No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode

A guy called into NPR this morning and said he had a worlds almanac from 1967 with an article about Afghanistan's mineral riches.

The refute the discovery by citing a report from 2007 that says "Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered nonfuel mineral resources".<p>How does someone previously citing <i>undiscovered</i> resources contradict the idea of those resources now being <i>discovered</i>?

Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was excited to hear about it.<p>I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be King", by Kipling.<p>Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real possibility that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is exciting news to me.

Even if the profits exist, "Who will be profiting" is a good question. Here are some points (1) Afghanistan's chunk of revenue from reserves will almost all come from Loyalties. They don't have engineers to design mines, no capital equipment to sell, no skilled labour, etc. At best, there will be a slight trickle of money to those serving food and cleaning at camps. (2) Loyalty revenue, in a country as corrupt as Afghanistan, is not going to go the people - at best a small slice might be used to build some infrastructure (3) All this foreign investment in the Country will lead to huge inflation which will make housing/food/etc even less affordable to the average afghani.<p>Source: I've lived-in and worked on mining projects in the developing world and saw all this stuff happen first hand.

I guess what I don't understand is why thought this was good news. Look around the world at countries whose economies depend on non-labor-intensive natural resource extraction. Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. These resources form a natural monopoly and quickly become the subject of political power.

Folks, let's finally bury this news as a PR-gag launched by Pentagon (or some other US government agency) spin-doctors. Why would they do it? People in western countries are tired of the war in Afghanistan. There's no real progress despite big plans of the western nations for this year alone. And until June 2010 western military forces have had more losses than in first three years of engagement there. So, because no one believes in the myths of "bringing freedom and democracy" and "building schools and civil society" anymore , we need a new reason to stay there: Resources! I'm not denying that they don't exist. But...<p>1. Until there is real analysis of the ground you cannot predict its size and value.<p>2. There's still a problem of how to export all that minerals from Afghanistan. Even with peaceful and unarmed population, the country doesn't have any notable infrastructure (trains, harbor), many of those areas are in mountains etc.

The wired article is interesting, and offers some perspective. But personally, the mineral news was news to me, and helps me understand a little more about what is at stake.

So does this mean that the current war in Afghanistan is a war for lithium?

New or not, this story in the NYTimes at least brought an old perspective to the new generation. Lot more people (due to Lithium take of the story) is now aware of the potential of Afghanistan, irrespective of the conspiracy theories etc.

NYT headline is an extremely powerful tool. It puts things into a spotlight. Why? There could be various reasons, to shift attention from an oil spill, for example. =)<p>And of course everyone who are spending (or were spent) money for a war (British, Russian, US) were aware what they would get as a reward.

If US knows already (before the war) that Afghanistan is terribly rich with minerals, so that explains why they did the war and settled down.<p>But how can we forget the reason US told us why they invading Afghanistan? Fighting Terrorism (under the name of AlQaida).<p>The image is clear now.<p>Edit: Assuming US knows that before war.