A team of US geologists and Pentagon officials has discovered vast untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, conceivably enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy, according to a report in a US newspaper.
Nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, including iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium have been discovered, according to the report published today in the New York Times.
The Times quoted a Pentagon memo as saying Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium," a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and mobile phones.
During a visit last month to Washington, Afghan president Hamid Karzai said his nation's untapped mineral deposits could be even higher - perhaps as much as $3 trillion.
The report said the US Geological Survey (USGS) began aerial surveys of Afghanistan's mineral resources in 2006, using data that had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Promising results led to a more sophisticated study the next year.
Then last year, a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq arrived in Afghanistan and closely analysed the geologists' findings. US mining experts were brought in to validate the survey's conclusions, and senior US and Afghan officials were briefed.
Mr Karzai's spokesman Waheed Omar told a news conference today that the USGS was "contracted by the Afghan government to do a survey, so this is basically an Afghan government initiative."
"I think it's very, very big news for the people of Afghanistan and that we hope will bring the Afghan people together for a cause that will benefit everyone," he said. "This is an economic interest that will benefit all Afghans and will benefit Afghanistan in the long run."
So far, the biggest mineral deposits discovered are of iron and copper, but finds include large deposits of niobium, a soft metal used in producing superconducting steel, as well as rare earth elements and large gold deposits in Pashtun areas of southern Afghanistan, the report said.
AP