

U.S. Discovers Est. $1 Trillion of Minerals in Afghanistan - jfi
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html

======
tptacek
Without something to juice the Afghan economy, the West is already playing the
long game to lose. It can hold parts of Afghanistan at great cost for many
years, but it can't indefinitely deny the Taliban influence or bases of
operation. At some point, the West will simply lose the will to pour hundreds
of billions of dollars into a bottomless hole.

Since there appears to be no stable economy in Afghanistan that is feasible to
build, maintain, and defend, the Taliban's supporters have an incentive to
invest, and its recruits have incentive to join up. Ambivalent forces in
Afghanistan that might help thwart the Taliban are disincentivized to do so,
because there's no path to victory, and they'd be subject to reprisals when
the effort failed.

Vast mineral resources could change that. Saudi Arabia has approximately the
same population as Afghanistan, but enjoys a massively better standard of
living, a far stronger central government, and operates an effectively modern
social safety net. If mineral investment can set that trend in motion in
Afghanistan, the state may have an actual path to stability. Which alters the
equation there in a way that disfavors the Taliban.

Everyone seems to be citing the case of the Congo. But the Congo isn't
essentially occupied by the rest of Western Civilization. Apart from foreign
corporations, which are agnostic to which regime controls the country, nobody
has a stake in the Congo. That's not the case in Afghanistan.

This seems like a positive development.

~~~
MichaelSalib
_Which alters the equation there in a way that disfavors the Taliban._

I don't think this is true at all. The Taliban have significantly more
military skill than the Afghan warlords they've been fighting for the last
decade. Consider: if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of
aid from the US and tens of thousands of western soldiers helping them, still
haven't been able to defeat the Taliban, how large must the disparity be.
Plus, the Taliban have a reputation for being less corrupt than the warlords
that currently comprise the government. There's a reason Afghanis turn to
Taliban-run courts instead of going to the government ones: the justice might
be crazy, but it will be impartial.

Before this find, the future of Afghanistan was pretty clear: sooner or later,
there was going to be a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, culminating in
some sort of power sharing agreement. Given the find, that will still probably
happen, but my guess is that the Taliban get more power in the end.

From a western/Chinese companies perspective, who would you rather deal with?
Religious fanatics that are honest and maintain order with horrific brutal
efficiency? Or obscenely corrupt bumblers who couldn't administer their way
out of a paper bag? Extraction industries have plenty of experience dealing
with the former in Saudi Arabia. Given the choice, I can't imagine why they'd
prefer the later.

~~~
swombat
_if the warlords, after having gotten billions of dollars of aid from the US
and tens of thousands of western soldiers helping them, still haven't been
able to defeat the Taliban, how large must the disparity be_

I don't think that's a fair statement. "Defeating" the Taliban, which are
basically an insurgency, in a country twice the size of Germany and filled
with mountains and deserts, takes a lot more than military skill or firepower.
I think that the military skill is in fact secondary in that battle. The
political skill is far more important. As long as the Taliban are effective in
convincing local farmers to support them, they'll be there, no matter how
skilled the handful of soldiers on the other side.

~~~
InclinedPlane
In a country twice the size of Germany _plus another bit of countryside in
Pakistan the same size_. If the Taliban were able to be 100% contained within
the borders of Afghanistan they would have been utterly smashed and destroyed
as a movement of any consequence years ago.

~~~
jessriedel
Like gjm, I'd also like to know what makes you think this.

~~~
ilconsigliere
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtunistan>

+

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Maj...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6e/Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg/620px-
Major_ethnic_groups_of_Pakistan_in_1980.jpg)

~~~
jessriedel
I understand that regions in Pakistan have offered refuge for the Taliban.
What I don't understand is how one could be confident that this has been
essential to the survival of the Taliban.

~~~
gwern
When the Taliban was smashed in the post-9/11 invasion, where do you think
Osama bin Laden and the Taliban hierarchy escaped to, to rest & recuperate &
reinfiltrate into Afghanistan?

~~~
jessriedel
Again, I just don't understand what the evidence is for the claim that
Pakistan was key, vs. there being sub-optimal substitute hide-aways in
Afghanistan.

In other words, just because I drive a Honda to work doesn't mean that if
Honda went out of business I wouldn't be able to get to work. I'd just buy a
different (perhaps less reliable) car.

~~~
gwern
See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora>

What 'sub-optimal' hide-away was available to bin Laden?

------
edge17
The title of the article's a little misleading. The US discovered some
treasure maps with a big red 'X marks the spot' that the Soviets made in the
80's

from the second page -

 _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._

~~~
sdurkin
The Soviets did preliminary mapping. The Chinese "private" sector did more
detailed charts, which were undoubtedly intercepted by NATO intelligence in
country.

