‘Discovery’ of Afghan Riches a Pro-war PR Scam?
By Daniel Tencer
July 15, 2010 "RawStory" -- A New York Times
report
announcing the US has found $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in
Afghanistan has some observers wondering if the news is part of a
public-relations effort to bolster support for the Afghanistan war as
the mission's death toll continues to climb.An article in Sunday's New York
Times
announces that "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."
The
article cites an "internal Pentagon memo" as saying Afghanistan could
become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium" -- the mineral used in the
production of rechargeable batteries, such as those found in cell
phones and laptops. It cites "a small team of Pentagon officials and
American geologists" as having made the discovery.
While
the dollar estimate -- $1 trillion -- may be new, it's hardly news that
Afghanistan sits on rich mineral deposits. In a 2007 press release,
the US Geological Survey announced that Afghanistan possesses
"significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources." And,
as Marc Ambinder reports on his Atlantic blog, the Soviet Union was aware of
Afghanistan's mineral potential as early as 1985.
“The ‘discovery’ of Afghanistan’s minerals will
sound pretty silly to old timers,” a "retired former senior US official" tells
Politico's Laura Rosen.
“When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [US government],
the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all highly focused
on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the
ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor.”
So
why is this news now? To many, the story's timing suggests a Pentagon
public relations campaign designed to extend public support for the war
with the hope that, in time, Afghanistan may be able to raise itself
out of abject poverty.
"Why the story broke in the NYT
on Sunday could be linked to a desire by the Pentagon to create a
reason why US troops might want to stick around in Afghanistan for some
time to come," writes Paul Jay
at the Huffington Post. "Things are not going very well on the ground
and the promise of vast mineral riches would sound enticing."
Some
"veteran Afghan hands detect an echo of [Gen. David] Petraeus’ effort
to 'put a little more time on the Washington clock' for the Afghanistan
surge, as he once described his public relations strategy to buy time in the US
for the Iraq surge," Rosen reports.
Indeed,
the US military's need to shore up support for the war effort may be
becoming critical. Recent news reports indicate that Afghan President
Hamid Karzai may have lost his faith in the US military's ability to
carry out the war. And Gareth Porter at IPS reports
that US forces are facing "the spectre of a collapse of U.S. political
support for the war in Afghanistan in coming months comparable to the
one that occurred in the Iraq War in late 2006."
That context leads blogger Steve Hynd to
declare that the Times piece is "a conveniently timed zombie story" that was
"resurrected yet again for political purposes."
Even if one were to take the Times
story at face value, the practical benefits of Afghanistan's mineral
deposits are in doubt -- not least because of the country's weak
central government, corruption and a lack of skilled labor.
"Under
even the rosiest scenarios, it does not appear the new wealth will
change dynamics quickly enough in Afghanistan to aid the US military
effort there," reports Alan Greenblatt at NPR.
[Daniel]
Markey [of the Council on Foreign Relations] says he's nervous that
Afghanistan will fall prey to the "resource curse," under which nations
that base their economies primarily on natural resources fall prey to
conflict and corruption — forces that are already endemic in
Afghanistan.
"Afghanistan
can make a lot of money from this, but this is the way to make money
that attracts corruption," says S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the
Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
"A
scramble for Afghanistan's resources would simply intensify the tribal
warfare that's already taking place in that devastated country," writes Jacob
Heilbrun
at the Huffington Post. "The sad truth is that precious natural
resources are, more often than not, a curse for the Third World nations
that harbor them."
======
Say What?
Afghanistan Has $1 Trillion in Untapped Mineral
Resources?
By Blake Hounshell
July 14, 2010 "Foreign Policy" -- I'll get
to the main point in a little bit, but bear with me for a second ... A
series of recent news stories has deeply damaged the Obama
administration's case for continued patience with U.S.-led
counterinsurgency campaign, which has shown little discernable progress
despite the best efforts tens of thousands of additional American
troops and an all-star lineup of top military officers.
First, let's talk about Hamid Karzai, the
Afghan president. Remember the chatter earlier this year about how he'd gone
crazy, threatening to join the Taliban and all that? That discussion died down
a little after Karzai checked all the right boxes during his May visit to
Washington.
Then
came the "peace jirga" -- after which Karzai abruptly fired his
intelligence and interior ministers, reputed to be two of the most
competent members of his cabinet (technically, they resigned). The intelligence
minister, Amrullah Saleh, told his side of the story Friday in a jaw-dropping
interview with the Times.
