By Daniel Tencer
July 15, 2010 “RawStory” – A New York Times report announcing the US has found $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan has some observers wondering if the news is part of a public-relations effort to bolster support for the Afghanistan war as the mission’s death toll continues to climb.
An article in Sunday’s New York Times announces that “previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”
The article cites an “internal Pentagon memo” as saying Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium” — the mineral used in the production of rechargeable batteries, such as those found in cell phones and laptops. It cites “a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists” as having made the discovery.
While the dollar estimate — $1 trillion — may be new, it’s hardly news that Afghanistan sits on rich mineral deposits. In a 2007 press release, the US Geological Survey announced that Afghanistan possesses “significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources.” And, as Marc Ambinder reports on his Atlantic blog, the Soviet Union was aware of Afghanistan’s mineral potential as early as 1985.
“The ‘discovery’ of Afghanistan’s minerals will sound pretty silly to old timers,” a “retired former senior US official” tells Politico’s Laura Rosen. “When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [US government], the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor.”
So why is this news now? To many, the story’s timing suggests a Pentagon public relations campaign designed to extend public support for the war with the hope that, in time, Afghanistan may be able to raise itself out of abject poverty.
“Why the story broke in the NYT on Sunday could be linked to a desire by the Pentagon to create a reason why US troops might want to stick around in Afghanistan for some time to come,” writes Paul Jay at the Huffington Post. “Things are not going very well on the ground and the promise of vast mineral riches would sound enticing.”
Some “veteran Afghan hands detect an echo of [Gen. David] Petraeus’ effort to ‘put a little more time on the Washington clock’ for the Afghanistan surge, as he once described his public relations strategy to buy time in the US for the Iraq surge,” Rosen reports.
Indeed, the US military’s need to shore up support for the war effort may be becoming critical. Recent news reports indicate that Afghan President Hamid Karzai may have lost his faith in the US military’s ability to carry out the war. And Gareth Porter at IPS reports that US forces are facing “the spectre of a collapse of U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan in coming months comparable to the one that occurred in the Iraq War in late 2006.”
That context leads blogger Steve Hynd to declare that the Times piece is “a conveniently timed zombie story” that was “resurrected yet again for political purposes.”
Even if one were to take the Times story at face value, the practical benefits of Afghanistan’s mineral deposits are in doubt — not least because of the country’s weak central government, corruption and a lack of skilled labor.
“Under even the rosiest scenarios, it does not appear the new wealth will change dynamics quickly enough in Afghanistan to aid the US military effort there,” reports Alan Greenblatt at NPR.
[Daniel] Markey [of the Council on Foreign Relations] says he’s nervous that Afghanistan will fall prey to the “resource curse,” under which nations that base their economies primarily on natural resources fall prey to conflict and corruption — forces that are already endemic in Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan can make a lot of money from this, but this is the way to make money that attracts corruption,” says S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
“A scramble for Afghanistan’s resources would simply intensify the tribal warfare that’s already taking place in that devastated country,” writes Jacob Heilbrun at the Huffington Post. “The sad truth is that precious natural resources are, more often than not, a curse for the Third World nations that harbor them.”
======
Say What?
Afghanistan Has $1 Trillion in Untapped Mineral Resources?
By Blake Hounshell
July 14, 2010 “Foreign Policy” – I’ll get to the main point in a little bit, but bear with me for a second … A series of recent news stories has deeply damaged the Obama administration’s case for continued patience with U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign, which has shown little discernable progress despite the best efforts tens of thousands of additional American troops and an all-star lineup of top military officers.
First, let’s talk about Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president. Remember the chatter earlier this year about how he’d gone crazy, threatening to join the Taliban and all that? That discussion died down a little after Karzai checked all the right boxes during his May visit to Washington.
