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.
Potentially up to $3 trillion (Score:3, Interesting)
Again - no idea whether this is true or just hype, but thought it was worth mentioning.
Might as well try this too (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not clear what the US goal is in Afghanistan, and how to get there. But the possibility of mineral wealth can be a useful fact in affecting the calculus of other countries in how they deal with the conflict. The possibility of lots of lithium can be very important to the Chinese, and having their backing in making Afghanistan stable would be very welcome. It's going to be a corrupt hellhole no matter what the US does, but if enough other countries want it to be a stable, mineral-producing, corrupt hellhole then maybe it will be.
Several years (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it was clearly stated that some of the information used to research these deposits was found in Russian documents left over from the occupation.
So since these documents were discovered (in country) several years ago, clearly they knew about it several years ago.
But So what? The Russians knew about it even LONGER ago, but some how this is ignored when raising the question of whether the deposits are "real or illusory".
It takes time to follow someone else's notes, written in Russian, get core samples (in a war zone). On what date should the announcement have been made?
The Russians knew, and hid it from the Afgans. The US/Nato surveyed the deposits and published it.
Somehow US/Nato gets scapegoated and the Russians are forgotten.
What's up with that?
Oh so ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
What a ridiculous story.
Nobody is going to invest the needed billions of dollars in a country with no real government, no laws, no protection for private property, and every expectation of being taken over by the Taliban as soon as the US army leaves.
It would take billions in up-front investment, as Afghanistan does not have any of the needed things: water, power, roads, engineers, chemical plants, railroads, ports, diging machines, huge trucks, smelters, coal, oil, and gas. Billions, and at least ten years to build the infrastructure before a pound of ore comes out of there.
And minerals only get extracted if the cost is less there than from the developed sources. That's unlikely, due to the needed up-front investment. And one of the alleged largest supplies, Lithium, is already being mined very, very cheaply in South America, where there are huge easily-accessed deposits.
Re:It is just PR... (Score:3, Interesting)
I read the reasoning and much of it was infrastructure rather than it not being there or straight out infeasible in all instances. China will swoop in sometime (not necessarily waiting until we leave) and invest in the good mines, as they are doing all over Africa and other parts of the world while our government is investing in failed banks and overunionized industries.
I don't see this as a bad thing, China is growing and they'll need copper from somewhere. And I don't think it's cost effective to keep the military there, what are we spending on Afghan will exceed $72B so that's 15 years max at the estimates.... and extracting that stuff isn't free nor is it ours.
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home [nationalpriorities.org]
Oil found off Vietnam (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:2, Interesting)
And what we will do again is to develop the natural resources in yet another unstable, chaotic, barbaric society.
It will be just like oil (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Several years (Score:5, Interesting)
What's up with that?
What's up is that the people who brought you Iraqi WMDs are lying again.
The numbers are fictitious and "Stephen Peters, the head of the USGS’s Afghanistan Minerals Project, said that he was unaware of USGS involvement in any new surveying for minerals in Afghanistan in the past two years. 'We are not aware of any discoveries of lithium,' he said." [timesonline.co.uk]
So the Pentagon has basically gathered up a bunch of old data, done some overflight surveys with no ground truth, and made up numbers. Anyone who knows anything about geology knows what a tricky business mineral exploration is, even without deliberate fraud, and yet the American media reacted with breathless excitment rather than honest and fully justified scepticism to this propaganda.
What's up with that?
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a funny thing that having wonderful natural resources dampens other parts of the economy. It's called Dutch Disease [wikipedia.org], and was diagnosed some time ago. Kind of makes you want to re-read Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel.
Re:It is just PR... (Score:3, Interesting)
It' s not at all unreasonable that there's a trillion dollars in "mineral wealth" there.
Sand is worth about $9/ton, so just scraping off and selling the top 8.5 cm of the country will get them a $trillion at retail.
The question is what kind of profit is there to be had on it?
Re:Several years (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would the USGS be involved?
Of course he knows nothing, his mandate is state side.
Arial survey (magnetometer) of these kinds of minerals is pretty accurate, and you can contract for that privately.
In order to believe your conspiracy theory, you have to believe it was all planned and started when the Russians were occupying the country.
Tinfoil hat much?
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is all three.
I doubt it is hype. There's technologies deployed right this moment in Afghanistan that people could only dream about as little as five years ago. The sheer flood of data generated by any attempt to map an entire country's mineral deposits would have been impossible to even just store (much less process) when people were unaccustomed to using the term "TB". It is not in the least surprising that we're now finding things like this that were there all along right under our nose. If only we had the capability to store a kilobyte of spectral data per square meter of a whole country.
I also doubt that this will make Afghanistan any better off. In terms of mineral wealth, Africa is the richest continent on earth. Most of the interesting metals (from uranium to gold) and most of the expensive non-metal materials (from diamonds to sapphires) are found in Africa. And all that wealth has bough it ... what exactly?
(And I am not in the least suggesting that the Pentagon has been mapping Afghanistan in a humanitarian effort to chart its wealth. The same spectroscopic technologies that tell you "this mountain is full of Chromium" will also tell you that it is "full of opium", "full of dynamite" or even "full of people").
Even if it were simple or sensible... (Score:4, Interesting)
...it still doesn't mean diddly to the average Afghan. They just have to look at Africa to know that none of them will see any benefit from this. To the average Joe on the street, all this means is that the local street thugs who make their lives miserable will have better weapons.
Re:Wealth won't help (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:4, Interesting)
The question is, did anyone over there ask for our help?
I have memories of them asking for us to not cease sending them help when the USSR stopped invading in the late eighties.
As for the minerals - geological surveys take time, this one identifies deposits scattered throughout the country, so it's fairly thourough. The resources have been know of for some time, but I think this announcement was delayed until the survey was complete.
Re:Do I have to choose? (Score:3, Interesting)
The survey has been complete for months. And major wartime funding has been up for renewal. It wasn't renewed. Then the report was released, and now a bunch of representatives are asking themselves, "Who gets the development contracts?" Welcome to realpolitik.
Re:Wealth won't help (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't do much for the current generation, but education does slowly secularize the subsequent generations. How do you think the U.S went from having pockets of people who think singing is a sin to... well something considerably more tolerant at least.
British knew in 1930s (Score:2, Interesting)
The U.S. Army has had this information for a couple of years. It would be nice to know what the objective is of this release. I suspect that this is either part of a psy op to put it in the minds of the tribal leaders that they can be Saudi rich if they just cooperate and behave for a few years or this is psy op for U.S. consumption to make it clear that Afghanistan is not a lost cause
Afghanistan is not resource poor -- it is just extremely mismanaged.
All that is very good but not what happened (Score:3, Interesting)
I think what is new is that a journalist saw it.
As for the condescending bit about things we could only dream about five years ago - a TB is still a TB even if it's on 6000 nine track reels from 1975 and in the past large projects used tapes on that sort of scale, that many reels would still fit in a small truck. Today we have convenience but that doesn't mean the inconvenient was impossible before. It has really manifested as a time and cost saving which doesn't determine if large projects go ahead or not - if it still cost a lot it would still be done.
Re:Wealth won't help (Score:2, Interesting)