Afghanistan: Taliban to reap $1T mineral wealth
dw.com
dw.com
They need the supply chain, transportation, electrical, and financial systems necessary to exploit those resources, none of which Afghanistan has.
I quote from a humanitarian report[0]:
"""
Afghanistan‟s economy from the 1950s onward became closely intertwined with the Cold War. From 1953 to 1963 Afghanistan‟s Prime Minister Mohammed Daoud Khan had solicited military and economic assistance from both the United States (US) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), believing that, without rapid growth, Afghanistan would become severely politically fragmented. Often dubbed the “economic Korea”, the country received 50% of its foreign aid from the Soviet Union between 1950 and 1970 and 30% from the United States during that same time span.3 In the early 1960s Soviet investment targeted immense infrastructure projects including the 1964 completion of the Salang tunnel which greatly reduced travel time between northern Afghanistan and Kabul. By 1967 the country had 1,200 miles of paved roads and a 25% increase in power output.
"""
[0] https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/AB...
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-bills-its-belt-and-road-a...
It's so opaque that you know who is funding, building, etc? Right. Also, who else is going to bring the financing? And as for infrastructure, hasn't china shown to be the best at it?
> Foreign companies are often largely left out.
So what? It's a china led project which the west is opposed. What do you expect?
> The people benefit very little as the resources and value extracted return to China.
That's true for everybody. The people benefit very little. Do you think "the people" benefited from Canada sending timber to the US or Australia selling iron ore to china for decades?
Why don't we offer a better deal? So using your logic, afghanistan shouldn't trade with anyone?
If china's deal is that awful and afghanistan is choosing them, doesn't it really show how even more for awful everyone else is?
Also, I wouldn't take anything by wsj, rupert murdoch owned and controlled propaganda outlet, seriously when it comes to china as his propaganda empire is peddling the most anti-china propaganda.
Do you think "the west" cares about afghanistan, africa or any nation involved in BRI? Do you think we are mad because china is ripping them off or that china is actually giving these BRI nations a good deal? My guess is the latter. Or we worried that china is ripping off afghanistan, a nation we invaded and brutalized for decades? Or are you worried because china is giving them the best deal? Be honest. Given how evil we've been for a few centuries now, which do you think?
Yeah, sure, they're building the infrastructure to strip the country bare, but the West hasn't been much better. Funding wars and bribing officials to keep a country poor and disorganized in order to plunder it has been the modus operandi for decades. Before then it was straight slavery.
If the Taliban make billions and build modern cities, I bet you anything that large Western countries will sell their good there. Apple, Mc Donalds, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Yves Saint Laurent, Rolex, VW, Ferrari, and so many more will be trying to conquer the market.
It's just business.
Although I wonder why they weren't already exploiting the resources? Lacking investments due to security risks?
The US has been de facto doing business with anyone, especially the Taliban, to get raw resources (in very dangerous and environmentally damaging ways) for use in some markets for many years.
I'm curious what happened to those arrangements and facilities. I think most of the people profiled in the OCCRP are stateside now (Emily Scott King is in beautiful Miami).
On a side note, "artisanally mined" looks like a euphemism for "dug out of the dirt with spades and bare hands by the desperately poor serving brutal overlords", or something similar. Pretty much like the "artisan" child cobalt miners of Congo. See [1] Is my phone powered by child labour?
[1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2016/06/drc-coba...
(i.e. in answer to your question, the US would have "helped" if it was oil that was in the ground)
But We Have Oil
Julian Assange in 2011: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US and Europe through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite. The goal is an endless war, not a successful war"
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1427929346262642688
US veteran that oversaw training of Afghan forces, 2021: "I would sit in on staff meetings, because part of my position there was with a Joint Command that was building the Afghan military and police force — the division that I worked with was about training and policy for the Afghan police. And that also included arming and funding them. I don’t think I could overstate that this was a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or losing equipment."
https://mtracey.substack.com/p/a-big-money-funneling-operati...
And now said equipment is confirmed lost or in the hands of the Taliban: "A U.S. defense official on Monday confirmed the Taliban’s sudden accumulation of U.S.-supplied Afghan equipment is enormous."
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-army-taliban-185017ba29...
One answer could be: it was Trump who started this and he wanted to stop the corruption, and the US is getting better. Another answer could be: it hasn't stopped, its just a lull before the US starts up endless war again.
I suspect that one can make any argument fit any reasons from any angle and there will be some truth in some of each of the ideas.
Aside from that, here's a quote from Biden's speech about Afghanistan I find relevant.
"Today, the terrorist threat has metastasized well beyond Afghanistan: al Shabaab in Somalia, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Nusra in Syria, ISIS attempting to create a caliphate in Syria and Iraq and establishing affiliates in multiple countries in Africa and Asia. These threats warrant our attention and our resources."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
The war in Afghanistan was still fairly popular among the general public until very recently.
No matter how many stupid looks they show on TV and how much "complete surprise" they proclaim, there's people been making a living off this war for a while and they saw the writing on the wall.
Do we expect they've packed up and gone home to a quiet retirement? Or is the next chapter of "how much shit can we waste" already on railcars?
When there was a draft and people were invested in the outcome of the wars, politicians made their names by going after war profiteers.
The history of the United Fruit Company, the CIA and the term "banana republic" are worth looking into if you're unfamiliar.
