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U.S. Discovers Est. $1 Trillion of Minerals in Afghanistan
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- mkramlich 16y agoAwesome, 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 16y agoSeriously - 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
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- lowkey 16y agoAnd here I thought the only reason we were in Afghanistan was for the [opium](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cultivation_1994-2007b.PNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Afghanistan_opium_poppy_cu...) and the potentially lucrative [oil pipeline](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_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 16y agoHN does not [support](markdown).
- natrius 16y ago> 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/ http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/ I'd prefer links as footnotes, but using markdown even when it isn't supported isn't so bad.
- rms 16y agoIf you want opium, google for "dried poppy pods" and you will get raw, dried opium sent to your door for a reasonable price and in a professional manor. That we are waging a war in Afghanistan to stop the supply of opium when it is so easily available (legally!!!!!!) on the internet is just one more example of how the world is insane.
- epall 16y agoThis seems like a dangerous opportunity for a China-U.S. confrontation.
- alexgartrell 16y agoI think it'd take a lot more than a trillion bucks to make China and the US get into any kind of bullets and bombs dispute. A war with China would cost a LOT more than a trillion bucks. If China underbids us and we're unable to leverage state power or anything of that nature, I'm sure we'll just lick our wounds and give up. Anything else would be really, really stupid.
- baguasquirrel 16y agoNations, like people, make stupid mistakes sometimes. Look at the defining wars of the previous century.
- sdurkin 16y agoInteresting 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.
- rikthevik 16y agoHere we go, folks! Afghanistan, your smoking craters are about to get a lot bigger and a lot smokier.
- alexgartrell 16y ago
- Detrus 16y agoWow, 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 16y agoDeveloping an entire industry from nothing (and lots of foreign support/investment) will take years. Do US voters mind waiting?
- edge17 16y agoIf 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.
- mattdw 16y agoThe 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.)
- bradleyland 16y agoNation building. We (supposedly) learned from our first exercise in Afghanistan that you can't help a people fight off their oppressor then leave them to fend for themselves. Things quickly degrade to where they were with the Taliban as the ruling body. Some believe it is in our interest to build up the nation with a favorable government in place. And no, GWB's administration didn't invent this ideology. Neither did PNAC, or any of the other conspiracy-nut targets. This kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.
- mkramlich 16y agoWe look for large valuable resources in order to help democracy. (I'm only half-joking, I think there are both sinister and non-sinister reasons why this may occur, which is why it makes it hard to discern true motives.)
- csomar 16y agoProfit, certainly. They have control over the country and its' government; so they can take advantage of the resources.
- Aetius 16y agoOnly in an extremely naive world would you get downvoted for this. Is HN becoming a less enlightened place? Do we truly believe that we went to Afghanistan solely for the terrorists??
- tkahn6 16y agoFor what purpose do you believe we went into Afghanistan? For their opium? [Edit: Afghanistan, not Iraq.]
- csomar 16y agoI 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 16y agoMoney 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 16y agoThat'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 16y agoTreating all citizens respectfully and putting science above superstition (read: religion) fundamentally violates the basic principles of a large number of human cultures.
- jmtulloss 16y agoI 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.
- Wolf_Larsen 16y ago>Only culture can do that That is an excellent point. It reminds me of the "Money does not motivate developers" articles on here recently.
- joezydeco 16y agoI'm sure it will go to the Afghan people, but guess who gets to jump to the front of the line to buy it....
- houseabsolute 16y agoStraight from the almost too good to be true department.
- Aetius 16y agoNow 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 16y agoGiven 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.
- jafl5272 16y agoSomebody would surely find a way to spin that into an act of war, clear out the scuttled ships, and invade Iran.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoI don't think Iran would do that unless there was already an invasion of Iran underway. And while it might be possible to clear the scuttled ships, it would be extremely difficult and take months, if not years. That would be months or years in which oil supply from not only Iran but Iraq, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia would be choked off. That would be crippling to the world economy.
- jarek 16y agoJust wondering -- wouldn't a couple (or a couple dozen) of well-placed explosive charges disintegrate the ships into small enough pieces and clear the way? Can you expand on the difficulties? It doesn't seem to a layman like it'd be that challenging or take that long. (Then again, I realize little does.)
