the Pentagon (and US geologists) found huge veins of copper, lithium, iron, cobalt and gold. should transform the war. afghanistan's current GDP is $12B U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com
"In 2004, American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learned that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989. During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey’s library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001. " U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan - NYTimes.com
will have to fight the chinese for it. actually there will be an international bidding process (for companies) for the rights. i doubt this will be developed like BP was.
If its is not BS, then it is a ticket to economic freedom for Afghanistan. But most likely the value is exaggerated and recovering the minerals will take an investment so big that most companies won't risk it in a war zone. And it will take many decades to get it all, perhaps 100 years. On the other hand, many of the "taliban" are just out-of-work tribesmen with little else to do but fight for the fanatic jihadist Taliban and receive pay from opium profits. If thousands of well-paying mining jobs appeared, it would boost the Afghan local economies, put idle people to works, and deprive the Taliban of recruits and popular support. And we wouldn't have to pay for it all. On the other hand, Iraq has huge oil reserves that haven't seemed to keep us from spending a Trillion bucks of our money there. The Bush administration promised that Iraqi oil profits would fund the invasion and that turned out to be BS. This geologic minerals find may also be political exuberance that physical reality will demolish.
You remember what Obama promised. Out in 16 months. Which BSer do you want to believe? They are all the same.
