Afghanistan Strikes It Rich

| Mon Jun. 14, 2010 12:45 AM EDT

Just a few hours after I surveyed the scene in Afghanistan and suggested that a decade from now "we'll all be wondering why we were ever there," James Risen of the New York Times proposes an answer:


....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.


I have a very bad feeling about this. It could quickly turn into a toxic combination of stupendous wealth, superpower conflict, oligarchs run wild, entire new levels of corruption, and a trillion new reasons for the Taliban to fight even harder. And for the cynical among us, this line from Risen's piece — "American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan" — suggests that the Obama administration might be eagerly thinking about these discoveries as a shiny new reason to keep a military presence in Afghanistan forever. I can hardly wait to see what Bill Kristol thinks of this.

On the other hand, maybe it represents lots of new jobs, enough money to suck away the Taliban's foot soldiers, and the stable income base Afghanistan needs to develop a modern infrastructure. I doubt it, but you never know.

That aside, if you read the entire piece it turns out that the story (and the timeline) of how this mineral treasure was discovered is pretty interesting. Enjoy it while you can.
