I have been reading and thinking about the newly announced mineral wealth discovered in Afgahanistan. At first I was happy to hear that they might have found a way to help their ecomony and bulster an improved way of life for them and their people. I am routing for them! Heaven knows they need it. Hopefully it would increase the nations wealth enough to educate, feed and employee it's people (both genders hopefully).
But after awhile, I started realizing that maybe this could also lead to some ugly times for them. Can you imagine the wealth from this falling into the Taliban's hands? They are certainly going to want their cut. Not to mention the corruption within the governement and outside governments and businesses thinking they need a cut in this. And....Can you imagine teaching a non-mining people how to mine and build businesses and do all of this with no governmental regulations for such a thing in place? They have no mining history. Honestly, to do this right...they need some hardcore rules and regulations set up first. How does a third world country jump into such a huge task with no experience or history of it and be successfull with it? How do they do it and keep the wolves away? How do they set it up so that the Afghan people can benefit from this? I am sure they can hire contractors to come in and set this up...but then they have to spend lots of money on their securtiy. (which might be a necessary cost of doing business)I hope they think this through before they start diving into it. If they do it methodically and with care...they can be successful....but if greed is the motivating factor.... this whole ordeal could be "bad news". And doing it while a major war offensive is going on in their country would probably be near impossible. I am curious to how this will all play out.
4 comments:
Mining minerals on an industrial scale requires a vast transportation network that links to smelters, refineries, factories, etc. The network would include railways and roads that can handle heavy loads. Afghanistan is land-locked, so no shipping is available. The maintenance and support structure is as important as building the roads. Logistics would be a nightmare without a solid communications network. The development of such infrastructure would take many years if not decades. For Afghanistan, the quick buck is farming opium and other drugs, so I doubt they will or can aggressively pursue mining on a meaningful scale. Security is the other problem (as you noted). The Taliban prefers to live in the dark ages, so they will see such economic development as a bad thing. The bottom line is that the mineral wealth will not likely be developed anytime soon.
Alan's comments only serve to preface mine. Afghanistan will not be able to develop these resources without western help and western help will only come if there is stability and money to be made. Lithium is one of the primary minerals that is there in abundance. George Will wrote that it would take decades. Alan and he are probably right. But Afghanistan has problems much older than the Taliban: tribal societies that just don't seem to want to go away. Tribes fight for rights to water even now.
Tribalism and Islam makes for a very bad cocktail. I am struggling to think that we should continue there, George Will doesn't come out and say it, but in several of his recent articles he shows a great deal of doubt about our continued presence there.
I supported the war there because I couldn't bare the idea of women having there heads blown off in the center of soccer stadiums with large crowds of men looking on. I still don't want us to leave for those humanitarian reasons, but it is beginning to seem more and more hopeless.
Yes although it may take decades...China has already tried to buy rights to such mines. The race is on!
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