Massive mineral deposit found in Afghanistan.

deleted · Jun 15, 2010

Massive mineral deposit found in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — 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.

The 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.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. Afghanistan has a national mining law, written with the help of advisers from the World Bank, but it has never faced a serious challenge.

“No one has tested that law; no one knows how it will stand up in a fight between the central government and the provinces,” observed Paul A. Brinkley, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the Pentagon team that discovered the deposits.

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.

The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.

“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”

Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.

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.

During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

“There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.

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.

The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.

Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.

So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, and the quantities are large enough to make Afghanistan a major world producer of both, United States officials said. Other finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan.

Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. Pentagon officials said that their initial analysis at one location in Ghazni Province showed the potential for lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which now has the world’s largest known lithium reserves.

For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.

“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/wo...o_interstitial
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with all that metal, We should build something really big, like a building, or a nice giant blackberry. as big as Epcot, only bigger. :coffee:

thedope · Jun 15, 2010

Ain't it.

Nyxx · Jun 15, 2010

I think they (US/former Soviet Union goverments) have known about this for some time, doppler radar from satelites could have detected this. That would explain these goverments always fucking with the Afghan people, making sure they had their foot in the door to pillage this land like they do everything else.
I am sure Haliburton will be there to help set up some infrastructure for the "benefit" of the poor Afghan people.

Justin_Hale · Jun 15, 2010

I lol'd at this comment from a related article

If the mineral deposits are valuable enough, it might be easier (and probably cheaper) to tunnel in from a port city, and mine from below. Let the locals do what that want to each other on the surface.
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deleted · Jun 15, 2010

..

lillallyloukins · Jun 16, 2010

Nyxx said:

I think they (US/former Soviet Union goverments) have known about this for some time, doppler radar from satelites could have detected this. That would explain these goverments always fucking with the Afghan people, making sure they had their foot in the door to pillage this land like they do everything else.
I am sure Haliburton will be there to help set up some infrastructure for the "benefit" of the poor Afghan people.
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ofcourse... and now Jamaica too....

broony · Jun 16, 2010

well obama did go into to office said he wanted nothing with iraq and went straight to afghanistan.

Nyxx · Jun 16, 2010

broony said:

well obama did go into to office said he wanted nothing with iraq and went straight to afghanistan.
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The US has had a strong presence in Afghanistan for a long time.

deleted · Jun 16, 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USZzH1L6nKU"]YouTube- Nirvana - Lithium [Live]

lillallyloukins · Jun 17, 2010

orison319 said:

YouTube- Nirvana - Lithium [Live]
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NUTS!!!!! i miss his song writing if ever there was a man who looked good in a dress, it was him!

deleted · Jun 17, 2010

hey, i look good in a dress...:toetap05:

lillallyloukins · Jun 17, 2010

could this thread have been "Massive mineral deposit found in orisons dress"? then? arf arf

deleted · Jun 17, 2010

some NPK for growing my weed maybe..

lillallyloukins · Jun 17, 2010

:smilielol5: yeah.... fertilizer.... arf arf :sifone:

yonosoymedico · Jun 18, 2010

sooo...we're staying indefinitely like Mccain said...100 years or so, till the mines are running smoothly...also, on a related note, our next mission!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7828242/More-water-on-the-moon-than-previously-thought.html

ChronicTom · Jun 18, 2010

Yes, there seem to be a lot of logistical things in the way. So, it's fascinating that there was talk of these minerals all the way back in the '70s, possibly the '80s with the Soviets. And here we are in 2010, and they know it's there. But what can be done with it is still a huge question.
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http://afghanistan.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/15/why-all-the-talk-about-minerals-now/

yonosoymedico · Jun 18, 2010

http://infowars.net/articles/june2010/150610Afghanistan.htm

deleted · Jun 18, 2010

While the "discovery" of Afghanistan's trillion-dollar mineral deposits may be news to some, it's merely a confirmation of what Afghans already knew.

Fairly extensive geological surveys of Afghanistan have been conducted by the Soviet Union as early as the 1980s, perhaps even earlier. The resultant understanding of Afghanistan's wealth even graced the pages of the country's middle school curriculum, which once boasted about vast reserves of copper, iron, gold, natural gas, coal, and precious and semiprecious stones.

The Pentagon only put a hefty price tag on these unexploited resources, potentially prompting the increasingly skeptical Afghans to ask questions about America's real war motives.

Afghans have long held the view that invaders of their land are motivated at least in part by Afghanistan's rich natural resources. With their best knowledge of history, some from among the mostly illiterate population would muse on why the British would return to the barren mountains of Afghanistan after a snuff-out of their forces in the first Anglo-Afghan War. The resource-hungry Russians came next, incurring heavy losses. And now -- voila!

Afghan explanations about the woeful state of the war effort in their country contrast sharply from what emanates from the White House or DC-based think tanks. Again, skeptics muse: Why is it that with thousands of soldiers, billions of dollars and all of its technological sophistication -- drones, satellites, B52s, infrared imaging, you name it -- has the US failed to capture or kill one man: Osama bin Laden?

And if you put this together with why America may actually be aiding Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, a comprehensive picture emerges: the Americans are prolonging their stay in that country for some ulterior motive.

And the Pentagon, counterpart to the one-time British War Office, just explained why -- it's the minerals.

Of course this may sound outlandish and perhaps even somewhat silly, but the Afghans are not alone. Others also view the announcement as a potential justification for the increasingly unpopular war. Yet others are exploring the possibility of short-term benefits the U.S. can draw from these minerals.

The clumsy timing and tone of this announcement suggests a failure of public relations on Pentagon's part. It has unleashed the Pandora's box of skepticism both at home and abroad. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ahmad-shuja/afghan-mineral-discovery_b_612217.html

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