U.S.
troops in Afghanistan: Does the country's newly-revealed
mineral wealth
mean America will remain longer than announced?
The Pak Tribune, Pakistan
Afghan Wealth: 'The Devil Sends in the Cooks'
"For
the good old U.S. of A, it all boils down to this: cut and run and be damned,
or stay and fight and be damned, but have your pockets full when the bullhorn
sounds. … And to poor Afghans, unable to extract what is rightfully theirs from
the bowels of the earth, this: 'God sends the meat but the devil sends the
cooks.'"
A miner drills into rock at a mine in Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley: According to Afghanistan's minister of mines, the country is to seek bids from global mining firms to extract the country's estimated $1 trillion of mineral wealth.
Despite incessant interludes
of chaos, Afghanistan wasn't always a rough, blood-splattered land of wild
hordes charging their steeds into desolate stretches of terrain. When Europe
was a backward, impoverished and irrelevant territory, the region today called
Central Asia, with Afghanistan at its southern tip and ancient trade routes
interweaving it, was a land of great wealth, culture, scholarly attainment and
prized international trade.
Writing way back in the year
1900, poet James
Elroy Flecker summed up the view held of the region the Western world;
Sweet
to ride forth at evening from the wells,
When
shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And
softly through the silence beat the bells,
Along
the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Dating back over 6,000 years,
some of the earliest indications of mining anywhere in the world come from
Afghanistan. For example, Afghanistan has always been a well-known source of
precious and semi-precious stones - above all its lapis lazuli. The blue lapis
lazuli in the famous funeral mask of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen is said to have
come from Badakhshan, Afghanistan to Egypt in 1,300 BC.
During the Russian occupation,
geological investigations were closed to the Western world. But the Soviets did
carry out sporadic mining surveys and neatly catalogued them on charts and
maps. Though much of this record was destroyed during the armed resistance to
the Soviet occupation and later during the messy rule of the Taliban, some
survived.
Thus it was in 2004, when the
Americans began undertaking the so-called reconstruction effort in Afghanistan,
that geologists in Kabul came across these fascinating sets of Soviet-era
charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey. The information
more than hinted at major mineral deposits in the country.
That got the U.S. Geological
Survey team’s antennae up. They promptly obatined an old Orion P-3 aircraft,
configured it with advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment, took
along the old Russian survey charts and maps and began a series of aerial
surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources. In 2006, they flew over more than
70 percent of the country. The data they put together was so promising that
they came back in 2007, this time with instruments that offered 3-D contours of
the mineral deposits deep below the surface. In the end, what began as a hunch
turned out to be the most wide-ranging geological survey ever conducted in
Afghanistan. The results, not shared internationally until recently, are
breathtaking.
Due to the universally slow
pace of bureaucracy, however, files containing this astonishing array of
records gathered dust for next the two years. It was only in 2009 that a Pentagon
task force called the "Business Development Task Force" (whatever that
stands for) stumbled on this wealth of information. Not much later, the
Pentagon task force brought in teams of American mining experts and had them pore
over the survey’s findings. Eureka! The experts shouted out load at the end of
the study, while their head honchos reached for the nearest telephones.
The
New York Times broke the story in a screaming
headline on June 13. Reportedly, the deposits are so rich in quality and
quantity that, according to the Times, “Afghanistan could eventually be
transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world.” Having
a value of approximately $1 trillion, Afghanistan is said to be loaded with
bulging veins of gold, copper, iron, cobalt and critical industrial metals like
lithium. Meanwhile, the country’s current gross domestic product stands at a
puny $12 billion.
The biggest mineral deposits
discovered so far are of iron and copper. Other finds include large deposits of
niobium, a soft metal used to produce superconducting steel, and some rare
earth elements. According to the same report, an internal Pentagon memo states
that “Afghanistan could become the Saudi Arabia of lithium." General David
Petraeus, commander of the U.S. Central Command, called it a "stunning
potential." Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines,
said “this will become the backbone of the Afghan economy.”
Intriguingly, The Times
slipped in another
interesting report the next day, on June 14th. According to this one, the
bidding for rights to explore the reserves could begin in as little as six
months - and that Afghan officials believe there is even more wealth than
announced so far. According to these officials, this is the case because, “in
part, the surveyors did not examine closely the entire country and at least 30
percent of it has yet to be fully investigated.”
The New York Times
articles of June 13th and 14th surreptitiously raise two other issues. One, the
Taliban may now fight ever more viciously for their country’s untapped wealth.
And two, regional actors like China are likely to warm up to the idea of having
such untold riches in their own backyard.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
But for one other report, one
could have let the two stories go by as straightforward reporting. In a report
on June 14th, the viability of President Obama’s plan to begin pulling out by
July 2011 was put into question. Regional specialist Bruce Reidel of the
Brookings Institution, who helped formulate the administration’s first Afghan
strategy in early 2009, was reported as saying, “things are not looking good,
there’s not much sign of the turnaround that people were hoping for.” While Mr.
Reidel did say that pouring in more troops was politically infeasible, he also
added, “pulling out altogether would make the United States vulnerable to a
terrorist attack organized by al-Qaeda and originating in Taliban-dominated
Afghanistan.”
Now, a scribe could simply have
said "eat your heart out Dick Cheney" and let the news slip out sensationally
but routinely. Or - one could draw certain not-so-routine conclusions from this
reporting. Some of these are;
1. News of the mineral finds was
too big to keep under wraps any longer.
2. The time to share the
lolly, i.e. time for bidding, was just around the corner, at which time the
sudden announcement of the finds would have looked even more suspicious.
3. The current American administration,
which had promised a pullout with a rush of blood at the start, is increasingly
finding that beyond the fact that withdrawal means a loss of face, it is impossible
to just fold up and go home.
Essentially,
then, for the good old U.S. of A, it all boils down to this: cut and run and be
damned, or stay and fight and be damned, but have your pockets full when the
bullhorn sounds.
So yes, eat your heart out
Dick Cheney, for you missed it by a click, yet in Kabul, you urged Dubya's
successors to start building the world’s second largest embassy, the first one
having been built in the other colony [Iraq].
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Therefore, to grand strategic
thinkers, particularly of the Pakistani variety, one has to say this: start
getting your dander up, but there no need to act in haste this time, because no
one is going anywhere, anytime soon. First let the grand masters have their
fill of Manna first.
And to poor Afghans, unable
to extract what is rightfully theirs from the bowels of the earth, this: “God
sends the meat but the devil sends the cooks.”
*AnwaarHussain is a former Pakistan Air Force F-16 fighter
pilot. With a Masters in Defense and Strategic Studies from Quaid-e-Azam
University in Islamabad, he now resides in the United Arab Emirates. He has
published a series of articles in Defense Journal, South Asia Tribune and a
host of other web portals. Other than international affairs, Anwaar Hussain has
written extensively on the religious and political issues that plague Pakistan.
