to take out a loan from the IMF/World Bank. The corporation(s) doing the mining will reap most of the profits, with a small percentage going to key figures in the Afghan government. The only jobs this will create for the Afghan citizens is menial labor, doing the actual mining. The resources, when gone, will only have benefited the mining/engineering firm(s) involved and the people in power in Afghanistan. Afghanistan will never be able to pay off its loan to the IMF, driving it deeper into poverty, which will, in turn, drive even more locals into the opium trade.
I just want to point out (Score:2, Insightful)
that getting these alleged minerals out of Afghanistan is going to be a problem for western countries. Afghanistan is bordered by Iran to the west, Pakistan to the south and various other 'stans to the north.
Oddly enough, the country that might mostly benefit from this discovery is China and perhaps India. You know China must be interested.
Re:Imperial Colonialism has always worked this way (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wealth won't help (Score:3, Insightful)
The common wisdom leaves out liberalism altogether, the debate being whether democracy brings about wealth or wealth brings democracy. I like your argument better, as it explains more of the actual facts in places like the middle east.
Re:Several years (Score:4, Insightful)
Then why not recognize when they meet that standard by documenting and mapping Russian preliminary findings and PUBLISHING the information and providing it to the Afghans?
Why the sinister suggestions of evil intent?
Because congress just turned down a military request for more funds for the first time in decades. This report has been ready for ages, the military has been saving it for just such an occasion. The idea being, every representative will be thinking, who gets the contracts to develop? Someone from my state, or another state? The military gets a big say in this: this company can perform work in a war zone, this one isn't capable, and so on. So, it isn't so much a sinister suggestion of evil intent as glaring example of realpolitik in action.
Re:not that much money (Score:3, Insightful)
Impact: Addt'l 50% of GDP per year for 40 years (Score:3, Insightful)
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"How Much Is $1 Trillion in Afghanistan?
Source: CEPR.net / Dean Baker's 'Beat the Press' blog
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/how-much-is-1-trillion-in-afghanistan/ [cepr.net]
"The media have been highlighting projections produced by the military that show that Afghanistan may have $1 trillion of mineral wealth. It would be helpful to put this figure in some context. The NYT helpfully described this sum as being equal to $38,482.76 for every person in Afghanistan."
"It would be useful to note that this is a gross number, it does not subtract the cost of extracting the minerals nor does it consider that these resources would likely be extracted over many decades. If we assume that the cost of extracting the minerals (e.g. foreign produced equipment, foreign trained technicians, profits of foreignh companies and environmental damage -- not counting domestic Afghan labor) is between 25 and 50 percent of the value of the minerals, then the money going to Afghanis would be between $500 billion and $750 billion."
"If this money is earned over a 40-year period (Saudi Arabia has been producing oil for 80 years), then it comes to between $12.5 billion and $18.8 billion a year. Afghanistan's population is currently 29.1 million, but it is growing at the rate of 2.5 percent annually. Assuming the growth rate slows, Afghanistan's population will average about 40 million over this period. This means that the revenue from the minerals will average between $312.50 and $470 per person per year. This is still likely to have a substantial impact on Afghanistan's economy, since its current GDP per capita is just $800 on a purchasing power parity basis."
Re:Wealth won't help (Score:4, Insightful)
Soviets were fighting Islamic Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I fully think the Soviets are to blame for spoiling a hundred years of hard work by the Afghanis.
The USSR was fighting radical Islamic extremism. The more secular Marxist government of Afghanistan requested Soviet help to fend off attacks by radical Muslims. This has been further advanced by the declassification of many internal Soviet era documents.
The CIA, with several hundred billion dollars of US Taxpayer and Saudi money, radicalized the "freedom fighters" -- now called "insurgents" -- and armed a good number of jihadists from around the globe. Internally this was described as "giving the Soviet Union their own Vietnam."
As soon as the last Russian soldier left, so did we. The radical muslims who were left fought over the scraps, and eventually the Taliban became the dominant force. Even though they imposed a disgraceful form of violent religious intolerance, it was welcomed in the vacuum of decades of warlords trying to destroy each other.
Almost all of the misery in the middle east can be directly traced to Western powers attempting to divide and control and conquer the region to exploit their geographical importance and natural resources. Making Iraq a country nearly equal in land controlled by Kurds, Shias, and Sunnis was not a mistake. Supporting murderous thugs and dictators who could control their populations was also not a mistake. Arming violent madmen who wanted to rid the world of Godless Atheists was also not a mistake.
All of those decisions, however, do carry consequences. And consequences that the Average Joe seems incapable of understanding, let alone accepting. The real lesson is this: leave sovereign nations alone. If you have made yourself dependent on their resources, then you have only yourself to blame. Get rid of the need, or play by their rules. Otherwise you are just another nation-state wallowing in moral hypocrisy.
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me that Avatar is pretty much the anti-Taliban given the way the women dressed.
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think part of the equation is accessibility. If the resources are close enough to the ground that you can get villagers to dig them out for you by pointing a gun at them, you might end up with some of the worser situations in Africa.
If the resources require a significant investment of technology and infrastructure, well, large companies will come in and employ locals and bring in a lot of money, which may bring in other businesses to serve them.
I'm hoping these huge deposits are deep, deep under the ground. Just barely within range of our instruments, and that the dollar figure to get to them is as large as possible. Because if all it takes is a shovel, Afghanistan is in for a ride.