Afghan Mines: Untapped Abundance Straddled on Long-Term Woes

Afghanistan's much-touted abundant mineral deposits and reserves, it seems, could pose more as a problem than a solution to address its long-standing political and economic woes.

"It is very welcome that Afghanistan has mining on the horizon ... (but) extraction of mineral wealth does not necessarily produce an improvement of life for the local population. Very often, mining under a weak state which cannot control it is a recipe for more conflict," Thomas Ruttig, co-founder of the Kabul-based Afghanistan Analysts Network, said in Reuters.

He said mining income is unlikely to cure Afghanistan's political and economic woes in the face of destroyed infrastructure, depressed levels of educational attainment and an unemployment figure believed to be as high as 40 per cent.

The Afghan government, eager to rebuild its nation as well as attract investment, had been proclaiming it holds an estimated $3 trillion in natural resources. The deposits, which yield copper and iron ore, oil and gas, niobium, cobalt, gold, molybdenum, silver and lithium, could lift the country's coffers by some $3.5 billion a year.

But Ruttig said much of the information that government has in its hands could be obsolete as it dates from the Soviet era. Geologists may need to conduct more evaluation to accurately assess Afghanistan's natural resources and its economic potential both to the country and the international community.

"Mining is seen as a silver bullet, not only by the Afghan government but also by the international community," Ruttig said.

But "until (it) is ascertained that the mineralization exists, it is only a potential resource which may or may not be there," Hassan Alief, an Afghan-American geologist who has worked extensively in Afghanistan, said.

Moreover, international investors, although heavily interested in the country's vast mineral resources, remain cautious dealing with Afghanistan and its people.

Although investors were expected to come up with a commitment to boost Afghan social development as part of the tender process, few have actually complied, thus generating few jobs for the locals.

"Take a look at what Metallurgical Corp. of China have since done. They brought in their own people, they buy their own goods from China and have them shipped in. The large capital investments by MCC are not benefitting the Afghan people like they should," James Yeager, an adviser to the Afghan Ministry of Mines, said.

A consortium led by MCC won the country's first big mining contract to develop the Aynak copper deposits in 2008.