Mining; US soldiers in Afghanistan
Is the conflict in Afghanistan a resource war?
US geologists have estimated that Afghanistan’s mineral resources is worth as much as $1 trillion. But Afghan Minerals and Petroleum Minister Wahidullah Shahran said the unearthed or unexplored Afghanistan minerals were worth at least three times the US estimate.
Published: June 30, 2017, 7:18 am
According to NASA estimates, there are deposits of copper, iron and other metals worth of $81.2 billion.
Shahran noted that a number of other mineral reserves in the country were not included in the estimate.
Helmand, one of the southern provinces, holds vast deposits of uranium located in villages like Khanashin.
A member of the Afghan parliament from Helmand Province and local residents have told Sputnik Afghanistan that uranium is currently being smuggled out of the village.
Helmand is a center of both the country’s mining industry and drug-running operations which would make any smuggling operation quite easy. There are not only deposits of uranium, but also magnetite, apatite and carbonite in the south of this region. Some 60 to 80 percent of Afghanistan’s opium is grown in Helmand province.
“The highest concentration of NATO servicemen in Afghanistan is being accompanied with the highest concentration of opium poppy […] That situation causes doubts about the anti-terrorist mission and leads to the conclusion about catastrophic consequences of the eight-year stay [of coalition forces] in Afghanistan,” Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov, said in January 2010.
Additionally thorium deposits are found in the same province, as are vast resources of tantalum and other rare elements.
“Afghanistan’s uranium and lithium mines require management and protection and the government should get capability of extraction,” Faiz Rahman Ishaqzai, lecturer in Kabul University and executive director of Natural Science Association of Afghanistan, told the Afghanistan Times last year.
The deputies of the lower chamber of the country’s parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, or the House of the People, from the province of Helmand, have repeatedly said that clear evidence exists that uranium from Khanashin is being smuggled out in US cargo planes, according to local media reports.
“They justify their presence with security reasons, however what they are doing is robbery and theft,” residents were quoted as saying by Sputnik.
According to the American journal Foreign Affairs, “there are more U.S. military forces deployed there [Afghanistan] than to any other active combat zone” and their mandate is ostensibly to go after the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS.
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