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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.
This seems to be a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Bush warned us about this long ago and tried to save us.
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.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
El Reg just thinks it is a complete PR exercise.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/18/afghanistan_mineral_report/
Extracting the wealth is neither simple or sensible.
wot no sig
Again - no idea whether this is true or just hype, but thought it was worth mentioning.
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.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Poor religious nutballs will just become rich religious nutballs. And if anyone thinks that the Afghan mainstream aren't a bunch of religious nutballs, go rent a documentary called Afghan Star (about the Afghan equivalent of "American Idol") and watch what happens when a female contestant dares to dance on stage.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I've always thought what der Führer Shrub advocated was to chop off the left wing... hand so that right hand is accountable to no one and need not share anything with anyone.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
What are THOSE AFGHANS doing sitting on OUR MINERALS?
We have people in our country (the U.S.) and in other countries who want access to the resources of Afghanistan. They will (and probably already have) petitioned their governments for [military] protection as they attempt to claim these resources. If there is enough money in these resources, there will be enough military presence installed in a region to protect the people and equipment used to exorcise the resources. The by-product of a successful military protection campaign is that a region will also become more pacified and civilized. But a balance must be achieved. That balance is to maintain sufficient military strength while also keeping those who might be in opposition as pacified as possible. Without that balance, you have rebellion and revolution.
So, in short, be armed with weapons and keep the locals happy.
Well if it's "unobtanium" I'm sure it'll resolve itself peacefully. That worked out great for everyone.
No, wait.
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!".
So will the good ol' USA be "liberating" Afghanistan now?
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.
And I think it's almost sure Soviets knew it too... Such things are not something to be hidden, not even in 20th century :).
Number is just for news, so round and nice... Real number is probably few times, if not order of magnitude, bigger than that.
Reason is probably PR... In current crisis, what better way to renew economy vigor thab some vast riches "we can have just by keeping military there?"
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
There are valuable minerals everywhere. The question is are the minerals worth more than it would cost to mine them.
That was the announcement in 1974 courtesy of the Pentagon. Need we explore this further?
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
I am from Venezuela, and our experience with oil is that it's more of a bane. Rich countries rarely arise where there are valuable mineral resources. These merely become corrupt underdevelopped monoproducing big mines controlled by an economical and political elite or neo-communist populist totalitarian ruler.
But it looks like they finally found Whopping Mineral Deposits in Afghanistan.
Time to go after those WMDs, folks.
One of the prevailing sentiments is "the Russians found it first and forgot about it." They didn't forget about it, they were too busy fighting insurgents to ever exploit the resources. Then, once they got kicked out, the nation got taken over by tribal infighting and eventually the Taliban. They seemed a little to concerned with actively driving their nation into some sort of religious dark age to consider maybe making use of their natural resources. The Taliban were legitimate bad guys. It's kind of a shame that the war on terror has gotten them mislabeled as some sort of a neo-con boogey man than the dark age, koran-thumping hicks that they were / are.
If you want to blame anyone for not getting the mineral rush ball rolling for ten+ years, why not blame the guys that were in charge?
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Afghanis realizing the benefits of minerals in their contry is about as likely to happen as finding yellowcake uranium in Nigeria.
So KBR get more gubbermint contracts and the Afghan landscape gets as raped as their population is being.
Democracy - doesn't it make you all warm inside.
Todd: I hope it proves as delicious as the farmers that grew them
M$ tactics deployed by DOD
If you stop to think about it what purpose does the Iraq and Afghanistan wars serve the US? It is not about "Democratization" as some have said as both countries have been allowed to reform under demagogues. Iraq could have been about oil but the PRC has most of the contracts. It could be about Billions to be made by insider contractions "servicing" the war.
... from which heroin can be refined, earning billions of dollars a year (well, nobody knows the true number). Just one problem with that!
If there's lithium etc., then someone can pour vast amounts of money into Afghanistan without having to admit that they're either funding narcotics or enriching corrupt officials. Oh, and metals are less easy to smuggle than poppy syrup, which also gives the recognized government an advantage in trading. So it becomes possible -- hardly likely, but possible -- that Karzai or his successor will be able to afford a real army and stand up against the Taliban.
The place will still be run by warlords, just not by druglords. I don't know that I care much either way.
... then we found the reason behind the war.
Scientia est Potentia
Hey, major resources in developing countries has worked out so well in the past right!? ...input list of third world countries beset by war, corruption, famine and secretarian violence here..... oh maybe not. (stolen from the daily show or colbert report can't remember which)
"It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
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.
Huh? please do tell us the wisdom of your reasoning. Do you mean eradicating the poppies? What if every country legalized heroin, cocaine and mj, would not the price come down?
Get up!
...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.
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.
I was talking about mining.
For them to realize the mineral wealth, they would have to destroy a lot of nature to do it. And things like tailings piles leaching into their water supplies...
