Afghanistan's Mineral Wealth Undermines NATO Mission
June 28, 2012 - 11:00pm
By Nathan William Meyer
It feels like Hollywood’s latest box office hit. Deep in the archives of a war torn country, a team of intrepid scientists discover forgotten maps leading to a buried treasure. Fantastical as it seems, such a scene played out in 2004 when American geologists found a cache of charts in the Afghan Geological Survey’s library dating from the days of Soviet occupation. Returned to the library after the NATO invasion, these Russian charts were protected in the geologists’ homes through the tumultuous 1990s since the data indicated that under Afghanistan’s mountains and dry plains, lay vast mineral deposits.
Guided by Soviet charts, aerial surveys in 2006 and 2007 covered 70 percent of the country and produced the most comprehensive geologic study in Afghan history, estimating the nation’s untapped mineral wealth at $1 trillion. In June 2010, the Pentagon confirmed reports that Afghanistan’s massive deposits could make it a major world producer of iron and copper. In fact, the lithium deposits in Ghanzi Province may rival Bolivia’s for the world’s largest title. Additionally, the country’s Samti gold deposit is estimated to hold 20-24 metric tons and according to the U.S. Geological Survey, a single million-ton deposit of rare earth elements (REE) in Helmand Province makes Afghanistan the holder of the world’s sixth largest REE reserves.
Today the Afghan government believes this mineral wealth could exceed $3 trillion. But, as one should always ask about buried treasure, is it cursed? Whether the potential wealth raises generations out of poverty or plunges them into exploitation and civil war is the real question here.
“I wish we had discovered water,” the former Saudi oil minister Sheikh Ahmad Yamani grimly stated. He offers a sober reminder that like so many resource-rich countries, Afghanistan’s patrimony could irrevocably damage this fragile state. Landlocked, underdeveloped, undereducated, ethnically fractious, insanely rich, and surrounded by powerful neighbors, Afghanistan is a prime candidate for the resource curse—that paradox wherein resource-rich countries at best, suffer poor development and economic growth, and at worst, are torn apart by brutal governments and civil war.
http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2012/06/29/afghanistans-mineral-wealth-undermines-nato-mission
