Without something to juice the Afghan economy, the West is already playing the long game to lose. It can hold parts of Afghanistan at great cost for many years, but it can't indefinitely deny the Taliban influence or bases of operation. At some point, the West will simply lose the will to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into a bottomless hole.<p>Since there appears to be no stable economy in Afghanistan that is feasible to build, maintain, and defend, the Taliban's supporters have an incentive to invest, and its recruits have incentive to join up. Ambivalent forces in Afghanistan that might help thwart the Taliban are disincentivized to do so, because there's no path to victory, and they'd be subject to reprisals when the effort failed.<p>Vast mineral resources could change that. Saudi Arabia has approximately the same population as Afghanistan, but enjoys a massively better standard of living, a far stronger central government, and operates an effectively modern social safety net. If mineral investment can set that trend in motion in Afghanistan, the state may have an actual path to stability. Which alters the equation there in a way that disfavors the Taliban.<p>Everyone seems to be citing the case of the Congo. But the Congo isn't essentially occupied by the rest of Western Civilization. Apart from foreign corporations, which are agnostic to which regime controls the country, nobody has a stake in the Congo. That's not the case in Afghanistan.<p>This seems like a positive development.
The title of the article's a little misleading. The US discovered some treasure maps with a big red 'X marks the spot' that the Soviets made in the 80's<p>from the second page -<p><i>In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.</i>
The world has a severe shortage of opiate-based pain killers:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy-based_medicines" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy...</a><p>Opium poppies grow well in Afghanistan and farmers already know how to cultivate and prepare it for shipping in large quantities.<p>Potential mineral riches are spiffy and all, but it seems foolish to toss money at projects which require large-scale construction and worker training when an existing high-demand product already exists to productively employ the populace.<p>These folks don't yet have infrastructure capable of large-scale mineral extraction. Why not build upon useful agricultural exports and start from there?
This story is pretty weak. What they apparently have are a bunch of anomalies from extremely coarse geophysical surveys. Aerial surveys even! That's about four steps from having deposits, in the same way that having a bunch of startup ideas is about four steps away from an exit. Each of those steps results in major winnowing.<p>The next logical phase of exploration would be having geologists hiking and driving around on these prospects to try to understand the specific geology of each. If things look good then maybe a program of surface level geophysical surveys, which are far more precise than aerial surveys (though still pretty fuzzy). Finally some (very expensive) exploratory drilling, then a lot more drilling to establish with some certainty the size of the deposit. Now you have a mineable property.<p>By the way, at every step you need a bunch of skilled people on location who currently have plenty of work opportunities in non-war zones.<p>Sure, there are almost certainly good mines to be found since it's a huge country and mineral exploration has been on hold for thirty years and was pretty spotty before then. But saying that aerial geophysics surveys confirm this is pretty funny.<p>EDIT: It looks like some ground geophysical surveys have been done as well. But no drilling as far as I can tell from the story.
"Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country."<p>Can anyone in the know describe how this works? It sounds interesting.
This reminds me of the guy who dated the somewhat gawky looking girl at high school who ended up blossoming into the most gorgeous young woman you could imagine. Either that, or the US has, behind the scenes, known about this all along.
Wow, victory was in doubt because the motivation to run a prolonged war over nothing wears out. That's why everyone lost in Afghanistan, it was hard to capture but had little worth capturing. Now that money is at stake, victory from a serious war effort is more likely.<p>I'm betting $10 on a USA victory now.
So they are proposing we trade Oil dependency to Lithium dependency.<p>But there are HUGE deposits of Lithium in the USA.<p>You know who owns the rights to them? Canadian corporations.<p>They refuse to mine them because it's not economically beneficial (yet) they want the price to go up.
I wish the money goes to the Afghan people. I wish also if it did, they don't build another Dubai, but focus on teaching children and make a new enlightened generation.
Bolivia had better watch out for falling lithium prices.<p>When a government depends on resources for their revenue, they are setting themselves up for failure when prices fall.<p>Norway could have been in a similar situation with oil, but they avoided it:<p><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabd...</a><p>Hopefully Bolivia learns something from Norway and this does not happen to them (Venezuela definitely didn't take a hint).<p>Similarly, if Afghanistan does not set itself up well, it could have the same resource dependency problem.
And here I thought the only reason we were in Afghanistan was for the [opium](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cultivation_1994-2007b.PNG" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cu...</a>) and the potentially lucrative [oil pipeline](<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline</a>). Now that we've discovered mineral riches, I'm guessing it's time to bring some Haliburton-style capitalism (I mean democracy) to the Afghan people.
It looks like we'll be there for a very long time.
The thing I don't understand about this is why the US would be prospecting in Afghanistan in the first place. Is there any valid reason why the US should have made this discovery? (Genuine question; I can't think of any reasons.)
A trillion dollars? Really? What a round figure. Wait a minute ... that reminds me of something that I read recently. Now, what was it? Oh yeah, it was this observation by Vijay Prashad over at CounterPunch.<p><a href="http://counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html" rel="nofollow">http://counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html</a><p>"On May 30, at 10:06am, the United States exchequer turned over its trillionth dollar to the U. S. armed forces for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A trillion dollars is a lot of money. As my friends at the National Priorities Project put it, if I made a $1 million a year, it would take me a million years to earn a trillion dollars. The U. S. government expended the same amount in nine years, fighting two wars. So what did our trillion tax dollars buy?"<p>Alan Greenspan: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” (The Age of Turbulence, 2007, p. 463).<p>Me: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Afghanistan war is largely about gas and mineral wealth” (My unpublished international bestselling debut, 2011, p. 231).<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline</a>
Awesome, now the US can power our gas/oil-based cars with Iraq and our electric battery-powered cars with Afghanistan.<p>(regarding the supposedly huge lithium find there)
East Afghanistan Trading Company. Est 2010.<p>[Like the East India Trading Company led to 150 years of British rule, I just hope history does not repeat itself.]
As much as I would like to consider the outlook that US can possibly improve Afghanistan as an industrialized nation, create jobs, increase GDP and whatnot... it just boils down to historical autonomy. Afghanistan, no matter how many years they are at war and political turmoil, does not want any outside entity breathing down their throats no matter how "benevolent" their intentions are. If the US only came in as an economy-oriented entity instead of a war-figure, then the story might change.<p>This is not going to be a good example, but unless you give consent, do you want some overwhelming authority barging into your household saying that they struck gold while you and your significant other are having a disagreement (and that you've been doing this and resolving for a while)?<p>But then again, who am I to steer things like these? Government contractors make up a good percentage of our economy, technology included.
Okay, anybody on this thread who think the Taliban is a good thing in any degree for Afghanistan has no idea what they are talking about. They have almost completely destroyed that beautiful country.
No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1T Afghan Motherlode<p><a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430125" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430125</a>
I guess I'll stick my neck out, point to the political discussion and ask "what does this have to do with hacker news?". If you want politics, reddit has plenty. If you want a nice discussion site, you can't have politics.
I hope 80% of the returns are invested back in Afghanistan <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle</a>
This might actually not be good for Afghanistan:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease</a>
Now that these wars are paying off, what's the timeframe for invading Iran? Let's face it, we all know some secret CIA operation has been drawing up detailed plans, running simulations, and playing war games with Iran for years. Now that we flank them on left and right, all they need is the right Administration. 15 years is my guess. 10 if there's a major terrorist attack that can be tied to Iran.