I must embarrassingly say that you're wholly correct, the United States was
rather late to arrive at this party.

~~~
edge17
Yup, here's an article dating from 2009
[http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/03/08/chinas-
thirst-...](http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/03/08/chinas-thirst-for-
copper-could-hold-key-to-afghanistans-future/)

China's already built roads to the area, and US soldiers are protecting the
Chinese construction effort

~~~
sdurkin
Nice thing about those roads, as long as we secure them, we own them.

~~~
jmtulloss
By that logic we own all of europe.

~~~
tamarindo
By that logic we also own Japan and Taiwan.

------
charleso
The world has a severe shortage of opiate-based pain killers:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy-
based_medicines)

Opium poppies grow well in Afghanistan and farmers already know how to
cultivate and prepare it for shipping in large quantities.

Potential mineral riches are spiffy and all, but it seems foolish to toss
money at projects which require large-scale construction and worker training
when an existing high-demand product already exists to productively employ the
populace.

These folks don't yet have infrastructure capable of large-scale mineral
extraction. Why not build upon useful agricultural exports and start from
there?

~~~
techiferous
"but it seems foolish to toss money at projects which require large-scale
construction and worker training"

I understand your argument to not abandon the poppies, but do you really think
"foolish" is the right word to describe pursuing vast amounts of minerals that
are in high demand? It's literally digging money out of the ground. Wouldn't
the large-scale construction and worker training be funded by the profits from
the minerals?

~~~
charleso
You're right. 'Foolish' was a poor choice of word.

When pairing mineral resources with a chaotic government like Afghanistan's, I
can't help but picture kleptocratic scenarios like Nigeria, Congo or the like
and that's what brings 'foolish' to mind.

If mining started there today _we_ would certainly enjoy the fruits of the
labour, but I'm not sure the people would see anything from it. A few other
posters have mentioned 'The Resource Curse' and I think Afghanistan would end
up more like Congo than Norway if minerals were extracted in quantity from
their soil.

I think starting with agricultural exports and building slowly from there
would provide a more stable economic foundation.

------
herdrick
This story is pretty weak. What they apparently have are a bunch of anomalies
from extremely coarse geophysical surveys. Aerial surveys even! That's about
four steps from having deposits, in the same way that having a bunch of
startup ideas is about four steps away from an exit. Each of those steps
results in major winnowing.

The next logical phase of exploration would be having geologists hiking and
driving around on these prospects to try to understand the specific geology of
each. If things look good then maybe a program of surface level geophysical
surveys, which are far more precise than aerial surveys (though still pretty
fuzzy). Finally some (very expensive) exploratory drilling, then a lot more
drilling to establish with some certainty the size of the deposit. Now you
have a mineable property.

By the way, at every step you need a bunch of skilled people on location who
currently have plenty of work opportunities in non-war zones.

Sure, there are almost certainly good mines to be found since it's a huge
country and mineral exploration has been on hold for thirty years and was
pretty spotty before then. But saying that aerial geophysics surveys confirm
this is pretty funny.

EDIT: It looks like some ground geophysical surveys have been done as well.
But no drilling as far as I can tell from the story.

------
rjett
"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."

Can anyone in the know describe how this works? It sounds interesting.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
My old man did this work in the Navy (on P-3s) on 'pure science' missions and
later on Twin Otters looking for oil. As I understand it they look for slight
variations in gravitational pull that represent different densities in the
crust of the Earth. The S/N is so bad that even with current computers they
couldn't do the analysis on the aircraft. They would have to beam the data to
Boston where a room full of computers tackled it.