THL phish sticks
I thought the DOD used them first. They got the idea from the British Empire.
Anything can be found funny, from a certain point of view.
Whats flamebait about this? Do you honestly expect that America, who hover on the brink of complete economic collapse, is doing this for free? One of the reasons for America huge deficit is this war.... and they just "found" a trillion dollars.. Is it truly so unreasonable to assume at some point, with hundreds of thousand s of soldiers on the ground in the area that the USA will clear thier throat and mention the cost?
sig loading.......
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.
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.
Obviously the reason the mineral wealth wasn't released years ago is because Republicans were in charge of the US government. They wanted to steal it, of course, but the only way to do that is to keep it secret. Why do you think Bush really wanted to invade Iraq? Remember that Iraq was under oil-export restrictions! Booting out Saddam allowed the restrictions to be removed, and incidently allowed US interests to start stealing oil, since they were controlling the place. Such thefts are quite typical of Republican policies--read a good history text if you don't believe me.
This idea that american GOPers are somehow the only politicians and businessmen in the world that launch aggressive campaigns to take control of natural resources is absurd. The majority of people with any kind of power want more power. Their position on the political spectrum is irrelevant. Their desires are what counts. The only difference is who they pander to, and sometimes that isn't all that different.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
---
"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/
"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."
Afghan Tech Minerals
__ Curse
__ Cure
__ Hype
__ Cowboy Neal's sandbox
__ Microsoft's real reason for going to Asia
__ Google is indexing the minerals right now
__ Other
Give that man a cookie. I mean, jeebus, all one has to do is look at the sources currently being exploited for diamonds, oil, gold, etc. Do you want to vacation or raise your kids in Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, or even Saudi Arabia? It seems like the only time stability occurs is when the ruling junta has enough power and outside help to keep the entire country's population well under control.
I guess it was easier when you had a huge corporation with government backing, and a population of uneducated, uninformed, largely unarmed folk who were glad for anything they could get out of the deal. Now you've got huge corporations with government backing facing a more educated, well connected population with cell phone, satellite and Internet access, and a phalanx of groups itching for the chance to sell a few hundred thousand more AKs and RPGs to equip the next insurgency.
To be perfectly honest, if I discovered anything of value underneath Afghanistan - I'm not sure I wouldn't keep my damn mouth shut until the place was something more than a shooting gallery in the round.
Oh, PLEASE, won't someone think of the Miners!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Much of this is not new. I beleive that the British figured most of this out in the 1930s or earlier. I found information about iron and coal deposits in Afghanistan at the beginning of the war. I don't remember seeing anything about lithium though, but it was 10 years ago when I did that research.
... or both.
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.
that Afghanistan has $1 Trillion in mineral wealth? Did they conduct field surveys? Why were they looking for minerals? I thought we were there for terrorists?
Opinion:=TMyOpinion.Create(Me);
This idea that american GOPers are somehow the only politicians and businessmen in the world that launch aggressive campaigns to take control of natural resources is absurd.
No, but they're pretty good at doing it.
Why are we in Iraq again?
--
BMO
As the article mentions, and as I mentioned to everyone I knew when I originally read it, the news about minerals in Afghanistan is old. It is a poorly kept secret that the USGS has satellite surveys of mineral maps for the entire planet. Those maps were further enforced by studies done on the ground, in the field in Afghanistan.
The ONLY reason this was brought up is because the war is falling apart. The "war on terror" meme is losing steam. Allies of the United States are jumping ship left and right. Even the Brits are making noise about wanting to get out. Since "fear" isn't working as well anymore, the powers that be are turning to another, nearly universal emotional trigger... greed. Money fixes everything. Right? Right?!
The parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan are blatant. In Iraq, we were promised that Iraq's oil resources would be easily tapped and could fund the war effort plus rebuild the country. Replace "oil" with "minerals" and otherwise the dialogue reads the same.
I used to read a site... whatreallyhappened.com. There are some pretty fringe views expressed there, but the site is worthwhile to get a view of "the other side" of the conflict and propaganda that is "anti-American". That site is where I first learned about the SCO, and other key regional alliances that are being built to counter-act United States influence in the region. The reality of the situation is that we're over there for resources. We don't give two shits about democracy or freedom or any crap like that. We want oil, and resources and Afghanistan happens to be either a source of, or a transit route for a lot of our economy needs. I use "we" loosely. I certainly don't support the effort, and I realize that we're going to bankrupt our country and end up worse off for trying to steal from others. Karma is a big fat bitch. You can only beat it back with guns and bombs for so long.
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.
Never once in history of multi-national corporations that a place where wealth was found did the inhabitants get rich. RANDOM EXAMPLES: East india trading company, California Gold Rush, Alaska Gold Rush, Oil (almost everywhere it was found), Diamonds, sugar cane, ALCOA, Uranium in Indian country, and there are hundreds of others. Corporate wealth does not make the locals rich.
