Discovered in Afghanistan!
Now… THIS my friends could be an interesting “game changer”!! (Below
are excerpts from the article, with a wee bit of my commentary.)
Bee
The United
States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral
deposits in Afghanistan, far
beyond any previously known reserves…
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.
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.
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.
Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the
Taliban to battle even more
fiercely to regain control of the country.
And so it begins……
Of course this won’t bring “peace”… who is the nutcase that thought it
would!? There will be a “fight” over these resources in some form or
fashion. On a more positive note, at least Opium won’t be their largest
export anymore!
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.
Read the complete article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
