Could this discovery change the entire dynamic of the Middle East and possibly mean the end of Al Quaida? Why would Afghanistan need the poppy trade with bazillions in mineral wealth at their disposal? Why would they have to continue to put up with al Quaida’s bully tactics. It would seem that this is a huge incentive to turn these fuckers out and start telling the government where they’re holed up, especially if the citizens stand to have jobs and a share of the wealth.
Well, we all know that large deposits of oil have completely quashed radical fundamentalist groups in countries like, say, Saudi Arabia.
I’m not optimistic.
Could this be a reason why were sending close to 100,000 troops into the area? You know they didn’t just find this yesterday… only that they’re letting onto the public because someone was going to drop the dime. :dubious:
There’s plenty of oil in Colombia…
I think this will make the problem worse. The terrorists are already fighting for religious motivations; this will just give them a secular motive as well. Plus if they control access to valuable resources this will be enough incetnive for less scrupulous countries and corporations to make deals with them and provide them with financial support.
First it’s going to take a while to exploit those deposits (I’m assuming here that they actually exist).
Second, there are already some African countries with big reserves of oil, for instance, and where most citizens are still dirt poor (and where oil rigs must be guarded by what almost amounts to a private military).
Also, the existence of such reserves might aggravate the situation in some cases, leading locals to fight over the control of those riches (see diamonds in Africa again, or oil reserves near the Kurd territory in Iraq, etc…)
No way it’s going to solve the Afghan issue on the short term.
It just seems that if the government set this up properly, guaranteeing equal shares to everyone in the country (a la the Alaska oil dividend), there would be a huge incentive to clear the way for developers to come in. Yeah, it probably won’t play out that way, but it would be nice if people in that part of the world would stop slaughtering each other in the name of “god”.
Just something more to fight over.
Good luck with that.
Great. Something else to fight over. Religion and tribalism is bad enough, now they can throw greed and even more corruption into the mix.
Is this really such a revelation? Will it in fact make a major difference in Afghan development? Will the foreign-investment potential fizzle out on account of political instability, as in “Year Zero” Baghdad? What’s likely to happen?
I doubt it will make anything but a surface level change, at least in the short and medium term. I suppose you can’t extract a trillion dollars worth of natural resources without SOME benefit scraping off on the local populace in the form of jobs and infrastructure (I’d say that it’s a given that SOMEONE will exploit that level of resources…eventually anyway), but it won’t be any time soon.
Even if they discovered unobtainium by the bushel basket full I’m thinking it wouldn’t make much of a dent in the short or medium term. It will be interesting to see how it plays out in the long term, but I’m not sanguine, given the levels of local systematic corruption. I think that, at best, you’d get something similar to many of the oil rich ME nations, with a few locals with large bank accounts and a thin veneer of wealth painted on the rest of the populace…just enough to keep them semi-quiet and vaguely content.
-XT
If it is transformed, I would assume it’ll be more like the transformations seen in Sierra Leone due to the income from diamonds.
Various groups fighting for the natural resources domestically combined with international governments (China, Russia, the US, etc) fighting to establish influence due to the shortage of some raw materials like lithium or copper. I think it’ll make things worse in general.
How come nobody ever noticed this before? Plenty of advanced nations have ruled or at least passed through the country; why are we now learning about huge reserves of iron and copper for the first time?
Yes, where were all the whistleblowers and leaked documents that one expects whenever governments or large organisations try to keep a secret?
Why would the Bactrians try to hide the information?
The only bactrians I know of are camels, but I’ll admit, they look a secretive bunch. Don’t know why they’d be like that.
I wonder about that too, particularly as “a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists” made the survey. A case of wild extrapolation?
Imho, in regards to Al Qaida, yes, they will probably lose power in the region. More wealth means more schools means more education, which means less power for religion.
Does this mean the end of the threat of terrorism in the region? Likely not. If anything, it means more mercs and fewer militia.
Exactly. I mean, the Victorian British needed iron as much as we do today, and they certainly didn’t lack surveyors. How come they didn’t make this discovery?