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$1 Trillion In Minerals Found In Afghanistan
clustro writes "American geologists working with the Pentagon have discovered deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium of incredible bounty, amounting to nearly $1 trillion. In fact, the lithium deposits are so vast, an internal Pentagon memo has stated that Afghanistan could become the 'Saudi Arabia of lithium.' The wealth of the deposits completely flattens the current GDP of Afghanistan, estimated at about $12 billion. Mining would completely transform the economy of Afghanistan, which presently is propped up by the opium trade and foreign aid. However, it could take decades for extraction to reach its full potential due to the war, the lack of heavy industry in the country, and a corrupt national government."
This basically means we're staying in Afghanistan indefinitely. Even worse, in the end the only ones who will benefit are the corporations. The taxpayers and the government will never see any of that money.
...of minerals
Sounds likewe won't be able to become independent of these nations after all, even of we abandon oil.
think China and Russia are just going to sit on the side lines and let the USA get first pick on the mineral resources they better go put their flack jackets back on.
Right. They're fucked. Their best hope was that all the dopes would get bored and get out. Now there's not a chance in hell of that happening.
Conspiracy theorists will be eating this one up..
Well, isn't it lucky that the USA has invaded already - it saves them having to invent a thin pretext to invade later! Of course, the conspiracy theorists will probably be saying that this was all already known and was the pretext for the invasion but didn't make it public knowledge until now so that people wouldn't make a mental link between the resources and the invasion....
I'm sure the fair and honest Haliburton people will find a way to mine it exclusively and give the locals a fair share.
Great! Maybe now we can make our money back. What's the going rate for a dead soldier again?
So exactly why did the Pentagon spend my tax dollars to find mineral riches for a corrupt and hostile foreign country? And why did we tell them about it before an honest and American friendly government (if the even is such a thing) was in place?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It's their resource, sure, except they could live on it for another thousand years, memorizing Koran and stoning women, and never even realize it's there. Hopefully it won't be like Saudi oil all over again. We discover it, we find use for it, we develop the technology and build the infrastructure, we extract it, we process it, we ship it, their leaders keep most of the money and use it to build gold palaces while keeping their population imprisoned in worst darkness and ignorance and then use that same oil to blackmail us.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
You don't have to occupy a country to benefit from its resources. We did a very good job mangling Latin American economies without maintaining an occupying force. We'll benefit by doing nothing; I'd imagine deposits that large would drive down the global price for those minerals.
Bigger problems are what the summary mentions: Lack of heavy industry and corruption. Corruption increases with the square of the distance from Kabul. Bureaucratic processes are intentionally long and complicated; bribes at each step are expected and practically required. The central government has little reach outside of the capitol and inability to effectively tax. This means incredibly low salaries for government employees, encouraging graft.
"Lack of heavy industry" is another reason even a hardcore realpolitik would avoid "taking another [military] look at the Afghanistan situation." This means they'll need our contractors to realize any return on their $trillion in mineral rights.
DATABASE WOW WOW
China was on it since 2008. At least. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3941656.ece
The Economist had an interesting story about it something like one year ago. I couldn't find it unfortunately.
My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Sadly, no. You must start with a healthy government before mineral riches become a boon to the average citizen, let alone the poor.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/91538/vanguard-rebels-in-the-pipeline
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
It appears that nobody is interested whatsoever in what will happen to Afghanistan - the only posts here so far are people projecting their fears and prejudices on this new phenomenon. Let me get in the mood - looks like Halliburton is going to have to fire up their earthquake machine again!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If my suspicions are correct...
Yeah, I know a guy who has been there on business a few times. He mentioned a 'mountain that was basically solid copper'. The Chineese bought it and are running a new set of railroad tracks directly back to china. As this is in China's back yard, it takes a lot of pressure off the demand side of our markets. Prices will fall on these minerals, or at least not rise so fast. The 'I hate American capitalist pig-dogs' brigade can rest easy. There is no way on earth to get Americans to be miners in Afghanistan price competitively with Chinese slave labor.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
As you can see in http://kosovo99.tripod.com/minerals.htm and Saudi Arabia and Iraq before, US has good history of coming to right places in right times...
Also, Somaila's got some rich Uranium reserves... And I am 100% percent sure every big "human rights" hotspot od last century, and "terrorism" hotspot of 21st is "minerally supported".
Hopely, Japanese touchdown on asteroid will change things so we will have less wars in future, and more riches coming from space.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
America will do what it does best, bring democracy and freedom to the world. Those American corps better get their bids sorted, the Chinese are good at undercutting everyone.
