

No, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1 Trillion Afghan Motherlode - pinstriped_dude
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/no-the-military-didnt-just-discover-an-afghan-mineral-motherlode/

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tjmaxal
A guy called into NPR this morning and said he had a worlds almanac from 1967
with an article about Afghanistan's mineral riches.

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Groxx
Care to elaborate? Did it cover lithium / anything _discovered_ , and not just
theorized? Does anyone have a copy lying around they can check?

~~~
mahmud
I listened to said NPR programme and the guy speculated the resources might
have been known all along, but only now did the (high) price of these minerals
and the (low) cost of their extraction make them more attractive.

I, personally, have a more cynical and conspiratorial view of things: I think
the U.S. intelligence cooked up the trillion figure in order to wane the
production of opium for at least a decade, by promising Afghans a better
bounty and a reason to form national unity. Mineral extraction is an expensive
undertaking that can't be done by stealth mobile units in friendly pockets;
the whole country has to come together.

What strengthens my suspicion is the U.S's willingness to announce this
"finding", despite the possibility of undermining its presence there. The
Taliban can always say the Americans knew about this all along and have
fabricated excuses to invade us.

$50 on longbet, with a 10 year maturity :-)

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jseliger
_I, personally, have a more cynical and conspiratorial view of things: I think
the U.S. intelligence cooked up the trillion figure in order to wane the
production of opium for at least a decade, by promising Afghans a better
bounty and a reason to form national unity._

A good rule of thumb: ignorance and incompetence explains well over 99% of the
unfortunate aspects of the world and evil or deliberate planning well under
1%.

~~~
metamemetics
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlons_razor>

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by
stupidity."

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bobbyi
The refute the discovery by citing a report from 2007 that says "Afghanistan
has significant amounts of undiscovered nonfuel mineral resources".

How does someone previously citing _undiscovered_ resources contradict the
idea of those resources now being _discovered_?

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joe_the_user
Well,

If, hypothetically, Wire had shown that the military had no new information
but simply took the previous general reports of resources existing and labeled
that a "discovery", then Wired would have refuted the military's claims.
Unfortunately, the wired article doesn't seem to provide enough information
for this.

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pdx
Regardless of the political motivations that sparked the announcement, I was
excited to hear about it.

I became interested in Afghanistan in 2001, along with everybody else. Before
that, my only exposure to the country was my reading of "The Man who would be
King", by Kipling.

Everything that I've heard about the Afghanistan economy has had to do with
opium and heroin. To have it announced that there was a very real possibility
that there may be a way to grow their economy in a very real and significant
way, and a way that benefits the rest of the world, rather than harms it, is
exciting news to me.

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michael_dorfman
Your demographic is showing.

Some of us became interested in Afghanistan back in '79, when the Soviets
invaded, and President Carter (remember him?) re-instated draft registration.
Seemed pretty important at the time, but seems to be forgotten now...

~~~
pinstriped_dude
Maybe a large part of the audience here is born in the 80s?!

~~~
cema
Maybe a large part, but not "everybody else".

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sfard
Even if the profits exist, "Who will be profiting" is a good question. Here
are some points (1) Afghanistan's chunk of revenue from reserves will almost
all come from Loyalties. They don't have engineers to design mines, no capital
equipment to sell, no skilled labour, etc. At best, there will be a slight
trickle of money to those serving food and cleaning at camps. (2) Loyalty
revenue, in a country as corrupt as Afghanistan, is not going to go the people
- at best a small slice might be used to build some infrastructure (3) All
this foreign investment in the Country will lead to huge inflation which will
make housing/food/etc even less affordable to the average afghani.

Source: I've lived-in and worked on mining projects in the developing world
and saw all this stuff happen first hand.

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asolove
I guess what I don't understand is why thought this was good news. Look around
the world at countries whose economies depend on non-labor-intensive natural
resource extraction. Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc. These resources form a natural
monopoly and quickly become the subject of political power.

~~~
sprout
Seems to be going great for Norway.

~~~
houseabsolute
Canada too.

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eru
Those places have good government, I guess that's what saves them.

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houseabsolute
I guess so, but then the claim boils down to:

\- It is bad to be resource rich and have a bad government.

\- It is good to be resource rich and have a good government.

Why not instead just say

\- How good things are will significantly depend on how good the government
is.

Since that claim holds true for both resource rich and resource poor
countries.

~~~
eru
Yes. But we can add another (non-trivial) claim: If you have bad government,
resources make it harder to transition to a good government.

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binarray2000
Folks, let's finally bury this news as a PR-gag launched by Pentagon (or some
other US government agency) spin-doctors. Why would they do it? People in
western countries are tired of the war in Afghanistan. There's no real
progress despite big plans of the western nations for this year alone. And
until June 2010 western military forces have had more losses than in first
three years of engagement there. So, because no one believes in the myths of
"bringing freedom and democracy" and "building schools and civil society"
anymore , we need a new reason to stay there: Resources! I'm not denying that
they don't exist. But...

1\. Until there is real analysis of the ground you cannot predict its size and
value.

2\. There's still a problem of how to export all that minerals from
Afghanistan. Even with peaceful and unarmed population, the country doesn't
have any notable infrastructure (trains, harbor), many of those areas are in
mountains etc.

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hendler
The wired article is interesting, and offers some perspective. But personally,
the mineral news was news to me, and helps me understand a little more about
what is at stake.

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S_A_P
So does this mean that the current war in Afghanistan is a war for lithium?

~~~
jaekwon
Maybe it's a preventative measure against the money given to Afghanistan going
into the wrong hands, i.e. more terrorism.

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u48998
New or not, this story in the NYTimes at least brought an old perspective to
the new generation. Lot more people (due to Lithium take of the story) is now
aware of the potential of Afghanistan, irrespective of the conspiracy theories
etc.

~~~
ErrantX
I'm still not sure it will have an effect. Those for whom lithium mining
represents a commercial possibility almost certainly already new about it from
before - so what stopped investment then?

I don't buy the concept that this fixes more problems than it causes.

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c00p3r
NYT headline is an extremely powerful tool. It puts things into a spotlight.
Why? There could be various reasons, to shift attention from an oil spill, for
example. =)

And of course everyone who are spending (or were spent) money for a war
(British, Russian, US) were aware what they would get as a reward.

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csomar
If US knows already (before the war) that Afghanistan is terribly rich with
minerals, so that explains why they did the war and settled down.

But how can we forget the reason US told us why they invading Afghanistan?
Fighting Terrorism (under the name of AlQaida).

The image is clear now.

Edit: Assuming US knows that before war.

~~~
JacobAldridge
I don't think you can argue, as the article kind of does via its sources, that
these "discoveries" are of questionable profitability due to the
infrastructure and security investment that will be required _AND_ they were
the lucrative reason we went to war in the first place.

After all, if the Afghan War has already cost the US $739.8 Billion dollars
[1], even $1 Trillion doesn't leave much for infrastructure investment and a
reasonable profit margin.

[1] <http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933935.html>

