Afghanistan Could Become The Saudi Arabia of Lithium

[Parsad]

An internal Pentagon memo, that Afghanistan has at least $1T worth of untapped minerals deposits, including huge resources of lithium.  Cheers!

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?no_interstitial

[shalab]

Carefully leaked -why? Not sure. Yesterday, there was a report by London School of Economics that Pakistan continued to aid/abet Taliban including participating in Taliban council meetings. Never made it to any newspapers in the U.S.

 

 

[Packer16]

Unfortunately I think this will lead to the resource curse as the easiest way to get ahead in Afghanistan will be to control the resource (most likely by force) versus having to develop other ways of growing the economy. 

 

Packer

[claphands22]

Afghanistan has high rocky terrain with no sea ports, because of this - the country has very high transportation costs. High transportation will effectively inhibit Afghanistan from being a player in the the global market unless (a) they do service work like India or (b) they have high profit margin exports like opium, metals,  or oil.

 

The metal thing is interesting because it will allow for another financial alternative than opium - it'll be interesting to see how this plays out in 10-20 years.

[opihiman2]

I believe it's propaganda.  That's the general consensus that everyone has over on Reddit.

 

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/no-the-military-didnt-just-discover-an-afghan-mineral-motherlode/