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Afghan Tech Minerals — Cure, Curse, Or Hype?
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.
It is all three.
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!".
"Scenic Afghanistan: The Nigeria of the Middle East"...
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
Why bother spending all that money on infratstructure to extract those resources when you can just continue to profit from poppies and opiate production? God knows there will never cease to be a demand for that.
1T isn't that much money to a nation. People talk like it is going to make Afganistan rich. Lets put it in prospective: Canada ~34M people 1.3T per annum GDP. Afganistan 28M people. So all the mineral wealth of Afganistan would enable roughly the per capita GDP of Canada for one year. But of course it will take a couple generations to mine all those resources. This only takes them from poor to slightly less poor.
The U.S.'s mistake doesn't excuse what the Taliban did, or change the fact that they were legitimate bad guys--of epic proportion.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It continues to amaze me how naive people are about how the world works, so I'm going to go ahead and break it down. This is a summary of what happens to resources in third world countries:
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I don't think the idea is that giving one poor religious fanatic a lot of money will suddenly make them not fanatic. The idea is supposed to be that if you get enough wealth into the society as a whole (i.e. not concentrated in a small, elite class), the standard of living rises enough that the people value their own lives over the chance to kill foreigners. We saw this happening in Iran's last election, when the growing merchant class wanted a government that was more likely to leave them alone than execute them or provoke a dozen other countries into attacking them. Obviously this doesn't hold true for every individual, but it is true for a majority of typical people.