Afghanistan is the New Pandora
...so sez the NY Times and the Pentagon.
While the discovery of nearly a trillion dollars of minerals may appear to be good news for Afghanistan (for instance, the Afghanis will finally be able to abandon their opium crops and the CIA will no longer be able to run its opium route), I think they have more to fear than just the Taliban redoubling their efforts to control the country. Like American corporations trying to muscle their way into this bonanza and the American military using the Taliban as an excuse for having no exit strategy.
So, did things just get a whole lot better for Afghanistan or a whole lot worse? And how much longer before we start developing avatars?
posted by jurassicpork @ Monday, June 14, 2010
1 comments
1 Comments:
This whole "trillion dollar bonanza" thing is so bogus. To get minerals out, you need infrastructure -- electricity to run equipment like mine de-watering pumps, fuel lines to deliver all the petroleum to run the machines like mining trucks, rail lines to transport the ore to places where it can be refined... I'm not even supposing they'd try to do any value-added production with what they dig out of the dirt in Afghanistan. No way can that be built in a savage place where anything worth money will get stolen or blown up.
This is SO not gonna happen for the U.S. Who WILL take advantage of it will be the Chinese. And they'll do it in the way they did in Tamerlane's time, by just moving in with their own people and slaughtering any Afghan they come across, like Tamerland made pyramids with skulls in front of Kandahar. Look to Tibet for a modern example.
The Chinese communists than the U.S. imperialists for pointing them in the right direction!
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