U.S. Discovers Nearly $1 Trillion in Afghan Mineral Deposits

[seemslikeadream]

U.S. Discovers Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
A bleak Ghazni Province seems to offer little, but a Pentagon study says it may have among the world’s largest deposits of lithium.
By JAMES RISEN
Published: June 13, 2010


WASHINGTON — 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.

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 Blackberries.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

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.

“This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.

American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. The American-led offensive in Marja in southern Afghanistan has achieved only limited gains. Meanwhile, charges of corruption and favoritism continue to plague the Karzai government, and Mr. Karzai seems increasingly embittered toward the White House.

So the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of Afghanistan. Yet the American officials also recognize that the mineral discoveries will almost certainly have a double-edged impact.

Instead of bringing peace, the newfound mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain control of the country.

The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced.

Endless fights could erupt between the central government in Kabul and provincial and tribal leaders in mineral-rich districts. 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, undersecretary of defense 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.

Another complication is that because Afghanistan has never had much heavy industry before, it has little or no history of environmental protection either. “The big question is, can this be developed in a responsible way, in a way that is environmentally and socially responsible?” Mr. Brinkley said. “No one knows how this will work.”

With virtually no mining industry or infrastructure in place today, it will take decades for Afghanistan to exploit its mineral wealth fully. “This is a country that has no mining culture,” said Jack Medlin, a geologist in the United States Geological Survey’s international affairs program. “They’ve had some small artisanal mines, but now there could be some very, very large mines that will require more than just a gold pan.”

The mineral deposits are scattered throughout the country, including in the southern and eastern regions along the border with Pakistan that have had some of the most intense combat in the American-led war against the Taliban insurgency.

The Pentagon task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development. International accounting firms that have expertise in mining contracts have been hired to consult with the Afghan Ministry of Mines, and technical data is being prepared to turn over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors. The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on mineral rights by next fall, officials said.

“The Ministry of Mines is not ready to handle this,” Mr. Brinkley said. “We are trying to help them get ready.”

Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.

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.

“There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,” said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.

Armed with the old Russian charts, the United States Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan’s mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 percent of the country.

The data from those flights was so promising that in 2007, the geologists returned for an even more sophisticated study, using an old British bomber equipped with instruments that offered a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the earth’s surface. It was the most comprehensive geologic survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan, and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information — and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.

Soon, the Pentagon business development task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey’s findings, and then briefed Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Mr. Karzai.

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.

Just this month, American geologists working with the Pentagon team have been conducting ground surveys on dry salt lakes in western Afghanistan where they believe there are large deposits of lithium. 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.

For the geologists who are now scouring some of the most remote stretches of Afghanistan to complete the technical studies necessary before the international bidding process is begun, there is a growing sense that they are in the midst of one of the great discoveries of their careers.

“On the ground, it’s very, very, promising,” Mr. Medlin said. “Actually, it’s pretty amazing.”

.....and we are never leaving

[norton ash]

Is lithium any good for PTSD?

[Procyon]

not as good as opium

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

The article's 'Indiana Jones'-style assertion that this bonanza of minerals was only realized after the US invasion is absurd. "Now that we're here - golly, booty!"

The CIA and NSA would have picked up anything the Russkies found or just detected the mineral deposits with US tech.

Certain priming psyops for kidz in Summer 2001 also confirms this rational conclusion.
Milo Thatch had some documents but the museum directors weren't interested in his expedition plans...

[Nordic]

Yeah it's bullshit that this is "new". I remember months and months ago learning that one of the chores of the U.S. military (our gangsters for capitalism) was to guard a huge-ass copper mine for the Chinese.

[Stephen Morgan]

Not just the smack, then.

Crossing the Rubicun by Michael Ruppert, about 9/11, mentions a satellite surveying company which used orbital sensors to detect subterranean mineral deposits, and that ObL was an investor.

[Gouda]

Karzai announced this more than 5 months ago on Jan 31st, 2010.

Associated thread: Afghan Mineral and Oil Reserves Estimated at $1 Trillion

In that thread, we learn that the U.S. Geological Survey has been working with Afghan scientists mapping the mineral wealth of the country on and off for the last 40 YEARS.

