Who'd a thunk it? The Gray Lady informs us:
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.
The Saudi Arabia of lithium? Read about how lithium figures in some types of nuclear bomb design.
Afghanistan's current GDP is $12B. An international bidding war is in store, on all odds. While international investment can be attracted on prospective financial return, the payoff, though, is many years down the road.
Author Ann Marlowe, vastly knowledgeable about Afghanistan, sees trouble in the trillion-dollar find. She Sees General Stanley McChrystal getting bogged down, and Afghan crook-leader Hamid Karzai undermining us left & right. Definitely read her riveting two-pager.
WHICH RAISES TWO QUESTIONS:
1. Shouldn't the countries whose militaries have been fighting for Afghanistan's freedom have preferential treatment accorded their governments & companies?
2. How do we keep all this stuff away from the clutches of Islamist terror groups?
Bottom Line. We had better use all leverage we have to see that the deserving get this bounty, and ONLY the deserving. At minimum, those who have sacrificed their finest should get right of first refusal on major mining deals.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Nuclear Proliferation, Arms Control, WMD, Foreign Policy, Economy, Conservative Politics
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