- philwelch 16y agoThey'd have to be quick--it would take time for them to scuttle those ships, and they wouldn't go unnoticed since we almost always have a carrier battle group in the Gulf anyway (plus, who can really keep a secret anyway?). The US Navy continually operates to protect freedom of navigation--they'd prevent any scuttling operations there by any means necessary, considering the stakes.
- petercooper 16y agoThis 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.
- Alex3917 16y agoEither way, this is pretty much the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Afghanistan.
- alexgartrell 16y agoWhy? Every industrialized country on the planet now has an interest in making Afghanistan an industrialized country so that they can get a piece of that sweet lithium pie. Granted, there are chances for folks to take advantage and Afghanistan to get some generally raw deals, but it's overwhelmingly better than being poor with an economy built primarily on the drug trade. Afghanistan went from having no chance to a moderate chance. It's no cause for celebration, but it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world either.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoWhy? Because of the Resource Curse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse
- tptacek 16y agoMost of the supposed reasons behind the "curse" assume that there's an already-functioning economy to wreck. Minerals in Afghanistan aren't going to wreck their nonexistent licit agriculture output. Further, Afghanistan is already in a state of chronic intense conflict, which neutralizes another arm of the "curse".
- MichaelSalib 16y ago
- blizkreeg 16y agoEast 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.]
- haily 16y agoI wonder what is the exact date of the discovery of valuable minerals in Afghanistan. Do they look for minerals while at war?
- m0th87 16y agoThis might actually not be good for Afghanistan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
- tptacek 16y agoWhat manufacturing sector? These people eat dirt today.
- m0th87 16y agoAn economy doesn't have to be currently developed to be susceptible. The same phenomenon could prevent development too, e.g. Nigeria
- tptacek 16y agoBy the numbers, Nigeria is far better off than Afghanistan.
- kragen 16y agoLife 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.
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- rjett 16y ago"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 16y agoMy 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.
- mblakele 16y agoInteresting stuff. I think M.A. Foster used this as a plot device in "Gameplayers of Zan".
- jarek 16y agoI'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%20Around%20Salt%20Dome.jpg http://faculty.ksu.edu.sa/alhomadhi/Evaporates/Oil%20Traps%2... 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.
- tptacek 16y agoWithout 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 16y agoWhich 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.
- charleso 16y agoThe world has a severe shortage of opiate-based pain killers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy-based_medicines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid#Global_shortage_of_poppy... 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 16y ago"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 16y agoYou'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.
- chopsueyar 16y agoI agree, we need more iPads, dammit!
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- moolave 16y agoAs 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.
- DTrejo 16y agoBolivia 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-00144feabdc0.html http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/99680a04-92a0-11de-b63b-00144feabd... 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.
- edge17 16y agoThe 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 16y agoThe 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 16y agoYup, here's an article dating from 2009 http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/03/08/chinas-thirst-for-copper-could-hold-key-to-afghanistans-future/ http://www.sananews.com.pk/english/2009/03/08/chinas-thirst-... China's already built roads to the area, and US soldiers are protecting the Chinese construction effort
- one010101 16y agoNow we'll have enough Lithium to power our future electric cars - without buying it from China!
- ck2 16y agoSo 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 16y agoOr, 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.
- igravious 16y agoA 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 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Afghanistan_Pipeline
- alttab 16y agoI'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 16y agoThe 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.
- igravious 16y agoI am Jack's complete lack of surprise at the down-votes. From the article: "An internal _Pentagon_ memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,”" and "“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, _commander of the United States Central Command_, said in an interview on Saturday." and "“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, deputy undersecretary of defense for business and leader of the _Pentagon_ team that discovered the deposits" and "The _Pentagon_ task force has already started trying to help the Afghans set up a system to deal with mineral development." and "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." If someone points out that the US Pentagon has discovered riches under the soil of a foreign country its troops are waging a war in I'll certainly point out how much that war effort has cost and is costing each and every person in the States.
- davidw 16y agoI 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 16y agoGeology?
- T_S_ 16y agoWe'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?
- mjijackson 16y agoOkay, 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 16y agoThe 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.
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- herdrick 16y agoThis 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.
- known 16y agoI hope 80% of the returns are invested back in Afghanistan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle
- pinstriped_dude 16y agoNo, The U.S. Didn’t Just ‘Discover’ a $1T Afghan Motherlode http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430125 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1430125