AMERICA GOT LUCKY..

[Hamid Karzai]

US discovers stunning mineral wealth in Afghanistan: report
 
 

US geologists have discovered nearly one trillion dollars' worth of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including vast reserves of copper and lithium, the New York Times reported Monday.

The deposits, which also include huge veins of iron, gold, niobium and cobalt, are enough to turn the battle-scarred country into one of the world's leading mining exporters, senior US government officials told the Times.

Afghanistan's potential lithium deposits as large of those of Bolivia, which currently has the world's largest known lithium reserves, the Times said.

Lithium is a key mineral used in rechargeable batteries, as well as everything from cell phones and laptops to electric cars.

Afghanistan has so much of it that it could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," according to an internal Pentagon memo quoted by the newspaper.

The iron and copper deposits are large enough to make Afghanistan one of the world's top producers, US officials said.

"There is stunning potential here," General David Petraeus, head of the US Central Command, told the newspaper. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."

"This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy," Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines, told the Times.

A small team of US geologists and Pentagon officials uncovered the mineral wealth with help from charts and data collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Afghan geologists took the charts home to protect them during the chaos that followed the Soviet withdrawal, and produced them again in 2001 with the fall of the Taliban, the Times said.

"There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war," Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s, told the Times.

President Hamid Karzai was recently briefed on the finding, US officials told the newspaper.

[Dr. Phil]

So now we know.

[Old Mike]

Indeed.
It is possible that this is one more lie, to justify killing more young people.

[Vulcanl]

For the record...MOST Americans want us to get out of Afghanistan, Iraq and other places where we are neither welcome nor needed.  Count me as among them. 

[redacted]

If MOST Americans wanted to be out, America would be out....

If anybody knew of these mineral reserves before, the Taliban would have been much better equipped.

This could be a real boom for Afghanistan or could turn out terribly.

[Vulcanl]

"...If MOST Americans wanted to be out, America would be out...."

I really do wish it were that simple...

[Nyet]

Wow, Russia must be well peed off....

[redacted]

....Vietnam.

Or are you referring to the fact that the people who attacked America where in Afghanistan?

[oh come on...]

US confirmed this back in the 90s.... Russia has an inkling of this back in the 80s.

imagine if the report of this 'discovery' came out in, oh, say 2001.

this is just the right time to release it.

[X-files]

US confirmed this back in the 90s.... Russia has an inkling of this back in the 80s.

imagine if the report of this 'discovery' came out in, oh, say 2001.

this is just the right time to release it.

Yes - this is shaping up into a nice new conspiracy theory (albeit a quite possible one). Was the US aware of this before George junior's invasion of Iraq? They invaded to install a US-friendly government in the region, but was it for this rather than oil? etc. etc. etc.   

[redacted]

imagine if the report of this 'discovery' came out in, oh, say 2001.

I can imagine Americans would have had something else on their mind in 2001.

The conspiracy theories are now going to start flying which is not going to help anyone at all.

[whooooose]

imagine if the report of this 'discovery' came out in, oh, say 2001.

I can imagine Americans would have had something else on their mind in 2001.

That's exactly what "oh come on" is alluding to...

[redacted]

I don't think so. Please read the two comments again.

[scarbowl]

Seems unlikely the "Americans" are going to see benefit from the mineral wealth.  More likely the Chinese will be in there - they don't mind paying bribes, they are much closer geographically, they're willing to sacrifice more lives than most other countries for the advantage, they have little political involvement in Afghanistan, and they don't mind dealing with the Taliban.  My money would be on the "communists" in China to benefit from this.

[shold be]

Seems unlikely the "Americans" are going to see benefit from the mineral wealth.  More likely the Chinese will be in there - they don't mind paying bribes, they are much closer geographically, they're willing to sacrifice more lives than most other countries for the advantage, they have little political involvement in Afghanistan, and they don't mind dealing with the Taliban.  My money would be on the "communists" in China to benefit from this.

The chinese are moving in on everything now.   The property market in Dubai is steady now with the chinese investors buying up everything.  I have just come back from dubai and the chinese are propping the whole place up now.