Breaking it Down: The Afghan Mineral Empire-To-Be

The New York Times recently announced the “discovery” of a vast field of mineral deposits in Afghanistan.  This, of course, is some serious news.  Plenty of good, and plenty of bad.  A break-down of a few elements of this story:

How on the Planet Earth was this not already known?  If you look at the map of the mineral deposits, they’re ALL OVER the place, totaling over $1 trillion in mineral wealth.  It seems to me that this was a fact that could not have been missed for so long, and it therefore becomes a huge contributing factor to our involvement in Afghanistan, both now and in the past.  It’s announcement and supposed “discovery” leads me to believe that the Pentagon officials have good reason to publicize the news… I just can’t for the life of me think of any reason that would outweigh the potentially disastrous outcome of this.

It is stated to be “many years” before the minerals can be exploited to any reliable degree.  Exsqueeze me?  Baking powder?  Dude, they’re minerals ripe for mining, and the money involved is insane.  You can bet your ass that Afghanistan will NOT be footing the bill in starting the mining projects.  With the U.S. on one side and China on the other, they’re going to get some professional help, and we are DEFINITELY going to see some huge industrial mines in full swing, easily within the decade.  Claiming that it will be many years in development simply because Afghanistan officials don’t know about the mining business is naive assumption at best.

China are some serious beyotches.  It is an inarguable fact that this find is not only going to draw their attention, but with how completely enamored they are with the mining industry — especially in the middle east — they are going to jump on the first plane over and begin the bidding war.  And without someone to stop them with a diplomatic shield; with the corruption in the Afghan government; and with the United States already bogged down financially in supplying military support to the region, China is going to win every bid, hands-down, no contest.  They are going to make the effort to outright purchase the entire country.  And you can bet that Karzai is going to be just fine with selling (he’s still only pretending to be dismayed by the $30 million that came in from China for the copper mines, I highly doubt their previous minister of mines was alone in a bribe that substantial).

The United States is now facing a problem of epic proportions.  If China or any other country comes marching in with every intention of mining Afghanistan drier than it already is, the sick amount of ground troops we have deployed there will simply not be enough.  We will fall to only two choices: Spend an equivalent amount to the wealth of the mines in protecting and stabilizing the country under some false hopes that they will just hand over the mining rights, or pull out completely and let Afghanistan become a Chinese state.

As much as the U.S. does not want to see Afghanistan get bought by China, neither do the Taliban.  The bad news is the Taliban are the embodiment of purified corruption, honed, trained and nurtured to accept anything in exchange for social power over the region.  China doesn’t care about social power outside of it’s own borders, so they’ll be the first to allow the Taliban to take over, and likely even pay them quite a sum to keep clear of the precious mining regions.  Perhaps even ask them to send their children out to work in the mines, an offer they would be all too happy to accept, since it would keep those children from being afflicted with such sinful western notions of education and independent thinking.

Afghanistan is not on the brink of being a wealthy exporter of minerals to the world.  It’s about to get bought, twisted up, wrung out, and put away by the greater powers of the world.

I felt sorry for the common people living in the region before.  I’m devastated at the thought of what will happen to them over the next decade.  There is likely nothing that anyone can do about it without sparking a world war, either… and that would undoubtedly not end as well as WW2 did for the United States.

More later.