Gouda wrote: Here's a little story on an old USGS hand named Jack Shroder who began his geomilitary career in Afghanistan in 1972. He worked with VoA on anti-Soviet propaganda, and now works (again) with the Pentagon. The US Military and the USGS go back a long way in Afghanistan. Long before 2003:

Ravaged by war, drought and natural hazards such as earthquakes and landslides, Afghanistan’s people face many challenges. But the country also has untapped resources — great natural beauty , deep supplies of groundwater and a vast mineral wealth, including coal, gems like emeralds and metals like copper and iron.

For nearly 40 years — spanning the Cold War, Afghanistan’s own civil war and the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001 — U.S. Geological Survey scientists have worked with Afghan scientists to map and develop the country’s resources. Two stories in the most recent issue of EARTH magazine highlight the daunting challenges these scientists dealt with in the past and continue to face.

Geologist Jack Shroder began his career in Afghanistan in 1972, amassing satellite images and maps of the country. He also gathered seismic data weekly from the USGS’ Kabul University seismic station — which happened to record nuclear tests just north of the country’s border, in the then-USSR.

That got Shroder kicked out of the country in 1979, when the Soviets invaded. For the next decade, he worked with the radio program Voice of America to broadcast explanations to the Afghan people about their country’s frequent devastating earthquakes— as well as about Soviet exploitation of Afghan mineral resources. Schroder is now working with the U.S. military, teaching soldiers headed to Afghanistan about the country’s geology, natural hazards, environmental issues and declining water resources.

Afghanistan is also suffering under a decade-long drought — and ongoing war and shrinking glaciers make the situation even more dire. The country has water resources — groundwater fed by snowmelt and rainfall in the mountains — but lacks the technology and security to access them. Now, USGS scientists and the U.S. military are working with local scientists and engineers to adapt a thousands-year-old Afghan technology to access this deep water — and, hopefully, to help bring peace.

In the latest issue of EARTH, Jack Shroder tells his unique story, a first-person account of how he, the USGS and Afghanistan have been entwined over the last few decades. And writer David B. Williams describes the struggle to find clean water in this land-locked, water-starved country. Read more about efforts to rebuild Afghanistan in the July EARTH, on newsstands now.

[Bruce Dazzling]

Karzai announced this more than 5 months ago on Jan 31st, 2010.

Associated thread: Afghan Mineral and Oil Reserves Estimated at $1 Trillion

In that thread, we learn that the U.S. Geological Survey has been working with Afghan scientists mapping the mineral wealth of the country on and off for the last 40 YEARS.

Gouda wrote: Here's a little story on an old USGS hand named Jack Shroder who began his geomilitary career in Afghanistan in 1972. He worked with VoA on anti-Soviet propaganda, and now works (again) with the Pentagon. The US Military and the USGS go back a long way in Afghanistan. Long before 2003:

Ravaged by war, drought and natural hazards such as earthquakes and landslides, Afghanistan’s people face many challenges. But the country also has untapped resources — great natural beauty , deep supplies of groundwater and a vast mineral wealth, including coal, gems like emeralds and metals like copper and iron.

For nearly 40 years — spanning the Cold War, Afghanistan’s own civil war and the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2001 — U.S. Geological Survey scientists have worked with Afghan scientists to map and develop the country’s resources. Two stories in the most recent issue of EARTH magazine highlight the daunting challenges these scientists dealt with in the past and continue to face.

Geologist Jack Shroder began his career in Afghanistan in 1972, amassing satellite images and maps of the country. He also gathered seismic data weekly from the USGS’ Kabul University seismic station — which happened to record nuclear tests just north of the country’s border, in the then-USSR.

That got Shroder kicked out of the country in 1979, when the Soviets invaded. For the next decade, he worked with the radio program Voice of America to broadcast explanations to the Afghan people about their country’s frequent devastating earthquakes— as well as about Soviet exploitation of Afghan mineral resources. Schroder is now working with the U.S. military, teaching soldiers headed to Afghanistan about the country’s geology, natural hazards, environmental issues and declining water resources.

Afghanistan is also suffering under a decade-long drought — and ongoing war and shrinking glaciers make the situation even more dire. The country has water resources — groundwater fed by snowmelt and rainfall in the mountains — but lacks the technology and security to access them. Now, USGS scientists and the U.S. military are working with local scientists and engineers to adapt a thousands-year-old Afghan technology to access this deep water — and, hopefully, to help bring peace.

