The Afghan Trillion Dollars Mineral Find

After almost ten years of Afghan war, the U.S. has found a potential mineral wealth of $ 1 trillion. The Afghan government is saying it is potentially $3 trillion. Whatever is the amount, the question is would it affect the result of Afghan war for the better or for the worse. Since now that the figures are in, the Taliban would want to fight harder to get rid of the NATO and U.S. forces and lay claim to the wealth. But I don’t believe that a Taliban run Afghanistan would be an ideal environment for any investor to risks large sums of investment for this kind of wealth. It is the same as the Iraqi Oil wealth that was touted as one of the biggest in the world, and it would pay for the whole Iraqi war and the infrastructure, but after seven years of war, the Iraqis are still bracing electricity shortages and wealth crunch.

The so called wealth that Afghanistan possess right now would be hard to extract and would take decades (if any) after the war and infighting to make any difference to the lives of the Afghan people. Add to that corruption and the neighboring countries interference and the situation seems to be worse than Iraq. So I think that the euphoria about this new find should not distract people from the real problems Afghanistan faces and that is war, corruption, infighting and neighboring countries interference.