If you thought the ongoing Afghanistan War was complicated, well the situation is about to be exacerbated after vast deposits of minerals in the country were discovered by U.S. officials in the region. The New York Times reported that the reserves could be valued at close to $1 trillion and the composition included iron, lithium, copper, gold, among others. The good: Afghanistan could potentially become a mining powerhouse giving the Afghan people access to more economic opportunities than the drug trade and/or the Taliban. The bad: New war fronts could be opened up in conflicts over land rights and ownership. The ugly: Imperialist countries such as China or the United States could profit more from mining ventures than the Afghan people, which could potentially taint the already corrupted Afghan government.
The findings were recently announced and confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey, which started its exploration over the country in 2006. The discovery forces me to raise the following question about the United States’ presence in the country: If Iraq is to oil, is Afghanistan to minerals? The Afghanistan War has been going on for well over 8 years now and it is currently America’s longest war. Whether or not the United States “wins” the war against the Taliban, the victory will always be viewed as a Pyrrhic one, due to the length and cost of the war amidst America’s growing debt. America has an opportunity to leverage its war costs by gaining some access to Afghanistan’s mineral deposits especially since it has the largest foreign military presence in the country.
October 22nd, 2010 17:28
The instability of Afghanistan means that even should the war eventually end (whatever that means), the political and social chaos that will remain for the foreseeable future mean investment-heavy industries, such as mining, are a long way fom being a viable prospect there.
October 2nd, 2010 23:17
The electric car projects are just a scam to get a certain group of VC’s to control the lithium fields in Afghanistan!
Dmitry Medvedev Came to Silicon Valley on June 22, 2010 and met with some of the venture capital companies that helped lobby the leverage for the electric car companies that just got funded.
Ener1 Battery Systems who got zillions of the dollars from DOE per the Loan Guarantee and ATVM Director Seward.
Is controlled in part by Russian “business man” Boris Zingarevich.
Who is best friends with the Russian Dmitry Medvedev, who arranged for all of Russia to extend current agreements signed with foreign automakers between 2005 and 2008 granting preferential duties on imported components for eight years in return for sourcing 30 percent of parts locally, the Industry and Trade Ministry said. Once those arrangements expire, the carmakers would need to commit to buying 60 percent of components in Russia within six years to get more tax breaks.
Dmitry also appears to own interest in lots of Lithium processing and mining company technology in Russia which is pretty close to Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is: the “Saudi Arabia’ of lithium”. American geologists have discovered huge mineral deposits (possibly $1 trillion worth) throughout Afghanistan, according to the New York Times. Lithium, gold, cobalt, copper, iron, among other valuable minerals are lying beneath what is already a war-torn country with little history with mining. Off and on over the decades, geologists—Soviet, Afghan, American—would investigate and chart some of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, only to put the work on hold as violent conflict erupted. Now, corruption, in-fighting between the central and district governments, foreign interests, and greater zeal from the Taliban might come into play to disrupt a potential economy evolving around these natural resources. With the Ministry of Mines, a Pentagon task force is now helping organize a way of handling the mineral development and bidding rights. How this unfolds socially, environmentally and politically should be interesting.
The New York Times reports: 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. The two most prevalent minerals are copper and iron. Niobium, used for making superconducting steel, has also been found.
The effort to get that money for Ener1 was strong armed by Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar, one of the deans of Congress, and his junior colleague, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh.
Richard Lugar and Lachlan Seward co-managed the Chrysler Bail-out.
Lachlan Seward was appointed by George Bush to run all of the tens of billions for the DOE ATVM and Loan Guarantee Programs. He gave most of the money away to his closely aligned interests and negated competing applicants. –
Another place near Afghanistan that there is lot’s of Lithium is in Mongolia. Blum Capital has targeted the Lithium fields in Mongolia, said to be the second largest fields after Afghanistan in the region. Mongolia touches Russia so mining and equipment access could first take place there via Russia. China wants the Mongolian Lithium too so there is some two-way bidding that each country (Russia and China) do not know about. The owner of Blum Capital is Senator Feinsteins husband. She recently made him the Goodwill Ambassador to Mongolia.
Blum’s wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband’s government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however. Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife. URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract. In 2009 it was reported that Blum’s wife Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a government agency that had recently awarded her husband’s real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Times called “a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms.” In 2009 the University of California Board of Regents, of which Blum is a member, voted to increase student registration fees (roughly the Univ. of California equivalent of tuition) by 32%. Shortly thereafter, Blum Capital Partners purchased additional stock in ITT Tech, a for-profit educational institution. These events suggest a conflict of interest on Blum’s part. Also see: http://la.indymedia.org/news/2010/09/242044.php and http://www.floppingaces.net/2007/04/02/the-silence-on-the-feinstein-c/ and http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/21/senate-husbands-firm-cashes-in-on-crisis/