The main problem the oil industry faces is the density of oil is similar to
the density of salt. The only way to tell one from the other is to drill an
insanely expensive exploratory well. My dad said half the time they hit salt.
Really expensive salt.

~~~
jarek
I'm not a geologist either, and apologies if I screw something up in the
explanation, but:

My geologist (-in-training) friend tells me that you would actually look for
the salt because a geological process/property often causes oil to be found
around salt domes.

Salt is less dense than rock around it, so in terms of geological time it will
tend to get pushed up relatively fast. As it goes up, it will bend up the
layers of rock around it, breaking the lower ones as it goes through them and
deforming the ones above. Salt itself is practically impermeable, and so are
some layers of rock. Oil, which is fairly light, will flow up and collect in
pockets formed against the edge of the salt dome where a layer of impermeable
rock has been bent up.

In
[http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/alhomadhi/Evaporates/Oil%20Traps%2...](http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/alhomadhi/Evaporates/Oil%20Traps%20Around%20Salt%20Dome.jpg)
the pink layer is mostly impermeable, the grey-brown layer is porous and
therefore permeable. Oil is trapped against the salt dome in the pockets
created by the dome itself.

I understand not every salt dome will have oil around it, but there's only one
way to find out. I don't think exploratory wells are _that_ expensive, but of
course they aren't exactly cheap either. However, drilling around the domes
will still get you better chances than just drilling blindly.

~~~
mbenjaminsmith
I think you're right about salt domes and oil. I'm probably wrong about the
densities as well. Everything I know was what I picked up from my (non-
geologist) father over beers.

I don't think it's the drilling itself as much as it is the in/accessibility
of the site. They were usually doing surveys in the Andes or the Amazon river
basin. Not exactly friendly territory.

They lost two crews while in South America. Mountains, bad weather and an
expensive/tight schedule are a bad combination. He said they could never know
where they went down, so they would watch the villages to see where airplane
parts hit the markets. Pretty sad stuff.

~~~
stcredzero
I wonder if this is an area where drone aircraft would be useful?

~~~
jarek
Likely. This is subject to the usual caveats that come into play when dealing
with drone aircraft: availability of technology and cost.

In particular, I doubt it would have been feasible to do this with drones back
when mbenjaminsmith's father was working on this (or at least I got the
impression this was a fair while ago). And even now, since the primary users
of the technology are still military and other government agencies, it's not
exactly cheap. Depending on how the company values a life and what are the
estimates of risk, it might not happen for a while.

~~~
stcredzero
I suspect that the economics will play out much like ROV submersibles. Over
the long term, operating and insurance costs will be much less for the drones.

------
petercooper
This reminds me of the guy who dated the somewhat gawky looking girl at high
school who ended up blossoming into the most gorgeous young woman you could
imagine. Either that, or the US has, behind the scenes, known about this all
along.

~~~
dminor
The Congo is one of the most mineral rich regions in the world, so it's not
necessarily a ticket to happily ever after.

~~~
sdurkin
It goes by various names: the Resource Curse, Paradox of Plenty, the Dutch
Disease, etc.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse>

Finding tremendous mineral resources usually encourages corruption, collapses
immature democratic institutions, and hollows out the industrial sector of the
economy.

Nigeria, Holland, Congo, Venezuela, the story is always the same. The only
country which has managed to avoid this situation is Norway.

~~~
DTrejo
If anyone wants to read about how Norway avoided this:
[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html)

~~~
ananthrk
Thanks. The article was very good. You should submit that as a separate entry.

~~~
DTrejo
Done :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1434413>

------
epall
This seems like a dangerous opportunity for a China-U.S. confrontation.

~~~
sdurkin
Interesting you should mention this.

Chinese mining companies have been quietly performing exploratory studies in
the north for the past few years. It was the Chinese activity that actually
tipped us off that there could be significant copper and lithium deposits.

The Afghan people have repelled every major imperial power including Alexander
the Great, the Persian Saffavids, Ghengis Khan, the Moghul Empire, the Russian
Empire, the British Empire, and the United Soviet Socialist Republics. As a
result, Afghanistan is one of the last remaining pieces of land on the planet
that has never been properly surveyed, mapped, or mined.

The ground is untouched. The nation borders China, which has an almost
insatiable appetite for minerals. The United States has over one hundred
thousand troops present. It is a recipe for a disaster of the highest order.

~~~
alexgartrell
Don't you feel like Mutually Assured Destruction rules out a war between China
and everyone else? The worst thing that could happen would be Chinese aid to
Taliban fighters, or equivalent. China is not going to roll tanks against
NATO, because everyone is making waaayyyyy too much money trading with
everyone else.

    
    
        It is a member of the WTO and is the world's second 
        largest trading power behind the US with a total 
        international trade of US$2.21 trillion – US$1.20 
        trillion in exports (#1) and US$1.01 trillion in imports (#2).
    
