Hold On !
Something stinks:
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...
Course Petraeus just told Karzai... I think.
China Willing to Spend Big on Afghan Commerce
A delegation from the state-owned Chinese company, China Metallurgical Group Corporation, visited the site of a copper mine in Aynak, a former al-Qaeda stronghold southeast of Kabul, in 2007.