Posted on 06/14/2010 11:52:36 AM PDT by epithermal
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.foreignpolicy.com ...
Their poppy fields are worth more than that.
They have been buying up mineral resources all over the world with the $$$ we are sending them.
Isn’t it odd that Russia went broke trying to control it?
If this were in America, the EPA and the environmental movement would be suing immediately to make sure we left it all in the ground where Mother Earth wants it to be.
Afghanistan is a mountainous country about the size of Texas - like this is a shock that the place has lots of minerals? I would be shocked if it didn’t.
The REAL question is can anyone make any money mining there with the poor infrastructure, massive corruption, crime, etc.
And here is a first hand observation. There is OIL and NAT GAS there. I have seen the old wells and oil in massive pools. The locals process and dig it themselves.
2banana
Yeah, this is old news since the Soviets and the U.S. knew about the minerals years ago, which makes this story suspicious. The problem is that land-locked Afghanistan has NO infrastructure with which to mine, mill, and transport the ores, making them effectively useless.
Bush’s Fault no doubt
This is old news. That info has been out since 2007. But 20 of our soldiers were killed in Afghanistan last week, that doesn’t barely get mentioned. What better to take that off the news than 1 $Trillion headlines?
You got it exactly.
We could confiscate the whole lot of it and still not make a dent in our debt.
Al-Qaeda and the Taliban will direct their resources to the region and will have it under their control within a year.
Afghanistan has abundant mineral resources, including copper, gold, iron ore, lead, marble, nickel, rubies, sulfur, and talc. Construction minerals included clay for bricks, dimension stone, limestone for cement, rock aggregate, and sand and gravel. Poor infrastructure, a shortage of skilled labor, and security problems have been a hindrance to the development and mining of these resources and to investment by local and foreign companies. To rebuild its infrastructure, the country would most likely need to open market opportunities for construction minerals and equipment. The country’s output of construction and other industrial minerals did not keep pace with the strong domestic demand for them.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered nonfuel mineral resources. Copper resources (identified and undiscovered) were estimated to be nearly 60 million metric tons (Mt) of copper. The Aynak copper deposit was estimated to contain 12.3 Mt of copper. Iron ore resources (identified) were estimated to be more than 2,200 Mt of ore. The Haji Gak area was the largest unexploited iron ore deposit in Asia with 2,100 Mt of ore. The country has abundant deposits of colored stones and gemstones, including emerald, garnet, kunzite, lapis, peridot, ruby, sapphire, spinel, and tourmaline. Chromite, gold, graphite, magnesite, mercury, potash, sand and gravel, sulfur, and talc are also available for extraction. Afghanistan was estimated to have undiscovered deposits containing 27.5 Mt of potash (Peters, 2007).
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/2008/myb3-2008-af.pdf
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