In the latest issue of EARTH, Jack Shroder tells his unique story, a first-person account of how he, the USGS and Afghanistan have been entwined over the last few decades. And writer David B. Williams describes the struggle to find clean water in this land-locked, water-starved country. Read more about efforts to rebuild Afghanistan in the July EARTH, on newsstands now.

Yes, the proverbial other shoe.

Like Gouda, I was under the impression that this was old news.

Perhaps we just slipped into a different time line?

Here's a good link for the story Gouda posted above.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... tA-G9g4mlg

[Gouda]

Thanks for the link fix, Bruce.

***

Another reminder:

"Here, in this extraordinary desert, is where the future of world security in the early 21st century is going to be played out."

~ Tony Blair, 2006, speaking to troops in Afghanistan

[hanshan]

Not just the smack, then.

Crossing the Rubicun by Michael Ruppert, about 9/11, mentions a satellite surveying company which used orbital sensors to detect subterranean mineral deposits, and that ObL was an investor.

orbital sensors are old tech; the only thing that's new is the fact that they
have finally appeared in print (not that anyone would notice)(tx Gouda);
& certainly not just the smack, we'll have the whole pie, thank you.

Yeah it's bullshit that this is "new". I remember months and months ago learning that one of the chores of the U.S. military (our gangsters for capitalism) was to guard a huge-ass copper mine for the Chinese.

gangsters for capitalism? Heh Capitalist models are gangsterism. Disguise the activity use a pretty(different) word. Again, if there is anything new & different it's only the behavior is out in the open.



...

[Bruce Dazzling]

No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1T Afghan Motherlode (Updated)
By Katie Drummond
Wired

Despite what you may read this morning, the U.S. military did not just “discover” a trillion dollars’ worth of precious minerals in Afghanistan.

The New York Times today proclaimed that Afghanistan is apparently poised to become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” — a metal used to produce gadgets like iPods and laptops. The discovery will also, according to Pentagon documents quoted by the Times, fundamentally transform the country’s opium-reliant economy.

But the military (and observers of the military) have known about Afghanistan’s mineral riches for years. In a 2007 report, the Geological Survey and the Navy concluded that “Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources,” including ”large quantities of accessible iron and copper [and] abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, ruby [and] sapphire.”

Not to mention that the $1 trillion figure is — at best — a guesstimate. None of the earlier U.S military reports on Afghan’s mineral riches cite that amount. And it might be prudent to be wary of any data coming out of Afghanistan’s own Mines Minestry, which “has long been considered one of the country’s most corrupt government departments,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

And the timing of the “discovery” seems just a little too convenient. As Blake Hounshell at Foreign Policy notes, the Obama administration is struggling to combat the perception that the Afghan campaign has “made little discernible progress,” despite thousands of additional troops and billions of extra dollars.

Still, Pentagon officials are touting the find as a potential economic game-changer — and one that could end decades of conflict. But whether it’s oil or coltan, rich pockets of resources are always a mixed blessing. Just ask children in Congo, home to 80 percent of the world’s coltan supply, who were forced to mine for the precious metal that was later used to manufacture tech gadgets.

It’ll take years, and a ton of capital investment, before Afghanistan’s deposits can even be mined. And when they can, it’s anybody’s guess who’ll actually be profiting. Hounshell sums up the mess nicely:

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.

UPDATE:

One retired senior U.S official is calling the government’s mineral announcement “pretty silly,” Politico is reporting. “When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [U.S. 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.”

At least two American geologists have been advising the Pentagon on Afghanistan’s wealth of mineral resources for years. Bonita Chamberlin, a geologist who spent 25 years working in Afghanistan, “identified 91 minerals, metals and gems at 1,407 potential mining sites,” the Los Angeles Times reported in 2001. She even wrote a book, “Gemstones in Afghanistan,” on the topic. And Chamberlin worked directly with the Pentagon, after they commissioned her to report on sandstone and limestone caves mere weeks after 9/11.

“I am quite surprised that the military is announcing this as some ‘new’ and ’surprising” discovery,’ she told Danger Room in an email. “This is NOT new. Perhaps this also hints at the real reason why we would be so intent on this war…”.

