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Subject: Gold Rush & Exit Strategy
PPR    6/14/2010 11:00:31 PM
The big problem for an exit strategy from Afghanistan is this: Afghanistan has been shattered by decades of war and lacks the economic base to support an army large and powerful enough to keep control of the country without massive outside support. It will take decades to rebuild Afghanistan. The Bush strategy took this into account by have a small, sustainable presence, designed not to occupy the whole country, but establish a safe zone where an economic base could be built up over time and gradually exert control over the outlying areas. The Obama strategy is more of a surge, cut, and run strategy. They make a big presence to establish control and send the enemy reeling, then evacuate and leave the government to its own fate. Thus we save face, but abandon an ally. Call it the Vietnam strategy. Enter the wild card. A recent report suggested there could be almost a trillion dollars of mineral wealth in Afghanistan (and I suspect this estimate may be a low). Compare that to a GDP of $21 billion. You are talking massive wealth for one of the poorest nations on earth. The problem is this: it takes a lot of infrastructure to get at this mineral wealth. You need engineers and money to build and maintain the mines. Roads, railroads, and ports to ship it out to consumers. And of course this all depends upon security. It is always easier to destroy infrastructure than build it. Afghanistan has almost no infrastructure. It has a population that is mostly illiterate. It has only a few hundred miles of paved roads, no ports (it is a land-locked country), and almost no railroads. It could take decades to develop the mineral wealth of Afghanistan and big investment from outside. The hope is that the prospect of this wealth will induce warring parties to come together in their mutual best interest. I doubt this will help, because the parties are not all interested in only money. However, it does give the outside more incentive for staying involved. Perhaps the proponents of the cut-and-run strategy will reconsider.
 
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Mike From Brielle    PPR   7/7/2010 1:17:43 PM
My concern is that the mineral wealth may be exploited partially with forced labor in order to fund terrorist activities exclusively, ala Blood Diamonds, if we were to give Al Qaeda sufficient room to do so.  They would have to find a high profit margin material in a area tractable to their control but this may be possible.
 
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CJH       7/11/2010 5:59:08 PM
An unconfirmed report of "mineral wealth" in Afghanistan would excite my suspicions because that would drastically change anyone's Afghanistan strategic calculus. It would tend to rope us into an additional interest in Afghanistan.
 
It would put Karzai in the catbird's seat I would think. Either give him what he wants or he walks to Pakistan/the Taliban.
 
But infrastructure appears to be the decisive gap in the path to a stable state.
 
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CJH       7/11/2010 6:03:10 PM
Ok, I see a report.
 
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WarNerd       7/11/2010 7:14:02 PM
The report is nothing new.  
 
In fact they did not perform an extensive survey, just rehashed a Soviet report produced when they occupied Afghanistan, much of which was in turn based on earlier reports done for the Afghan governemtn before the Soviet invasion.
 
Besides, it is not how much the resources are worth, but how much is recoverable and how fast you can extract it.  If you assume that 40% is recoverable and it takes 60 years to extract then the cash flow is only about $7 billion/year.  Still a lot by Afghanistan standards.
 
A big question may be how much lithium they have.  The availability of this element is a stumbling block for advanced batteries needed by the electric vehicle industry.  50% of known reserves are in Bolivia, 30% in Chili, and another 10% in China.
 
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Mike From Brielle       7/12/2010 12:11:38 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong but hasn't the mineral wealth been there (known about) since the time of Alexander (Bactria I believe- established by Alexander's ex-hoplites)?  Wasn't there a civilization centered around what is now Kunduz, who's extravagant wealth was based on mining operations ?  After that the region was adjacent to what became the silk road but mostly because of the conflicts, that seem endemic, it has slipped into a prolonged silent dark age. 
 
From what I understand the region is a bit of a smorgasbord of high margin minerals.  The region can't be allowed to serve terrorists interests. 
 
If you put a need and a resource together someone will find a way. The right stewards (preferably democratically elected by common consent) of these resorces must be given the time and the resources to control these assets in a manner consistent with civilized norms.  If we try to pretend that the region can be let to slip again into a dark age the result will not be silent.
 
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Mike From Brielle    I believe...    8/4/2010 7:13:17 PM
 
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Mike From Brielle    I believe...    8/4/2010 8:51:17 PM
whatever can be done to augment and increase the authority and the discipline of the tribes in a manner so that the local headmen can be assured of some backing from their traditional sources of support in the shura's, must be done.  We have to back the tribes instead of attacking their authority.  We should do this in a manner that augments the forces of (relative) moderation.  We should lose neither the carrot or the stick.  Unfortunately this has to go on, on both sides of the border.  If the Pushtun shura's are against the Taliban in certain area's than the Taliban can't operate for long in those area's.  They will try to terrorize and intimidate but they can't hold on for long without some kind of local backing.  But they have been able to always run back to Pakistan for safe haven.  The problem may be that there is a silent Pakistan civil war going on with the most conservative elements of their society supporting the Taliban in order to gain short term tactical victories,  long term strategic dominance of the country or both. It would be helpful if we could identify who these elements are with certainty (depth, homogeneity, etc..).  We may have to walk back whatever power the Taliban have developed on the Pakistan side of the councils by whatever means necessary or with whatever will work.  This is an intelligence challenge and a fine line to be walked.  It might get messy, and it may be very very necessary.  What I fear is that as the radical conservative but sub-rosa elements of Pakistani society use the Taliban for tactical purposes in Afghanistan they may want to utilize Al Qeada for regional or even strategic purposes.  Have we been able to get bin Laden or Zawahiri?  Are they standards to marshal a future Army under?
 
It doesn't help that elements of our own government are advertising guaranteed insecurity in a year in a war in which one of our goals is to guarantee security for a long abused people.  This is puzzling; they ran on reemphasizing the war in Afghanistan yet elements of the administration seem determined to crash the policy.  Its almost as if now that Iraq is stabilizing that they want/ need at least one major US strategic defeat.
 
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