Why do American minerals always end up in the soil of other countries?
paai
Are you guys seriously thinking the US will get ANY of it? The Afghan gov't stopped caring about the US the day we announced we were leaving. The Afghan gov't has already been cutting it's deals with the Taliban. The US is exactly on the other side of the planet. Hell, we don't even have a friendly neighboring country to get the ore through. What do you think we'll do? FLY it to the US? The Chinese have this locked tight. If we tried to set up any sort of operation, Al-Queda would kill our people, if the Talibani didn't get to them first. The whole point under discussion is us taking the value away from the Afghanis. Can't happen. For anyone else, it's a cheap operation with cheap labor. For us it would be a military operation with expensive contractors getting killed every day. Cannot happen. The Chinese have this one in the bag.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
If you think mineral deposits "wipe out poverty" you ought to travel to west Africa.
The vast majority (99%+) of Sierra Loeneans who spend their lives in poverty, toiling to find diamonds, have never seen a finished and cut diamond. Many never even find a single diamond. Sierra Leone ranks amongst the five least developed countries.
A single gold mine in Mali will produce $1.5BN (USD) and has made a 0.07% reinvestment ($100k) in schools from its World Bank loan. The words of one worker, “[w]e read on the Internet that AngloGold has pronounced that Morila is the most profitable gold mine in the world, and yet most workers here get no lodging or training, or even health care. In South Africa, AngloGold is paying for the anti-retrovirals for its staff that are HIV-positive, and here they take all our medical costs out of our salaries.” Mine companies often pay only hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in lease fees.
Rutile is 95% titanium dioxide and Sierra Leone’s deposits of rutile may account for as much as 30% of the world’s supply, and the U.S. government lists it as a “strategic metal” to be stockpiled by the U.S. defense department. Sierra Leone is pock-marked by destroyed farmland and displaced communities, all in the name of rutile and diamond minining.
Another poster made an allusion to the mid-east, but Africa I think is a much better example as oil actually has been good for the average person in some mid-east countries, but these are fairly stable and developed countries. To look at natural resource reserves in unstable and undeveloped countries, versus stable, one only has to look at Oman and Yemen (both oil-rich and neighbors, one has GDP per capita 10x of the other). West Africa is a much better comparison to Afghanistan than Kuwait or the UAE (so if you want to make the mid-east comparison, skip Dubai and look at Yemen).
For a good read (and my source for much of the info above) I would recommend Joan Baxter's Dust from our Eyes.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Oh, wait...
So are we going to get to see the price of gold plummet again like it did in the 90's? Could be very interesting times for everyone who bought into the Goldline / Beck fiasco.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Afghanistan isn't really a proper country. Its a load of seperate tribal areas with a border drawn around then that really represents where the surrounding countries end rather than where afghanistan starts. Is effectively ungovernable and has been throughout recorded history. The tribes come together against any outside aggressors but as soon as they're gone they turn in on themselves and the inter tribal conflicts start again. I don't expect this to change anytime soon.
The article did not confirm if any Unobtanium reserves were discovered.
If these are confirmed, it may hint at the reason Bin Laden has yet to be discovered - heavy post-production on his video releases have cunningly disguised the fact he is actually 8 foot tall. And blue.
"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jnr.
It only takes a geologist or a google to show this has been publicly known for decades. Google "Afgan mineral specimens" and add -ebay for better results. The gem minerals being sold from Afgan locales are primarily those found in lithium-rich pegmatite deposits. The gems are worth from $100-100,000 for something that fits in a ziplock baggy. Raw lithium is valuable, but in rail-car amounts. I'm just an amateur geologist and if you had asked me I could have listed 3rd world countries with rich undeveloped minerals.
The same is true of Pakistan. Neither country has heavy rail. Bolivia has rich mineral deposits and mines, and the natives are dirt-poor and poisoned by mining related pollution, so don't hold your breath for the Afgans/Pakis to become developed countries.
Think of the Irony!
Oh, you mean like how all of the oil wells that were drilled by U.S. companies and then "nationalized" keeps Iran from becoming corrupt and evil, and run by religious fanatics? Thank for explaining that. Your understanding of the issue is clearly different than mine.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What i can see happening is some Family Man getting into a meeting with a bunch of local folks and cutting a deal that goes like:
1 You don't shoot my people and make sure that that IED [redacted] doesn't get used on the roads we need (and will be building)
2 as we get the stuff mined and processed you get a cut of X%
3 my people of course will be helping you get rid of your "problems"
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
By George $1 trillion is a lot of money! And this is probably just the tip of the iceberg! Imagine how much more the geologists could find if they were not dodging bullets all the time. Now let us be practical and reasonable. Extraction will be much easier if the country is uninhabited. It is time to declare the native population surplus and obsolete and zero them out. Well ... perhaps not all ... We will put the "good ones" on reservations. Plenty of firewater. They will be happy.