6.8SPC TR of 550, l xwind at 6, drift rt at 26" drops 77". AT has 503 ft-lbs at 1403 fps. FT 0.86
"After all, this is the guy who tried to kill my dad at one time" - Bush
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_Afghanistan
A number of theories have been advanced for the Soviet action. These interpretations of Soviet motives do not always agree – what is known for certain is that the decision was influenced by many factors – that in Leonid Brezhnev's words the decision to enter Afghanistan was truly "no simple decision." Two factors were certain to have figured heavily in Soviet calculations. The Soviet Union, interested in establishing a "cordon sanitaire" of friendly or neutral states on its frontiers, was increasingly alarmed at the unstable, unpredictable situation on its southern border. Perhaps as important, the Brezhnev doctrine declared that the Soviet Union had a "zone of responsibility" where it had to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country. Presumably Afghanistan was a friendly regime that could not survive against growing pressure from the Pakistan backed islamist resistance without direct assistance from the Soviet Union.
The government of Babrak Karmal faced several challenges. Strong connection to the Soviets prevented popular acceptance of the legitimacy of his government. Even though the Parchamis, themselves, had been among the groups most viciously persecuted by the Khalqis, their identification with 'Anti-Islam' Marxism and Soviet 'infidels' was not forgiven. Indeed, the decimation of their members forced the Soviets to insist on reconciliation between the two factions. The purging of Parchamis had left the military forces so dominated by Khalqis that the Soviets had no choice but to rely upon Khalqi officers to rebuild the army.
Soviet miscalculation of what was required to crush Afghan resistance further aggravated the government's situation. The Afghan army was expected to carry the burden of suppressing opposition, which was to be done quickly with Soviet support. As the war of pacification dragged on for years, the Babrak Karmal government was further weakened by the poor performance of its army.
I see no credible evidence of what you suggested. Looks like a country decide to try Leninist socialism, and once again, the US assumed Soviet interference was cause enough in order to intervene with military force. If you really believe the Soviet Union had no right to interfere with a country on it's own border, then I can't imagine what you believe about the United States and it's various adventures around the globe.
PS: Large foreign military force carrying the banner of freedom and trying to reduce the influence of militants based in Pakistan sounds awfully fucking familiar, doesn't it?
1. U.S. provides resources and equipment needed to dig.
...
2. Major announcement released that the U.S. has grossly over-estimated the volume and value.
3. Poverty and war continues
4. U.S. announces that they have recovered ealier than expected from the recession.
(Unmentionable) Profit!
To put things in perspective here what was found is some summaries of some surveys from the 1980s from Russian mineral exploration. I'm not sure how new that is since western companies have had access to 1980s Russian seismic data used in oil exploration in Afganistan probably since the mid 1990s.
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.
Nice conspiracy theory as far as it goes but you might want to leave Zimbabwe off the list because that just makes it far too silly while the reality there is tragic.
True but there would be a lot of inflation too. I know of people working in oil fields saying that coffee shops have to pay $25 per hour to get workers because of the oil boom. More money with the same amount of goods just equals more expensive goods. They would have to import a lot of the stuff with the money to keep inflation down I think.
I would assume they already knew about Afg's mineral wealth before going in there. But who knows.
Phase 1: Find a reason for legitimate military presence.
Phase 2: Establish a government over which some influence can be exerted.
Phase 3: Ooh, we found some stuff we didn't know was there before.
Phase 4: We can "help" your country's future by "protecting" (y)our mining companies with continued military presence.
Phase 5: Profit.
See how something unexpectedly worked out for phase 4.
The problem is that 1 trillion dollars is not that much. Afghanistan's population is 30 million and assuming the wealth is extracted over 100 years, we get 10^12/30/10^6/100=333 dollars per person per year. Assuming that half goes to foreigners providing capital and expertise, we get 167 dollars. Considering the probably very substantial environmental and opportunity costs, it may not be worth it at all.
Yes, they are doing it "for free". (At least in the sense that our Afghanistan venture is a snipe hunt for high level Al-Queda organizers.) Even if there were trillions of dollars "in them thar hills", Afghanistan does not have the infrastructure required to move that mineral wealth outside of the mountains. It will also take more than a generation to "civilize" the population to the point where they can conduct operations without getting shot or blown up. The China development scenario just can't work in this instance. (At least, not without a 20 year preparatory effort.)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
... knew about Afghanistan's mineral wealth nearly 2400 years ago. It's sure contributed a lot to the region's stability and prosperity over the millennia since.
(Actually, in some smaller provinces it perhaps has ; but like most of Central Asia for most of the time, it's been a question of subsistence farming with minor creaming of money from travelling traders for food, shelter and fodder. Scrub that "Central Asia" bit - most of the world.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"