It could be that humanity is on the cusp of the very same global competition for lithium that defined oil exploration and production in the 20th century.
This was from yesterday's front page story on the state of lithium. Well, today's New York Times reports vast quantities of lithium, gold, and other important industrial minerals in a nation where we just happen to also have a large military force:
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.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
For those of you very interested in lithium, I am not sure from which of Afghanistan's many pocket salt flat regions this discovery was made. I hope to learn more in the coming days. If I were betting money, however, I'd say it is probably the huge Dagh-E Tondi flat, so large it's visible from space.
The United States Geological Survey has been operating in Afghanistan for years, even before the war. The 2008 survey points out that the USGS has long estimated great mineral wealth in Afghanistan, so this discovery comes as no surprise to them. A special five-year exploratory group, initially slated to look for oil and gas, was formed in 2004. It has published some work on rare earth metals, minor metals and coal. The Afghanistan Geological Survery, which is joint project of the British GS and USGS under the auspices of the Afghan govern (ha!) has also been searching the nation for mineral wealth.
Let me state this clearly:
There will be no development of this wealth while there is war. That is for sure. No private or state sovereign business is going to invest in any nation where Taliban and Al Qaeda are moving about freely. No China. No Iran. No Venezuela. No North Korea. Pick your international bogeyman, they wont invest in Afghanistan. So any general whispering in the media's ear, as I'm sure they are, that we could "help" them by sticking around forever or that it is in our "national interest" is lying. If we leave, the minerals will stay in the rocks until the Afghans resolve their differences on their own.
We have no need to worry that Afghanistan is suddenly going to transform itself in a stable, China-friendly minerals exporter any time soon. After we leave, it will probably collapse into civil war, which is none of our business. These discoveries are no reason to stay in Afghanistan.
President Obama must not be moved by this report and must stick to the current set of military objectives he has set. We must get out. On schedule.
For more discussion, see cachala's recommended diary.