The problem with these conspiracy theories of everything is that they actually never explain anything.
The reason the war was continued was not only and not primarily because a transnational security elite was washing money blah blah blah.
It was primarily because those voters who supported the war had hope for a better outcome. And their hope was greater than their reason.
Without hope, no manipulation would work.
They face the same problem the US occupation did in reverse: the country is inherently inaccessible. There are a few scattered bits of railway. There are a few long mountainous roads out. It is landlocked. It is uneconomic to ship raw minerals other than by rail or sea, since they have low value density. Step 1 would be "build a thousand miles of railway", especially if they're thinking of shipping to China.
(This is why the a mainexport was opium: very high value density makes it worth shipping over the passes. Same goes for gold mentioned in a sibling comment)
The struggle for equality continues even in developed/Western countries where even relatively well-paid and famous women tend to make less than their male counterparts and have added their testimony to the #MeToo movement.
I don't have a lot of patience for people on HN being on their high horse about women's rights issues. This forum can't clean up its own messes, but boy can people here point fingers.
Color me unimpressed. And also uninterested in arguing it further because it never does me any good. It just aggravates the men who don't want to hear that sexism and misogyny are alive and well and most of them are actively part of the problem but want to think they are not. Aggravating the men who like to see themselves as "good guys" inevitably means I get treated worse, not better.
I certainly can't speak for your own situation or whatever you have endured, but my response was to your "Don't blame Islam"...and that is exactly what the Taliban is using to control women in this aspect so your comment doesn't make any sense to me. Women had been making progress in Afghanistan for the last 20 years because of the progress of separating Islam from the law...were they 100% equals of men, obviously not...but hundreds of times better than what they are going to be now.
Maybe you didn't hear me. Let me say it again:
I was homeless for years while racking up karma here left and right. I hit the leaderboard the first time about a month after I got back into housing, mostly because I paid off my student loan not because my income went up a lot.
I remain dirt poor and I'm currently broke and don't expect to eat today.
This is a survival issue for me.
I'm not expecting charity and I don't need much more earned income. But I can't seem to arrange it, no matter what I do.
I could honestly care less about your current situation and how that somehow translates to my comments. I have done nothing to you so lashing out at me and using your situation as an excuse is ridiculous. I could care less if you are a brand new member or someone who hit the leaderboard...
I've deleted that part of my comment.
I suspect that if they were in power, they would justify their actions as being ‘within the limits of Christianity’. I do not think tw04 was blaming Islam - the quotes indicate to me that this is how the Taliban sees it.
Thank you for pointing that out though.
Can you cite examples in good faith? How much power do these organizations have, and what is their support among the local populace?
The Taliban is not Islam.
the reference was uncalled for.
At this point, they have international legitimacy: the West gave them the country knowingly and unless the Taliban do something particularly stupid, they aren't coming back anytime soon, China and Russia look keen to deal with them, the former Afghan government yielded the power "gracefully". If internal strife is kept minimal, at this point they have a strong and stable platform to change things. Let's hope they use this newfound stability for the better of the whole population and have a Vietnam-like trajectory.
The Chinese, however, are ready to take on that challenge. They're in a different position. If the US decided to start mining in Afghanistan, it would only be seen as an exploiter (start a war, take from the people). The Chinese are viewed as a helper (help pick up from the ravages of war and build infrastructure). It's unfortunate but that's reality.
A Chinese State Owned Company will come in with Chinese workers to run the mines for the Taliban. The top officials in the Taliban will receive annual royalty payments.
Along the way, that good relationship with Kabul soured and it is not guaranteed that the Chinese will have any advantage with the Taliban-installed government once that government gets up to speed. I think the Taliban will be wary of dealing with them especially if they lean on or utilize the experience of those Afghanis who previously served in one of the western-backed administrations.
Here is a recent article about the status of that concession and complications encountered along the way:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/01/27/afghanistan-china-spy-r...
I think we will see a period of consolidation of control before we see much opened up to foreign operators who don't already have the blessings of the new leadership. They will operate from a position of minimal trust of outsiders unless the functionality that the foreign entity brings offers an opportunity for them to expand on their control. Just my opinion though.
There's more mining technology available now, but it's perfectly feasible to do large-scale mining without it. It's just a question of how badly you want the rocks.
Of course, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Hopefully they are able to capture the value of these resources instead of seeing that value exported to a more developed country. I fear that with the present level of corruption, it’s more likely that some officials will get rich, and most of this value will be taken by someone else.
Just because the organization called the Taliban was officially formed later does not mean that it’s not the same folks who fought the Soviets.
Were the police we paid for helpful, or did they take our weapons and extort folks on the side of the road?
Did police commanders take our money and pay their men or loot it?
Was justice fair, or did the dollar win?
Are there any places in Afghanistan where huge displays of wealth spring up set against grinding poverty (this is not uncommon when a western power allows elites to loot).
Did Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo help us communicate our values effectively to the locals?
Now we are going to cut them off and try and starve them. Biden and team think that will work better - we'll see.
https://www.rferl.org/a/exclusive-taliban-s-expanding-financ...
"The key to rising revenues has been profits from mining, growing from $35 million in 2016 to $464 million in 2020, according to one of the Taliban members interviewed, who added that China and the United Arab Emirates were the biggest buyers of the raw materials."