There is no president, not Obama, not his successor, that will extract us from Afghanistan now. Now it's about real money. To leave would be to cede everything to the Chinese, who would march in *tomorrow* and annex Afghanistan as "West China." And there would be *fuck all* anyone would be able to do about it. And the Taliban would not survive either. The Chinese will not give quarter/tolerate that bullshit. They will not play fair.
The Great Game never died.
--
BMO
[1] I don't ignore tax/royalty/dividends that may go to the local government in my original post. I partially address this (mine leases in Mali that are in the hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars per year), but even if the mines are paying "fair" taxes (etc) to the governments, that implies very little about eradicating poverty in a country that is unstable undeveloped. See: Yemen vs Oman. When something like 90% of US foreign aid comes directly back to the United States (source: Baxter's book, which is full of cites, apologies I don't have it available), I am dubious that the taxes paid by natural resource extraction firms will be any more beneficial to the impoverished people of a region.
... as the "subsistence" farmers if their lives are better after the "economic activity" came to their region, and the answer is invariably: NO.
[2] Morila did get a $150M loan, yes (source: Joan Baxter). These types of loans usually call for community investment, that is the point of the World Bank (ostensibly anyway), to develop countries, not to make mine owners richer (although you can make a good argument for the inverse! See documentary: Life and Debt). As to whether they got this loan, I tend to trust Joan Baxter on this matter (she's a BBC correspondent, etc), although I don't have her book handy (I loaned it to a colleague).
[3] Claims of community reinvestment are now standard practice, sure. Note: you are citing mining companies press released. According to BP's web site they are "unaware of any reason" that would have caused their "share price movement." This just happens to be a timely example, but I think it's a good one, in that it's pretty obvious what caused their share price movement (I assume their argument would be that they are still quite profitable despite their current environmental catastrophe — while that may be true, this argument is spin, at best). I am extremely dubious of any claims made by mining interests as to what they are investing in communities. I'd rather believe neutral sources (like BBC reporters) who actually VISIT these areas and report on what they've seen. "Investing" $240,000 might mean they have a $200,000/yr consultant on payroll and he had $40,000 in expenses while "researching" how to help the community.
Quoting your press released, "in areas where there had been little economic activity other than subsistence farming..." Maybe those farmers were happy. Now there is "economic activity" there, but are the farmers more or less impoverished? I'll bet more. We are debating whether minerals in undeveloped countries bring people out of poverty, mind you, not whether mining companies pay taxes.
[4] Ghana is the most stable of western African countries, and thus the least applicable to Afghanistan. Nevertheless, I'm happy to talk about it. I'll be spending three months in Ghana this year doing infectious disease work, so I'm reasonably versed on its issues. As you stated, Ghana might be the best case example. Even so, a third of the country lives on less than a dollar a day, and although that percentage has come down a lot, and they may well meet their MDG for poverty by 2015, it's still not great. More than half the country lives on less than $2/day. 40 years ago South Korea and Ghana had the same per capita income (source: council on foreign relations). Still think mining has brought Ghanaians out of poverty? PPP GDP nowadays for Korea = $27000, Ghana = $1400. No contest as to who is still mired in poverty. I'll admit that I have a biased perspective, when I see children dying because their parents couldn't afford the twenty-six cent cost of a measles inoculation, three dollars for malaria treatment, or ten dollars for a bed net. And I have yet to witness mining or oil extraction doing much to help fix this. Sierra Leone, Nigeria, etc, the story is always the same
[5] To address the last sentence of your post, "But, the assumption that mines are inherently destructive, and that mining co
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
If you don't understand finance on a national level there's nothing wrong with that, but please do not make stupid comments. No, China does not own the mortgage on the US. What's more they are not the loan shark who has a debt they can call due whenever they like (which cannot be done with a mortgage by the way, the term of the loan is specified by contract).
What China has done is invest in US securities. They have purchased US Treasure bonds/notes/etc. What those are is IOUs. They basically say "The US government promises to pay you X American dollars on Y date." The specifics vary, some pay interest at defined times, others are ones that pay face value on a given date, and are purchased at a discount. Regardless, they are all IOUs, the government promises to pay you money later. It isn't a debt you can call due, only way to get money early is to sell them, for a discount, to someone else.
