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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Tue Jun 22 2010 - 23:59:50 EDT
fighting words
Bring on the Coalition of the Digging
Why are we so focused on the problems Afghanistan's vast mineral deposits
could bring?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2010, at 11:10 AM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The breathtaking news of the latest estimate of the latent mineral wealth
of Afghanistan, already partly understood but now confirmed by two
systematic aerial surveys conducted in 2006 and 2007, has already been
downplayed as a possible force-multiplier of the country's existing
miseries. Huge deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold, and lithium (a key
ingredient in the manufacture of laptop batteries) could not only intensify
the determination of the Taliban and their allies to retake the country and
enrich themselves into the bargain; it could also give an incentive to the
country's other enemies: its warlords and its parasitic oligarchs and those
among its neighbors who are less choosy about what kind of government the
nation ends up having. Indeed, it was only a short while ago that the
Afghan minister of mines was removed, under U.S. pressure, for allegedly
taking a $30 million bribe to steer an enormous copper-extraction deal to
China, a country whose resource imperialism is already a disgrace
everywhere from North Korea to Darfur.
The story of countries that are poor because they are rich is an old one:
The Congo has been a scandalous example since the time of its private
ownership by the Belgian royal family in the 19th century, and to the list
of nations subject to depredation by resource exploitation one could also
add Haiti, Angola, India, and (to be fair) China. Afghanistan has no
infrastructure or professional civil service, no tradition of extractive
industry, and no mechanism for sharing resources among its wildly
discrepant provinces and regions. A Klondike beyond the Khyber could be the
last thing it needs.
Still. This is at least a trillion-dollar national-resource treasure in a
country that so far has had a GDP with scarcely any pulse. The governments
of NATO—which include countries with vast experience in mining, from
Germany to Canada and from Britain to the United States—have had almost
no real work to do on the economic front except to distribute aid, itself
often a cause of resentment, and waste time trying to "interdict"
Afghanistan's only other existing resource, which is opium. Is it
conceivable that such an alliance of earth-moving and digging powers could
not at last find something genuinely constructive to do in a country where
they already have a U.N. mandate for rebuilding and reconstruction? It is
true that the Afghan parliament and government have no tradition of
oversight, but the parliaments and press and NGOs of the alliance can be
pushed to ensure that this is not a mere gouging exercise of the sort in
which China likes to engage and that the Afghan people are the main
beneficiaries. It seems too good an opportunity to pass up. It also seems
like an opportunity far too important to be left in the tender hands of the
Taliban.
It would be important to know, as with the vast new discoveries of oil in
Iraq, how these deposits are distributed among the regions and ethnicities.
There are many successful and well-organized Afghan groups—the Tajiks,
for example, and the Hazara—who truly hate the Taliban and would leap at
the chance to develop and enrich their areas and strengthen their peoples.
There are also many Pashtuns who see the Taliban as the stealth agents of
Pakistani colonization that they actually are. The idea of a dignified and
economically staunch Afghanistan also possesses huge appeal to the large
number of qualified but underemployed Afghan professionals, many of whom
returned home after decades of war and barbarism.
It was also encouraging to see, a few days after the new surveys were
announced, that the new Afghan minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani,
issued an invitation to his Indian counterpart B.K. Handique. India already
trains Afghan geologists in Hyderabad and supports and finances a wide
range of infrastructural projects in Afghanistan; a closer tie between the
two countries' geological surveys could do nothing but good. As I never
cease to point out, India was fighting the Taliban and al-Qaida before we
were and will continue to fight them even if we ever make the cowardly
decision to withdraw. India is also a huge, prosperous, secular, and
multiethnic democracy with very sophisticated armed forces; it is the
natural ally of the United States in the region—as opposed to the
ever-protean Pakistanis—and also the natural counterweight to the
ambitions of China. It additionally has a renowned mining sector. The
planned development of Afghanistan's mineral resources provides an almost
ideal occasion for deepening and extending this alliance.
It will, of course, be a long time until any of the benefits of this
discovery can be tangibly experienced. But it does in the meantime offer
the somewhat rare commodity of hope and gives some sense of direction to an
engagement that often seems to be foundering. Can any serious Afghan,
however suspicious of the West, wish to see his country's patrimony put
into the trust of a gang of medieval hand-loppers and blinders of women?
Can any serious non-Afghan not hope to see the country emancipated, not
just from local theocrats and imported jihadists, but from the centuries of
poverty and stagnation that have afflicted and underdeveloped it? President
Barack Obama could make an excellent and reasoned geopolitical speech on
this, appealing to the Congress and to the United Nations. I wonder if he
will decide to do so. Meanwhile the peaceniks can have themselves a new
slogan: "No Blood for Lithium."
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Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz
media fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2257659/