Then came the “peace jirga” — after which Karzai abruptly fired his intelligence and interior ministers, reputed to be two of the most competent members of his cabinet (technically, they resigned). The intelligence minister, Amrullah Saleh, told his side of the story Friday in a jaw-dropping interview with the Times. According to Saleh, Karzai no longer believes the West can win the war and is looking to cast his lot with Pakistan and the Taliban; an unnamed source told the paper that Karzai had suggested that the Americans had carried out a rocket attack on the peace jirga. Karzai has apparently also asked the United Nations to remove Mullah Omar from a key U.N. blacklist.
Next came revelations that Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, is still deeply involved with the Afghan Taliban (yeah, blow me over with a feather) despite heated denials to the contrary.
Meanwhile, the drive for Kandahar looks to be stalled in the face of questionable local support for Karzai’s government, the Taliban is killing local authorities left and right, and the corruption situation has apparently gotten so bad that the U.S. intelligence community is now keeping tabs on which Afghan officials are stealing what.
In short, things don’t look good for the United States … which makes me suspicious of the timing of this attention-grabbing James Risen story in the Times, which opens with this mind-boggling lede:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.”
Wow! Talk about a game changer. The story goes on to outline Afghanistan’s apparently vast underground resources, which include large copper and iron reserves as well as hitherto undiscovered reserves lithium and other rare minerals.
Read a little more carefully, though, and you realize that there’s less to this scoop than meets the eye. For one thing, the findings on which the story was based are online and have been since 2007, courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey. More information is available on the Afghan mining ministry’s website, including a report by the British Geological Survey (and there’s more here). You can also take a look at the USGS’s documentation of the airborne part of the survey here, including the full set of aerial photographs.
Nowhere have I found that $1 trillion figure mentioned, which Risen suggests was generated by a Pentagon task force seeking to help the Afghan government develop its resources (looking at the chart accompanying the article, though, it appears to be a straightforward tabulation of the total reserve figures for each mineral times current the current market price). According to Risen, that task force has begun prepping the mining ministry to start soliciting bids for mineral rights in the fall.
Don’t get me wrong. This could be a great thing for Afghanistan, which certainly deserves a lucky break after the hell it’s been through over the last three decades.
But I’m (a) skeptical of that $1 trillion figure; (b) skeptical of the timing of this story, given the bad news cycle, and (c) skeptical that Afghanistan can really figure out a way to develop these resources in a useful way. It’s also worth noting, as Risen does, that it will take years to get any of this stuff out of the ground, not to mention enormous capital investment.
Moreover, before we get too excited about lithium and rare-earth metals and all that, Afghanistan could probably use some help with a much simpler resource: cement.
According to an article in the journal Industrial Minerals, “Afghanistan has the lowest cement production in the world at 2kg per capita; in neighbouring Pakistan it is 92kg per capita and in the UK it is 200kg per capita.” Afghanistan’s cement plants were built by a Czech company in the 1950s, and nobody’s invested in them since the 1970s. Most of Afghanistan’s cement is imported today, mainly from Pakistan and Iran. Apparently the mining ministry has been working to set up four new plants, but they are only expected to meet about half the country’s cement needs.
Why do I mention this? One of the smartest uses of development resources is also one of the simplest: building concrete floors. Last year, a team of Berkeley researchers found that “replacing dirt floors with cement appears to be at least as effective for health as nutritional supplements and as helpful for brain development as early childhood development programs.” And guess what concrete’s made of? Hint: it’s not lithium.
UPDATE: Missed this Wall Street Journal story earlier. Money quote:
[T]he Mines Ministry has long been considered among Afghanistan’s most corrupt government departments, and Western officials have repeatedly expressed reservations about the Afghan government awarding concessions for the country’s major mineral deposits, fearful that corrupt officials would hand contracts to bidders who pay the biggest bribes — not who are best suited to actually do the work.
Buzz It
Logging you in…
Nick Tucker · 
Ex Pat · 
oyate · 
Check Spelling
Sean · 
Mike · 
tarazan · 
arthurdecco · 
artur · 
Vox Populai · 
comment feed