According to Saleh, Karzai no longer believes the West can win the war
and is looking to cast his lot with Pakistan and the Taliban; an
unnamed source told the paper that Karzai had suggested that the
Americans had carried out a rocket attack on the peace jirga. Karzai
has apparently also asked the United Nations to remove Mullah Omar from a key
U.N. blacklist.
Next came revelations
that Pakistan's powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI, is
still deeply involved with the Afghan Taliban (yeah, blow me over with
a feather) despite heated denials to the contrary.
Meanwhile, the drive for Kandahar looks to be
stalled in the face of questionable local support for Karzai's government, the
Taliban is killing local authorities left and right, and the corruption
situation has apparently gotten so bad that the U.S. intelligence community is
now keeping tabs on which Afghan officials are stealing what.
In short, things don't look good for the United
States ... which makes me suspicious of the timing of this attention-grabbing
James Risen story in the Times, which opens with this mind-boggling lede:
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."
Wow!
Talk about a game changer. The story goes on to outline Afghanistan's
apparently vast underground resources, which include large copper and
iron reserves as well as hitherto undiscovered reserves lithium and
other rare minerals.
Read
a little more carefully, though, and you realize that there's less to
this scoop than meets the eye. For one thing, the findings on which the
story was based are online and have been since 2007, courtesy of the U.S.
Geological Survey. More information is available on the Afghan mining
ministry's website, including a report by the British Geological Survey (and
there's more here). You can also take a look at the USGS's documentation of the
airborne part of the survey here, including the full set of aerial photographs.
Nowhere
have I found that $1 trillion figure mentioned, which Risen suggests
was generated by a Pentagon task force seeking to help the Afghan
government develop its resources (looking at the chart
accompanying the article, though, it appears to be a straightforward
tabulation of the total reserve figures for each mineral times current
the current market price). According to Risen, that task force has
begun prepping the mining ministry to start soliciting bids for mineral
rights in the fall.
Don't
get me wrong. This could be a great thing for Afghanistan, which
certainly deserves a lucky break after the hell it's been through over
the last three decades.
But
I'm (a) skeptical of that $1 trillion figure; (b) skeptical of the
timing of this story, given the bad news cycle, and (c) skeptical that
Afghanistan can really figure out a way to develop these resources in a
useful way. It's also worth noting, as Risen does, that it will take
years to get any of this stuff out of the ground, not to mention
enormous capital investment.
Moreover,
before we get too excited about lithium and rare-earth metals and all
that, Afghanistan could probably use some help with a much simpler
resource: cement.
According to an article in the journal
Industrial Minerals,
"Afghanistan has the lowest cement production in the world at 2kg per
capita; in neighbouring Pakistan it is 92kg per capita and in the UK it
is 200kg per capita." Afghanistan's cement plants were built by a Czech
company in the 1950s, and nobody's invested in them since the 1970s.
Most of Afghanistan's cement is imported today, mainly from Pakistan
and Iran. Apparently the mining ministry has been working to set up four new
plants, but they are only expected to meet about half the country's cement
needs.
Why do I mention this? One of the smartest uses
of development resources is also one of the simplest: building concrete floors.
Last year, a team of Berkeley researchers found that "replacing dirt
floors with cement appears to be at least as effective for health as
nutritional supplements and as helpful for brain development as early
childhood development programs." And guess what concrete's made of?
Hint: it's not lithium.
UPDATE: Missed this Wall Street Journal story
earlier. Money quote:
[T]he
Mines Ministry has long been considered among Afghanistan's most
corrupt government departments, and Western officials have repeatedly
expressed reservations about the Afghan government awarding concessions
for the country's major mineral deposits, fearful that corrupt
officials would hand contracts to bidders who pay the biggest bribes --
not who are best suited to actually do the work.
Satrio Arismunandar
Executive ProducerNews Division, Trans TV, Lantai 3
Jl. Kapten P. Tendean Kav. 12 - 14 A, Jakarta 12790
Phone: 7917-7000, 7918-4544 ext. 3542, Fax: 79184558,
79184627 http://satrioarismunandar6.blogspot.comhttp://satrioarismunandar.multiply.com Verba
volant scripta manent...(yang terucap akan lenyap, yang tertulis akan abadi...)
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