And Jack Shroder, a geologist at the University of Nebraska, told the Associated Press in 2001 that mineral deposits in Afghanistan were so rich, they could be vital in rebuilding the country. He’s collaborated with Pentagon officials since the 1970s, when he worked on mapping the country. In 2002, Shroder was approached by several American companies who hoped to start mining the country.

It’s not clear exactly what those experts shared with military honchos, but the Pentagon’s knowledge of Afghanistan’s minerals clearly preceded the 2004 discovery of “an intriguing series of old charts and data,” as the Times reports. In 2002, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the U.S. Department of Interior’s Mineral Yearbook, among other atlases, noted Afghanistan’s “significant deposits of gold, precious stones and other minerals waiting to be mined.”

But whatever the U.S military knows, and no matter how long they’ve known it, Russia likely has ‘em beat. At a 2002 conference on rebuilding Afghanistan, reps from several countries complained that Russia continued to withhold decades-old information about mineral deposits in the country.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06 ... otherlode/

[semper occultus]

as if those poor bastards haven't suffered enough they've now got to contend with resource curse.

[jingofever]

Here's Why The Trillion-Dollar Afghan Mineral Discovery Is Bogus

People around the globe are reading widely circulated reports today of a tremendous mineral discovery in Afghanistan. Details are sketchy, but many rare and important metals are mentioned, and a potential value of $1 trillion dollars is mentioned in a New York Times story on the subject. This figure, at best, cannot be anything more than the wildest of guesses.

One does not have to be a geologist or an engineer to understand why. When geologists find outcropping mineralization, or other signs that an economic deposit of minerals may be present, that is not called a discovery. Even if the signs come from the latest scientific equipment flown over the country, as the U.S. government appears to have used, the result is still just an anomaly: a hopeful indication of where to look. And anomalies are like opinions: everybody has one.

Once an anomaly is identified, it takes extensive, and very expensive field work to determine the best locations for drilling holes in the ground, which you have to do to calculate a volume of mineralized rock, from which you can estimate the metal contained. It usually takes at least a year, and often several, to identify targets for drilling. And drilling off a deposit of any significant size takes several more years, usually after many false starts and setbacks, because you can’t see through rock and know where the goods are.

But even after you drill off a deposit, and know how big it is, how deep it is, and roughly what’s in it, you still don’t know what it’s worth. For that, you have to conduct extensive testing on the mineralized material, not just to quantify the metals or other desirable minerals within, but also to see if there are contaminants, or other elements present that can complicate, or even make impossible the economic recovery of the valuable mineral.

In short, until you know how much it would cost to mine and process any sort of mineralized material into a salable product, like gold bars, copper concentrate, etc., you cannot say what it’s worth. Even a huge deposit of gold may be completely worthless, if the grade is low and there’s lots of carbon that would mess up the gold recovery.

Now, back to Afghanistan. A "small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists" cannot possibly have drilled off these deposits, let alone done the engineering required to value them. The NYT article described airborne geophysical surveys and a little surface work – no drilling. This is not a discovery – no serious exploration geologist would call anything a discovery until enough holes have been drilled into it to outline a significant volume of potentially economic material.

What we have here is a regional survey that may or may not lead to significant new discoveries.

Where do they get the trillion-dollar figure? We can only guess, but given their own description, they have not done the work necessary to generate any reasonable estimate. It’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of mineral outcroppings and other anomalies never lead to economic discoveries, much less mines. Even a very rich vein sticking right out on surface can turn out to be the last dregs of a system that has been eroded away, leaving nothing but a tease behind. For gold, the odds of an anomaly leading to an economic discovery are often cited as being on the order of 300 to one, against.

No responsible geologist would circulate a valuation figure at this stage of the process in Afghanistan. In fact, if a public company put out a press release like this story in the NYT, the exchange would likely reprimand them severely and require a retraction.

Now, the soldier quoted admits that "there are a lot of ifs," but that does not excuse putting out the $1 trillion figure, a number that there is no reasonable way to support at this point.

Note that this doesn't mean the minerals are not there – Afghanistan has, for obvious reasons, not seen any modern exploration, or even antiquated exploration, for decades. It is, in all likelihood, a terrific place to look for minerals. But the government’s story sounds like the sort of PR stunt put out by Pink Sheet scammers.

It will take time for any real new discoveries to be made, especially given the time required to see if the Afghanistan’s new mining law will work, not to mention for physical security to be established in the country. It would be a great benefit to the people of Afghanistan, and of the world, if this would happen.