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Republic_of_China>

There's just way too much to lose over a trillion bucks (especially since they
have 1.6 trillion in US Securities)

~~~
sdurkin
You're absolutely right. It won't be PRC tanks rolling against NATO. It will
be proxy warfare, in the manner of the Great Game or the Cold War. Even today,
Chinese companies sell a great deal of weaponry to the Taliban and other
insurgent groups.

We are looking at a repeat of the US-Soviet conflict, replayed in Central
Asia, with stakes unimaginably high.

The mineral deposits are significant in that they are a major catalyst,
forcing events to happen over years rather than decades. The minerals will
pull in corporations controlled directly by the Chinese state, and our own
psuedo-public conglomerates such as Betchel and Halliburton. As a rule,
soldiers follow merchants. It is a potentially dangerous situation that is
strongly foreshadowed by historical precedent.

There is a reason nearly all Eurasian empires of the past two millennia have
found themselves fighting in the Afghan hills.

Afghanistan is not some simple backwater. It sits astride the only viable land
passes between Europe, China, and India. It is the natural crossroads of the
world, the only unsecured military path into the Punjab, and a major potential
trade route between three billion consumers.

Afghanistan is unique because it could be phenomenally wealthy, but as a
result, it is simply too dangerous for any one power to allow a rival to
control it. The Brits invaded to keep it away from the Russians. The United
States sponsered insurgents to keep it away from the Soviets.

The most stable outcome is for no one to possess it, and for the country to
remain in ruin. But from time to time, a Great Power tries to seize the area,
drawing a response from the other powers. That time may be again be
approaching.

~~~
blantonl
_As a rule, soldiers follow merchants_

That struck me as the most important comment regarding this article.

------
Detrus
Wow, victory was in doubt because the motivation to run a prolonged war over
nothing wears out. That's why everyone lost in Afghanistan, it was hard to
capture but had little worth capturing. Now that money is at stake, victory
from a serious war effort is more likely.

I'm betting $10 on a USA victory now.

~~~
brianobush
Developing an entire industry from nothing (and lots of foreign
support/investment) will take years. Do US voters mind waiting?

~~~
edge17
If they don't want to, I'm sure others will swoop in for an opportunity to get
mining rights. There's going to be plenty of suitors because the mining terms
will probably be very good since Afghanistan's credit rating is so bad.
They're not going to have an easy time getting a loan to build up operations,
so the terms they'll give others for mining rights will be quite profitable.
And yes, things can get unsavory (as we've seen in places like Africa). The
market's going to work this out (commodity traders will see to that... dealing
in war-torn countries is tricky but they've shown time and time again that
they're happy to oblige).

People these days are too hung up on making money fast. A few years to develop
and build a profit engine really isn't that much.

------
ck2
So they are proposing we trade Oil dependency to Lithium dependency.

But there are HUGE deposits of Lithium in the USA.

You know who owns the rights to them? Canadian corporations.

They refuse to mine them because it's not economically beneficial (yet) they
want the price to go up.

~~~
jseliger
Or, more likely, a combination of oil and lithium, since it looks unlikely
that purely electric cars are going to make it in the next decade or two.

------
csomar
I wish the money goes to the Afghan people. I wish also if it did, they don't
build another Dubai, but focus on teaching children and make a new enlightened
generation.

~~~
ars
Money will not, and can not, do that. Only culture can do that.

And what does "enlightened" mean, anyway? Does it mean "follows my ideals"?

~~~
jmtulloss
That's a good question.

I think at first it meant putting science above superstition, but now I think
it means treating all citizens with respect. We're in the civil rights age of
enlightenment.

~~~
DannoHung
Treating all citizens respectfully and putting science above superstition
(read: religion) fundamentally violates the basic principles of a large number
of human cultures.

~~~
jmtulloss
I disagree. I have seen very little in any religion that puts them in direct
opposition to science. Rather it's peoples interpretation of both that seems
to create so much conflict.

------
T_S_
We'll never be able to exit now. Gulf oil and Afghan lithium. Screwed either
way.

Is it just me, or is anyone else tired of perpetual war?

------
DTrejo
Bolivia had better watch out for falling lithium prices.

When a government depends on resources for their revenue, they are setting
themselves up for failure when prices fall.

Norway could have been in a similar situation with oil, but they avoided it:

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabdc0.html)

Hopefully Bolivia learns something from Norway and this does not happen to
them (Venezuela definitely didn't take a hint).

Similarly, if Afghanistan does not set itself up well, it could have the same
resource dependency problem.

------
lowkey
And here I thought the only reason we were in Afghanistan was for the
[opium]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cultivation_1994-2007b.PNG))
and the potentially lucrative [oil
pipeline](<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline>). Now that
we've discovered mineral riches, I'm guessing it's time to bring some
Haliburton-style capitalism (I mean democracy) to the Afghan people. It looks
like we'll be there for a very long time.

