This looks like more Foreign Policy with which the corporate media doesn't want to disturb the slumber of the American electorate. (McClatchey, the only decent news service left, did have a story in March.)
Last month, US troops set up their bases running alongside a dirt track being built by a Chinese company as an access road to the Aynak copper reserves. The US forces are also making their presence felt in Logar province, where the Aynak deposit is located.
Although the US forces are deployed to ward off Taliban incursion in Kabul, inadverntally, they are also protecting Chinese workers at the Aynak copper site.
- China to mine copper in Afghanistan (10 March 2009)
WTF is going on here? Is there some quiet agreement that we provide security for China in return for them not rocking the financial boat? Or have the BFEE military-only foreign policy idiots managed to lose Afghanistan to China before Obama even showed up?
More below the fold.
I didn't mean to write this diary. I was just doing a little checking up on who's who in the Chinese Turkestan (Urumqi - or Wulumuchi in pinyin) rioting, when I came across a mention of new railroad that connects Turkestan to Pakistan via Afghanistan: China rail integrates Afghanistan, Tajikistan, & Pakistan (June 3, 2008). Pursuing that story led to the story about the Aynak copper mine (not on the same railroad line).
Apparently, one of the stories the corporate media doesn't talk much about is that there is an immense amount of railroad building going on in Central Asia. Its not just because there is oil in places you have heard of, like Tajikistan or Uzbekhistan. Its because those railroads will promote Trans-Asia land trade, connecting China directly to Europe via Russia or Iran.
The geopolitics of such railroads are dizzying. China will get to play Russia and Iran against each other and against us. When these rail links are completed, Germany will become a major point of entry for Chinese goods in Western Europe. The Russians will have competition for the Trans-Siberian railroad. And the Chinese will have created a huge number of jobs, and goodwill, in some of the most godforsaken parts of the planet.
You have to see this in the context of China's great western development program, which has led to major investment into the western provinces [of China] and, of course, also crossborder connections to Central Asia, South Asia, and Iran," Norling says. "In order to develop the west [of China], they need energy resources, and they need other resource materials. So far, Afghanistan has remained virtually untouched by Beijing's concerns, in contrast to China's involvement in Central Asia, Pakistan, and Iran.
"The past few years have seen investments into the Karakorum Highway in Pakistan, the Gwadar port [in Karachi], [and] a multibillion-dollar pipeline from Kazakhstan to Xinjiang [Uyghur Autonomous Region]. China has signed a $100 billion, 25-year energy contract with Iran. And so on and so on," Norling continues. "So, of course, this forms part of a greater strategy."
Norling says the Aynak copper mine also should be seen in terms of China's competition with countries like Russia and the United States for economic influence in the region.
"All states [in this part of Asia] basically are swing states whose geopolitical alignments could tilt either way during the next decade -- including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran perhaps also, and the Central Asian republics," Norling says. "The state that manages to acquire the most influence will, of course, tie these states into their orbit. And I think China is progressing well to do this."
- China: Afghan Investment Reveals Larger Strategy (May 29, 2008)
So, that's the backstory. Now on to how Uncle Sucker (or perhaps, Uncle quid pro quo) wound up playing Wackenhut to the China Metallurgical Group.
U.S. troops set up bases last month along a dirt track that a Chinese firm is paving as part of a $3 billion project to gain access to the Aynak copper reserves. Some troops made camp outside a compound built for the Chinese road crews, who are about to return from winter break. American forces also have expanded their presence in neighboring Logar province, where the Aynak deposit is.
The U.S. deployment wasn't intended to protect the Chinese investment — the largest in Afghanistan's history — but to strangle Taliban infiltration into the capital of Kabul. But if the mission provides the security that a project to revive Afghanistan's economy needs, the synergy will be welcome.
- China's Thirst for Copper could hold key to Afghanistan's future (McClatchey, 3/09)
China here, sounds like the kind of can do (and can pollute) place that America used to be. No challenge too daunting. No real-world (as opposed to Wall St. Casino) risk that they won't take. Building railroads across the vast deserts of Central Asia. These are real risks.
Beijing faces enormous challenges in completing the project and gaining access to the estimated 240 million tons of copper ore that are accessible through surface mining. Taliban-led insurgents operate in large parts of Logar and Wardak; the area is sown with mines; and China must complete an ambitious set of infrastructure projects, including Afghanistan's first national railway, as part of the deal.
China's willingness to gamble so much in one of the world's poorest and riskiest nations testifies to its determination to acquire the commodities it needs to maintain its economic growth and social stability...
