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Copper mine threatens sacred city in Afghanistan

Mark Colvin reported this story on Thursday, October 4, 2012 18:34:00

MARK COLVIN Most people remember when the then rulers of Afghanistan, the Taliban, used artillery to destroy the ancient Buddhas of Bamiyan. Now another huge and important archaeological site is under threat of destruction, but this time because of China's desire to mine copper.

It's Mes Aynak, a site in Logar Province southeast of Kabul. The China Metallurgical Group, known as MCC in English, aims to dig it up with explosives with a target date of December this year. But archaeologists have only scratched the surface of the treasures of Mes Aynak.

Brent Huffman is an award-winning documentary maker. He's working on a project called "The Buddhas of Aynak". I started by asking him to describe the place.

BRENT HUFFMAN: The Mes Aynak Buddhist site is a little bit of a misnomer. It's really a city. It's a gigantic 400,000 square metre city, complete with hundreds of life-size or bigger Buddha statues, monastery complexes, temple structures, it's just enormous.

So it's actually spread all around the mountain area. So I think when people think of the site, they don't think of the sheer size of it, and the size is worth noting for a couple of reasons. One, because it is such a sort of grand, epic, really awe-inspiring site to see. But the size also makes it really difficult to excavate, because it's a very land-mined area, so it's dangerous to kind of poke around.

But it's also difficult to access some of the sites, and the archaeologists are small in number and don't have the tools to do the job, so the size makes things very difficult.

MARK COLVIN: So is what you see on the surface all of it, or do you think that there is more underneath? I understand it may go back as far as 5,000 years, in terms of human habitation.

BRENT HUFFMAN: The most important thing to maybe note about Mes Aynak is that archaeologists have just scratched the surface, and material has not been adequately studied that's been taken out of the ground.

So on the surface, we're looking at 2,600-year-old Buddhist sites - a major hub on the Silk Road, an extremely important meeting place, pilgrimage site, where different countries - Indian, Chinese, Afghan, Pakistani, all sort of met in this location.

What's really exciting, when I was there last in August, is they were just starting to discover, still from the Buddhist period, some ancient manuscripts, actually scrolls that were rolled up.

MARK COLVIN: Really? They've survived?

BRENT HUFFMAN: They've survived, and they believe there's thousands of them. As you can imagine, they're extremely delicate. In August, they hadn't yet unravelled any, because they're just afraid they're going to turn to dust, but they brought in an expert in ancient manuscripts and ancient paper.

MARK COLVIN: Let's talk about what's going on now. The irony, I suppose, is that the reason this settlement began back in the Bronze Age was that there was copper in the ground, but now it's the presence of copper in the ground that threatens the place.

BRENT HUFFMAN: Yes, so when I was there in August, everyone told me in December - and they didn't give me a solid date, but sometime in December - the Afghan Ministry (inaudible) is going to close off the site, force archaeologists to leave, and the Chinese were going to start copper excavation.

And that was kind of a surprise to me. For a while, they'd been saying 2014, and it was kind of all of a sudden, I heard, no, 2012 is it and everybody's got to leave the site.

MARK COLVIN: I mean, first of all, who wants to mine the copper there?

BRENT HUFFMAN: So it's a Chinese state-owned company. So a government-owned company, the China Metallurgical Group Corporation, or MCC, that paid a little under $3 billion for what's valued at $100 billion.

I think it's one of the largest untapped copper reserves in the world. Because of dangers on the site currently, they've been a little bit delayed and -

MARK COLVIN: The dangers being landmines, and the Taliban.

BRENT HUFFMAN: Actually, the danger has ramped up recently. It's kind of Taliban mixed with angry locals. So this MCC company had to level six villages. Six 500-year-plus villages in Logar province had to be destroyed.

MARK COLVIN: Have they done that?

BRENT HUFFMAN: They've done that. There's one village that's still holding out, they're still protesting.

But because of these really bad negotiations, in destroying these villages, there's a lot of angry local people that have partnered with the Taliban and that are actually putting landmines on the road, but also firing rockets into the archaeology site, they're firing rockets into the MCC compound.

It's gotten so bad that the Chinese that were living in Logar province have actually fled back to Kabul.

MARK COLVIN: And what will the mine involve? Does it mean using explosions to blow pretty much the entire surface off? It's an open cut mine.

BRENT HUFFMAN: Yeah, so it's going to be an open-pit style copper mine, which is basically the cheapest and most destructive kind of copper mining. They're going to destroy the whole mountain range.

Like I said, all of these villages, and this Buddhist site on top of this Bronze Age site. Everything's going to be destroyed. It will be blown up, and in the end, you're just going to have this big crater in the ground.

The Afghans that I've talked to haven't been educated on the environmental impact too of this. So you're going to have this toxic pit in the ground.

MARK COLVIN: I think there's a lot of arsenic involved in copper mining, isn't there?

BRENT HUFFMAN: Yeah, there's a lot of arsenic. There's a river that's close by and from the mining experts that I've talked to, all of that is going to be polluted and the pollution is going to be permanent, and to the level of a Superfund site or a site so toxic that nothing can live there ever again.

MARK COLVIN: Director and writer Brent Huffman. You can hear the full interview about Mes Aynak tomorrow night on Friday Late, after the 10 o'clock news on Radio National.



  • Click an image to enlarge
  • Buddhist stupa at Mes Ainak (Flickr: Jerome Starkey)
  • Chapel at Tepe Kafiriat in Mes Aynak (Flickr: US Embassy Kabul)
  • Tiny oil lamp excavated at Mes Aynak (Flickr: US embassy Kabul)
  • Mes Aynak exhibit at the Afghanistan National Museum (Flickr: US embassy in Kabul)
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