~~~
jrockway
HN does not [support](markdown).

~~~
natrius
> _The idea is that a Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is,
> as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or
> formatting instructions._

<http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/>

I'd prefer links as footnotes, but using markdown even when it isn't supported
isn't so bad.

------
mattdw
The thing I don't understand about this is why the US would be prospecting in
Afghanistan in the first place. Is there any valid reason why the US should
have made this discovery? (Genuine question; I can't think of any reasons.)

~~~
blogimus
Did you read the article? The discovery was accidental. There were charts
secreted away by Afghan geologists during the Taliban years.

 _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._

~~~
mattdw
Heh… caught out. Thanks for doing my reading for me ;).

------
haily
I wonder what is the exact date of the discovery of valuable minerals in
Afghanistan. Do they look for minerals while at war?

------
igravious
A trillion dollars? Really? What a round figure. Wait a minute ... that
reminds me of something that I read recently. Now, what was it? Oh yeah, it
was this observation by Vijay Prashad over at CounterPunch.

<http://counterpunch.org/prashad06112010.html>

"On May 30, at 10:06am, the United States exchequer turned over its trillionth
dollar to the U. S. armed forces for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. A
trillion dollars is a lot of money. As my friends at the National Priorities
Project put it, if I made a $1 million a year, it would take me a million
years to earn a trillion dollars. The U. S. government expended the same
amount in nine years, fighting two wars. So what did our trillion tax dollars
buy?"

Alan Greenspan: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to
acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” (The Age
of Turbulence, 2007, p. 463).

Me: “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what
everyone knows: the Afghanistan war is largely about gas and mineral wealth”
(My unpublished international bestselling debut, 2011, p. 231).

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline>

~~~
alttab
I'll file this story under "nuke, pillage, plunder."

While I'm not for war of any kind, and least we seem to have a semi-legitimate
reason to be over there now. However, if there was trillions of dollars of
valuable minerals, one could venture to guess we knew about those a while ago.

~~~
igravious
The thing is alttab, aren't we meant to have gone past that stage in our
historical development? You know, plundering and pillaging and what-not. The
problem is that any legitimate exploitation of this mineral wealth is
delegitimatized (God help me, does that word even exist?) somewhat by the
manner in which the wealth was found to exist. It'd be great if Afghanistan
became the California of Central Asia but I'm not going to be holding my
breath for that eventuality.

------
mkramlich
Awesome, now the US can power our gas/oil-based cars with Iraq and our
electric battery-powered cars with Afghanistan.

(regarding the supposedly huge lithium find there)

~~~
nickpinkston
Seriously - the first thing I thought of was InfoWars getting a hold of this
and saying:

"The US planned 9/11 in order to invade Afghanistan to get at it's vast
mineral resources - especially lithium and copper to power the future of
energy - just like oil in the Middle East!!" - Alex Jones in Parody

------
blizkreeg
East Afghanistan Trading Company. Est 2010.

[Like the East India Trading Company led to 150 years of British rule, I just
hope history does not repeat itself.]

------
moolave
As much as I would like to consider the outlook that US can possibly improve
Afghanistan as an industrialized nation, create jobs, increase GDP and
whatnot... it just boils down to historical autonomy. Afghanistan, no matter
how many years they are at war and political turmoil, does not want any
outside entity breathing down their throats no matter how "benevolent" their
intentions are. If the US only came in as an economy-oriented entity instead
of a war-figure, then the story might change.

This is not going to be a good example, but unless you give consent, do you
want some overwhelming authority barging into your household saying that they
struck gold while you and your significant other are having a disagreement
(and that you've been doing this and resolving for a while)?

But then again, who am I to steer things like these? Government contractors
make up a good percentage of our economy, technology included.

------
mjijackson
Okay, anybody on this thread who think the Taliban is a good thing in any
degree for Afghanistan has no idea what they are talking about. They have
almost completely destroyed that beautiful country.

~~~
astrodust
The Taliban are a dangerous element, they always have been, but they were
created largely by the US.

You often get such radicalized elements is because of aggressive external
pressure. Just as the Taliban was a response to the USSR, you have numerous
Palestinian groups who are just as adamant.

------
pinstriped_dude
No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1T Afghan Motherlode

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430125>

------
houseabsolute
Straight from the almost too good to be true department.

------
davidw
I guess I'll stick my neck out, point to the political discussion and ask
"what does this have to do with hacker news?". If you want politics, reddit
has plenty. If you want a nice discussion site, you can't have politics.

