Send the PLA

21 November 2007



Chinese Win Afghan Mining Deal

If the Bush administration thought that sending troops to Afghanistan would help it secure rights to that nation's resources, it was sadly disabused of the idea earlier this week. China Metallurgical Group, a state-owned company, will spend $2.89 billion in the biggest foreign investment in the history of Afghanistan to develop the Aynak copper concession. US and NATO troops will now defend the communist Chinese mine.

The Financial Times Says, “The US Geological Survey estimated that Afghanistan has 60 million tons of copper and 2.3 billion tonnes of iron ore. The Aynak deposit, situated 22km (13.7 miles) southeast of Kabul, was discovered in 1979 by Soviet geologists but was not developed amid almost continual armed conflict.”

Ibrahim Adel, the Afghan Minister of Mines, said, “This is the biggest investment in Afghanistan’s history and 10,000 people will be employed to work there.” He said that the deposit contained 13 million tons of copper, a figure that could rise to 20 million tons. Chinse Metallurgical Group plans on extracting 200,000 tons per year, and construction of the mine could begin before the end of June 2008. The People's Republic of China will be there for a century if those figures hold up.

The FT reports, “Rival bidders in the five-strong shortlist included Strikeforce, part of Basic Element, the Russian mining group controlled by Oleg Deripaska; Phelps Dodge, of the United States; the London-quoted Kazakhmys; and Hunter Dickinson, of Canada.” Precisely why the government of Hamid Karzai opted to work with the Chinese is hard to say, but the Bush administration has made a major blunder in allowing this deal to proceed.

Free trade is all well and good, and in the long run, is the most efficient way to go. On the other hand, there are no Chinese troops in Afghanistan hunting down Taliban fighters. The Kabul government is not propped up by the People's Liberation Army. If the Bush administration is interested in Afghanistan at all, this is a stunning set back.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.


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