{Spam?} Washington “discovers” Afghanistan’s m ineral wealth

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Washington “discovers” Afghanistan’s mineral wealth
By Alex Lantier
15 June 2010

For anyone who was still undecided, the New York Times has made it official: the
war in Afghanistan is an imperialist war of plunder. This is the inescapable
conclusion of yesterday’s lead article, “US Discovers Mineral Riches in
Afghanistan,” on Pentagon plans to hand over Afghan mineral resources to major
mining corporations and financial firms.

The New York Times cited “senior American government officials” saying that US
surveying teams had found “nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in
Afghanistan.” At current market prices, this includes $421 billion in iron ore,
$274 billion in copper, $81 billion in niobium (a metal used in producing
superconducting steel), $51 billion in cobalt, $25 billion in gold, $24 billion
in molybdenum, and $7.4 billion in “rare earth elements.” The Times left out the
value of Afghanistan’s extensive supplies of gemstones and natural gas.

Nonetheless, it concluded that Afghanistan might “be transformed into one of the
most important mining centers in the world.”

This bonanza is safely in the hands of the US military and major transnational
corporations, the Times explained. “International accounting firms” are
consulting with the Afghan Ministry of Mines to prepare technical data “to turn
over to multinational mining companies and other potential foreign investors.
The Pentagon is helping Afghan officials arrange to start seeking bids on
mineral rights by next fall, officials said.”

Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Brinkley told the Times: “The Ministry of Mines
is not ready to handle this. We are trying to help them to get ready.”

The claim that the Pentagon is “helping” the Ministry of Mines is a lie. In
fact, the Ministry of Mines is apparently being kept in the dark about the
contents of the survey. Contacted yesterday by Bloomberg News to obtain a
statement on the Times report, Deputy Mines Minister Abdul Qudus Hamidi said the
Ministry of Mines could not “comment until it receives a copy of the survey.”

More broadly, the Pentagon is mainly interested in “helping” the Ministry of
Mines decide who will get Afghanistan’s riches. US officials and the Times both
made clear that Chinese mining firms are not acceptable buyers.

The Times wrote: “Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines [Muhammad
Ibrahim Adel] was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe
to award China the rights to develop its [Aynak] copper mine. The minister has
since been replaced. ... American officials fear resource-hungry China will try
to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset
the United States.”

Such statements suggest some of the broader geopolitical interests motivating
Washington’s occupation of Afghanistan. In the struggle to grab Afghanistan’s
raw materials and cheap labor and deny them to its rivals, Washington intends to
fully exercise its one main advantage: it has more boots on the ground than its
rivals.

This February, after Adel was forced out over the Aynak license, Kabul canceled
bidding on the massive Hajigak iron mine. Business Week explained, “Indian and
Chinese companies eager to tie up resources for the world’s two fastest-growing
major economies had sought the Hajigak deposit ... China has wrestled with the
world’s main iron ore suppliers—Brazil’s Vale SA, London- based Rio Tinto Plc
and Australia’s BHP Billiton Ltd—in an attempt to circumvent rising global prices.”

Iron ore prices have skyrocketed as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, and Vale have
succeeded in bidding up prices in recent years, since the main importer of iron
ore—China—is completely dependent on their supplies. They demanded 90-100
percent price increases for iron ore this spring, after several years of
comparable price increases. Xinhua reported that Chinese steel firms would pay
$110-$120 per ton of imported iron ore, compared to $62 per ton last year.

Nor is the iron ore market the only one in which control of Afghan mines might
prove decisive. The Times’ article yesterday reported that deposits of
lithium—an essential material for laptop and smart-phone batteries—in
Afghanistan’s Ghazni province alone could rival those of Bolivia, which
currently has the world’s largest reserves. The Times cited an internal Pentagon
memo describing Afghanistan as the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” that is, a country
whose production (of oil, in the Saudi case) would determine world market prices.

A frank exposition of how US wars benefit parasitic corporate and financial
interests would provoke mass outrage, in the US and abroad. As a result, the
Times ludicrously presented Washington’s interest in Afghan mineral wealth as
the product of the lucky work of a few isolated US geologists, who arrived in
Afghanistan in 2004.