What's more you may have noticed that I said they are paid in American dollars. All US securities are paid out in US dollar amounts. Also, with the exception of TIPS, they are specified in a numerical amount. So a note will pay $1000, or will pay 3% interest or the like. That means if the value of the US dollar drops drastically, so does the value of your security. They don't pay you in your own currency, so you can't say "Well our currency is worth 6 times as much now so you owe us 6 times what the note says." They pay in US dollars.
Then there's the fact that a large part of China's currency having value and legitimacy is the reserves of US securities they hold. It is an investment, like any other, and without it, their currency would have problems. May seem silly to you but it is how the world works.
So this is not a case of China holding all the cards. It is more a case of economic mutually assured destruction. For China to attempt to liquidate all their US holdings would be disastrous to them as well. Putting all those bonds on the market would badly depress prices as it shook confidence of investors. China would have to suffer a massive loss to be able to do it, which would hurt their economy likely worse than it hurt the US's.
Also there's a very real possibility they could lose everything. So as I said, the notes are only worth something because they US says they are. Also it isn't as though they are physical notes/bonds anymore, they are just entries in a computer at the Department of Treasury. So, suppose China threatens the US with the liquidation of all bonds if the US doesn't let them in Afghanistan. In response the US confers with their allies and reaches a deal: This amounts to economic warfare and by US and International law, in the cases of war assets of the country can be frozen or nulled. Or all Chinese securities go away. The other countries like this, they also own US securities and they don't want to see the value of these tank. Now, all of a sudden, china has nothing. A massive amount of their net worth has been wiped out. They can't use the notes as leverage because they are void.
So please, enough with the "China owns the US!" crap. No, they don't, neither do any of the other holders of US notes (including the government itself and many US citizens).
This is a little too convenient I think. I wouldn't be surprised if this "find" eventually turns out to be much smaller than originally estimated.
-- INTJ Geek Blog http://www.intjgeek.com
This is probably the biggest curse one can heap upon afghanistan. Poor nations with tons of natural resources, can never make good use of these resources. I can see an Afghan situation now that promises more warfare, more involvement from nations in the Indian subcontinent (none of which will produce a positive result) and a population that will be plunged into even greater poverty than the current situation. Also, no one would probably want to be responsible for a mineral rich nation which has been the site of war for 30 years, whose ex-despotic leaders want power and will kill anyone in their way and whose population is now truly pissed with all the liberators and the oppressors fighting for control. I am not sure why Afghanistan deserves this.
I mean the fact that a land that has seen loads of war and oppression across a good portion of history sits on an element that amongst other things is rather famously used in mood stabilizers.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Ridiculous.
Someone needs to inform whomver wrote this story:
* Mining-company geologists have been scouring the globe for centuries, looking for mineral deposits that are economically recoverable.
* Minerals do not know about arbitrary political boundaries, making it highly unlikely that this "treasure-trove", if it exists, is wholly contained in Afghanistan.
* Minerals are heavy and hard to extract, which makes it paramount that there be things that Afghanistan has none of, such as rail lines, roads, ports, docks, electricity, coal, fresh water, chemicals, a stable government, a stable economy, and much more. Lacking just one of those items can make mining an impractical venture.
* No bank is going to loan the hundreds of millions to billions needed to even begin to extract these minerals. Banks do not loan money into war zones with no history of a stable government or protection of private property, and when the only source of quasi-stability, the US military, is on a countdown to leave the country.
Need more vespene gas
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
you didn't happen to notice the military suppression of democracy activists exactly a year ago in iran?
the usa does plenty of evil in the world, and is full of bible thumping assholes, but this is its first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/estabinto.htm
meanwhile, this is the beginning of iran's constitution:
http://www.iranonline.com/iran/iran-info/government/constitution-1.html
and this is a country where democracy has just been trumped by the revolutionary guards, where now you can wonder whether the country is a military autocracy or a theocracy. either way, officially, a bunch of grumpy old men interpret the will of god, somehow, and they now have their fingers on nuclear bombs. i don't care if you love the usa, hate the usa, love israel, hate israel, but a nuclear armed theocracy cum military autocracy should bother the hell out of you
but instead we have fools like you, who so hate the usa or israel, that they are willing to embrace an entity far far worse
friend: why can't you hate israel, hate the usa, AND hate iran?
why does your hatred of the usa and israel so blind your faculties that you wind up embracing a nuclear armed theocracy?
holy men who say they have a monopoly on interpretting the will of god, with nuclear weapons, isn't something that bothers you? no matter what the usa or israel does?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it