This is a guest post from Louis James of Casey's Research.

[Simulist]

The previously unknown deposits...

"But how was 'I' to know that there was a bag of money from a bank robbery in the trunk of the car I stole, officer?!"

[seemslikeadream]

The Pentagon’s Afghan Mineral Hype
June 14, 2010 · 1 Comment

This morning’s New York Times includes a story headlined, ”US Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan.’’ In fact the country’s mineral wealth has been known for centuries. Records of it date back to the time of Marco Polo. Mineral stories were mapped by the Soviets during their occupation of the country, and more recently by other mining experts. While it’s possible that the team of Pentagon officials and American geologists credited with the “discovery” may have added some detail to existing knowledge on the subject, it’s hardly the revelation their reports–and the article–suggest.

So could this “revelation” in fact be an Obama administration PR campaign to buttress U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan? For years, we were told of Afghanistan’s potential valuable oil prospects. When oil faded from the picture there was no economic reason to be there. The place wasn’t like Iraq, where the international oil companies got their hands on a huge oil reserve. But now, with the Times apparently swallowing the Pentagon’s bait, we’ve suddenly got a new reason to fight: Getting our hands on a lucrative mining colony. James Risen in the Times reports :

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.

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.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

Running counter to the claims of a huge discovery is an existing undated report called Minerals in Afghanistan, prepared by the Afghan minining ministry jointly with the British Geological Survey and easily obtained on the web. The report has this to say on the subject:

In central Afghanistan occurrences of rare metals have been identified in sediments below several lakes and depressions where lake brines contain higher than average metal concentrations. Trial pits have indicated that salt deposits covered by clay and loam layers contain high concentrations of lithium, boron, lead and zinc.

In a 2006 special edition on Afghanistan of Mining Journal, pre-eminent publication in the field, the mining minister, Hon.Eng. Ibrahim Adel, writes in the introduction,

It is a privilege for me to draw your attention to this Mining Journal special supplement on Afghanistan. Mining in Afghanistan has a history dating back over 6,000 years, and despite all the upheavals over the past 25 years, mining has continued to operate. The main task facing us now is to expand the industry from its present small base. The Government regards the development of Afghanistan’s natural resources as the most important driver of economic growth, and essential to the reconstruction and development of the country…For example, construction minerals production has grown dramatically with the increased need for raw materials to feed road building and reconstruction. I expect this will be followed shortly by further investment in the coal, cement and hydrocarbons industries. The first signs of grassroots mineral exploration for gold have started, and with the appointment of Tender Advisors for the future development of the world class Aynak copper deposit, I expect this to lead to really significant investment in the mining sector of the economy in the very near future. Aynak is one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper deposits and it has already attracted interest from a wide spectrum of international companies.

Mining Journal provides an in depth account of the history and potential for mining all sorts of minerals. Here is the Journal‘s overview:

Afghanistan has some of the most complex and varied geology in the world. The oldest rocks are Archean and they are succeeded by rocks from the Proterozoic and every Phanerozoic system up to the present day. The country also has a long and complicated tectonic history, partly related to its position at the western end of the Himalayas.

This diverse geological foundation has resulted in a significant mineral heritage with over 1,400 mineral occurrences recorded to date. Historical mining concentrated mostly on precious stone production, with some of the oldest known mines in the world established in Afghanistan to produce lapis lazuli for the Egyptian Pharaohs.

More recent exploration in the 1960s and 70s resulted in the discovery of significant resources ofmetallic minerals, including copper, iron and gold, and non-metallic minerals, including halite, talc and mica. The bedrock geology of Afghanistan can be thought of as a jigsaw of crustal blocks separated by fault zones, each with a different geological history and mineral prospectivity. This jigsaw has been put together by a series of tectonic events dating from the Jurassic up to the present.

Among other things, Afghan emeralds are generally considered to be among the most beautiful in the world, rivaling the emeralds produced in Colombia. They were mined and sold for arms during the time of the Northern Alliance; the famous Mujahideen leader Ahmed Shah Massoud funded his campaign by selling emeralds from the Panjshir Valley. More recently, sources with first hand knowledge of the business have reported that Afghan emeralds were blocked by the Colombian emerald cartel, though there are reports of Afghan emeralds being traded on the sly through Eastern Europe.