"Why the Chinese? Because they have money, they have lots of money," Ashraf said. "One day, when there is no more copper elsewhere in the world, the Chinese will have copper."...
Two other major copper deposits are close to Aynak, and the government is preparing to solicit bids for a lease to develop the Hajigak iron mine, which Minister of Mines Ibrahim Adil last year said contains an estimated 60 billion tons of ore.
Ashraf said that China and India have shown an interest in Hajigak.
- McClatchey
China is thinking about the real world, about resources, about infrastructure about economic development both at home and abroad. My question is: is the US in on this deal or have we blown it? I don't have enough information to judge.
Although China is contributing a much smaller share of the more than $25 billion in international assistance that's been pledged to Afghanistan since 2001 than the U.S. is, the Obama administration isn't complaining. China's investment in Aynak dovetails with the administration's emerging strategy for ending the war in part by delivering on unfulfilled vows to better the lives of the poor Afghans who constitute the vast majority of the Taliban's foot soldiers.
"The problem of security, the problem of the Taliban, we cannot solve these problems with the military," Ashraf said...
The deal, Ashraf said, is structured so that by the seventh year, the entire work force will be Afghan. Beginning in 2010, 60 Afghan engineering students a year will study in China, he said, adding that Chinese language courses have begun at Kabul University.
Employment projections vary, but there's general agreement that as many as 10,000 workers could be hired at Aynak and the coal mine in central Afghanistan, which the Jalrez Valley road project will link to the copper field. The railway will need thousands more.
Tens of thousands of indirect jobs are also projected to be created.
- McClatchy
Can someone please tell me if Obama's long-stated plan to do something in Afghanistan was worked out with a little input from Beijing? If so, then depending on the details, the current "surge" in Afghanistan is less insane than I first thought. (Please, 13-dimensional chess players, no "I told you so's", just FACTS if you have any.) Further down, the McClatchey article points out how this whole thing could go very badly wrong:
A January 2008 report by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, a European research group, said that MCC extracted more copper than expected from a mine in Sandaik, Pakistan, but that the project has "had virtually no spillover effect on the local economy to date."
The report also warned of the potential for an "environmental and social disaster" if Aynak isn't properly managed, noting that the area is home to some 90,000 people and a source of Kabul's water supply.
Ashraf said that the government will ensure that MCC takes rigorous precautions, including systems to store the highly toxic wastes produced by copper smelting.
Chinese construction company quality levels for toxic waste lakes in an earthquake zone. What could possibly go wrong?
Environmental issues aside, it appears that, under all that unexplored wasteland, there is a lot of mineral wealth:
Afghanistan has traditionally been endowed with gems and semi-precious stones, metals, and marble, and the US Geological Survey (USGS) report of 2002 showed that there were more than 1,000 deposits.
The survey also confirmed that Afghanistan not only had abundant minerals but also plenty of hydrocarbon resources and according to an Afghan geology expert, John Shroder, said that although the Soviets had made a survey earlier, the oil and natural gas reserves in Afghanistan as surveyed by the USGS is far in excess of earlier Soviet estimates.
Among the minerals found in the survey were substantial amounts of gold, copper, iron, mercury, lead, and rare metals such as cesium, lithium, niobium, and tantalum.
An Afghanistan ministry of mines brochure claims that an iron deposit at Hajigak in the Bamiyan province, contains 1.8 billion tonnes of ore with a concentration of 62 per cent iron.
- From the DomainB article in my intro
A similar reference: Newly Discovered Water, Oil And Gas Locations Surveyed In Afghanistan (May 2, 2008)
Yet, the only thing the U.S. seems to be spending money on in the region is killing people, condoning heroin trafficking at the highest levels of the Karzai government, and handing out Bibles. The Chinese are playing this pitch perfect. They live next door. They want peace and prosperity. You don't see them sending in troops. (Of course, if they did, the U.S. would bust an aneurysm.)
The Chinese INVEST $3B to mine from $30 to $90B of copper. They create tens of thousands of jobs and a huge profit. The U.S. squanders (I've lost count of) how many billions in making the rubble bounce and restarting the drug trade. Whom do you think the locals are going to want running things. DUH!
Someone talk me down from "The United States is so stupid and violence-prone that we are the ones 'the rifles will be air-dropped to so that we can shoot each other while we freeze in the dark'."
Please, I'm waiting.
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One final, very recent new story: China begins multi-billion afghan copper project (July 9, 2009)