Having “stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts” in Afghan libraries,
they commandeered an “old Navy Orion P-3 aircraft” that—in a fit of
absent-mindedness, perhaps?—had been fitted with “advanced gravity and magnetic
measuring equipment.” Having flown over “70 percent of the country,” they
produced a report noting that they had discovered “astonishing” mineral wealth,
and returned with a more sophisticated British aircraft for further exploration
in 2007. Their work, according to the Times, then “gathered dust” for two years
in US offices.

In fact the US government was well aware, as it invaded Afghanistan, that it was
invading a country with vast mineral riches. Despite the Times’ deceptive
presentation of the matter, its account objectively shows that US and NATO
officials have been carefully studying and documenting these resources for
years, as the war progressed. As for the Times’ absurd presentation, US
documents show that Washington has long been aware of Afghanistan’s riches.

Under “Resources,” the first chapter of the US government’s 1986 Country Study
on Afghanistan lists the following: “Wide variety of mineral resources—natural
gas, coal, copper, iron, barite, chrome, and lapis lazuli. Petroleum discoveries
and uranium finds reported.”

A 2002 State Department report, quoted by the WSWS, noted: “Afghanistan is
endowed with a wealth of natural resources, including extensive deposits of
natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead,
zinc, iron ore, salt, and precious and semiprecious stones” (See: “Oil and
‘conspiracy theories’: a reply to a liberal apologist for the US war in
Afghanistan”).

This begs the question of why the US government and the Times have waited until
now to report this discovery. What are the reasons for this sudden announcement?

The Times writes, “American and Afghan officials agreed to discuss the mineral
discoveries at a difficult moment in the war in Afghanistan. Noting the failure
of NATO military operations to crush resistance in the Afghan city of Marja, it
adds, “the Obama administration is hungry for some positive news to come out of
Afghanistan.” In other words, this is a bit of “good news” that NATO governments
think they can peddle to their populations to reconcile them to an unpopular war.

At the same time, the Times makes it clear it hopes the announcement will
inspire even greater violence against anti-occupation forces.

It laid out this policy in its lead editorial yesterday, calling for a more
aggressive policy in Afghanistan. Frustrated with Afghan President Hamid
Karzai’s negotiations with the Taliban and US General Stanley McChrystal’s
decision to put off an offensive against the city of Kandahar until autumn, it
wrote: “We don’t know if the Taliban leaders will ever compromise. But we are
sure they will only consider it under duress. General McChrystal is going to
have to do a much better job in Kandahar. Mr. Karzai is going to have to drop
his illusions and commit to the fight.”

>From the standpoint of intensifying combat between Karzai’s troops and the
Taliban, the mineral announcement also could help. As the Times notes, “newfound
mineral wealth could lead the Taliban to battle even more fiercely to regain
control of the country.” In short, the news may provoke more bloodshed, which
the Times wants—and help keep Karzai in line with US demands, by implicitly
offering him a piece of the mining money, if he wins.

These events powerfully confirm the critique of the social character of American
militarism made by the World Socialist Web Site prior to the September 11
attacks that marked the beginning of the US “war on terror.”

After the 1999 US war against Serbia, the statement “After the Slaughter:
Political Lessons of the Balkan War” addressed the rising inter-imperialist
conflicts of the time. Noting the origins of World War I and World War II in the
struggle of “different imperialist countries over markets, raw materials, and
related strategic interests,” it stated:

“The increasing frequency of military outbreaks during the 1990s is an objective
symptom of an approaching international conflagration. Both World War I and
World War II were preceded by a series of local or regional conflicts. As the
major imperialist powers seek to expand their influence into the regions opened
up for capitalist penetration by the collapse of the USSR, the likelihood of
conflicts between them increases. At stake in major disputes—such as those that
will inevitably arise over the allocation of booty from the oil of the Caspian
and Caucasian regions—will be life-and-death issues of world power and position.
Such issues do not, by their very nature, lend themselves to peaceful
resolution. The basic tendency of imperialism moves inexorably in the direction
of a new world war.”

With the Times’ recent article, the same contradictions emerge publicly today.
The difference, as the WSWS statement predicted, is that the world is far closer
to direct conflict between the major powers—with international relations
destabilized by the world economic crisis, US occupations of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and the entire Middle East on hair-trigger alert—as the US, other
NATO countries, and the rising powers in Asia continue to compete for access to
raw materials, labor and markets worldwide.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jun2010/afgh-j15.shtml

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