Mineral Wealth

I came across a tweet referencing a New York Times article,  U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan. The new cry can be that we are only in Afghanistan for the lithium. Liberty is a smoke screen and the U.S. took down it’s own towers as an excuse to mine Afghanistan. Oh yes, I can hear it now.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

So if we are busy fighting a war against the Taliban, who did have the time for the necessary geological studies? If this is true, we can expect corporations to start positioning themselves to set up shop in that part of the world. They can be friendly and charming until all systems are in place and then the government over there can step in and nationalize the operations. They need us only to get things rolling with the technology that would enable the efficient mining of the materials.

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.

That is all we need, another Saudi Arabia to hold us over a barrel as it were. And what of the warlords that gain their wealth from opium production? Will they really leave it all alone for others to enjoy the profits? Will they go straight as businessmen?

I am not against helping their economy or even participating in the extraction of said ores. I would like to see some caution and due diligence before we become dependent on yet another country who would rather see us dead.