~~~
chopsueyar
Geology?

------
known
I hope 80% of the returns are invested back in Afghanistan
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle>

------
m0th87
This might actually not be good for Afghanistan:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease>

~~~
tptacek
_What_ manufacturing sector? These people eat dirt today.

~~~
m0th87
An economy doesn't have to be currently developed to be susceptible. The same
phenomenon could prevent development too, e.g. Nigeria

~~~
tptacek
By the numbers, Nigeria is far better off than Afghanistan.

~~~
kragen
Life expectancy in Nigeria is 47. In Afghanistan it's 44.

Nigeria has 3% adult HIV seroprevalence. Afghanistan, 0.01%.

18.8% of Nigerians die before reaching five years old, and 23.5% of Afghans.

Nigeria's HDI is 0.511, putting it at rank #158 out of 182 countries.
Afghanistan's is 0.352, #181.

Which numbers are you looking at? Nigeria looks better off, but not far better
off.

------
one010101
Now we'll have enough Lithium to power our future electric cars - without
buying it from China!

------
Aetius
Now that these wars are paying off, what's the timeframe for invading Iran?
Let's face it, we all know some secret CIA operation has been drawing up
detailed plans, running simulations, and playing war games with Iran for
years. Now that we flank them on left and right, all they need is the right
Administration. 15 years is my guess. 10 if there's a major terrorist attack
that can be tied to Iran.

~~~
MichaelSalib
Given that Iran can easily cripple the world economy by scuttling some ships
and blocking the Straits of Hormuz, I don't think we'll see any such attack.

~~~
hga
The Strait is 33 miles / 54 kilometers wide at it's most narrow point, I'm
hard pressed to imagine that the navigable part of it is narrow enough to
close that way.

I've always heard that Iran's plans would involve the usual tools like
missiles, mines, small boats, etc., all of which have obvious counters. I'm
not saying it would be a cakewalk, and not even considering how things would
change when they go nuclear, but "easily" doesn't strike me as accurate.

There's also the minor detail that they import over open water 1/2 of their
petroleum distillates, a naval war in that area would bring their economy to a
near halt. Drop a few bombs on their only refinery (I've read they have only
one, but whatever the number, it's small enough for us and their neighbors to
take out) and their country reverts to a pre-industrialized state with mass
starvation.

Iran is _exquisitely_ vulnerable, which is certainly one of their reasons for
pursuing the bomb (and one reason they might continue even after a regime
change).

~~~
MichaelSalib
_The Strait is 33 miles / 54 kilometers wide at it's most narrow point, I'm
hard pressed to imagine that the navigable part of it is narrow enough to
close that way._

True, but the actual channel through which supertankers navigate is only 6
miles wide (two miles for each direction of traffic with a two mile gutter to
separate). The rest of the channel at that point is either within Iranian
territorial waters or too shallow for supertankers to safely transit.

 _I've always heard that Iran's plans would involve the usual tools like
missiles, mines, small boats, etc., all of which have obvious counters. I'm
not saying it would be a cakewalk, and not even considering how things would
change when they go nuclear, but "easily" doesn't strike me as accurate._

Oh, I very much agree with you. I'm sure Iran would follow through on all
those options before they did something as difficult to undo as scuttling
tankers to block the Strait.

 _There's also the minor detail that they import over open water 1/2 of their
petroleum distillates, a naval war in that area would bring their economy to a
near halt. Drop a few bombs on their only refinery (I've read they have only
one, but whatever the number, it's small enough for us and their neighbors to
take out) and their country reverts to a pre-industrialized state with mass
starvation._

Yeah, that would be awful for them. But given the low elasticity for gasoline
consumption, cutting off 40% of daily oil flow would be an economic disaster
for us. Businesses would grind to a halt as tens of millions of people would
no longer be able to afford to go to work. For starters.

 _Iran is exquisitely vulnerable, which is certainly one of their reasons for
pursuing the bomb (and one reason they might continue even after a regime
change)._

Absolutely. But the entire industrialized world is also vulnerable. And if we
start a conflict and do take out Iran's sole refinery while blockading them to
prevent them from getting refined products, they will have every incentive to
block the Strait. Right?

