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There’s a silver lining for the Afghan people, if they can fight for it as well as they throw off invading armies: precious metals and rare earth minerals potentially worth trillions.
CNBC is reporting that China will likely be high on the list attempting to work deals for access to that wealth.
Over the weekend, the Islamist Taliban organization took control of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, as well as the Presidential Palace. Following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan in April, the Taliban achieved rapid combat gains, and the militants now control almost the entire country.
Some experts, including Shamaila Khan, director of emerging market debt at AllianceBernstein, said Khan the world community should exert pressure on China if it tries to form an alliance with the Taliban.
Khan asserted that China must abide by international rules, since mining rare earth metals is regulated, due to their hazardous properties and other factors.
But what leverage the world community has to influence, let alone dictate to either nation at this point, is debatable, to say the least.
Although counted as one of the world’s poorest nations, a 2010 study by US military specialists and geologists showed that Afghanistan has . massive iron, copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth reserves.
Due to the country’s continuing conflict, most of those resources remained untapped for the next decade.
But as a result of the worldwide shift to green energy, the value of several of those minerals has soared. According to a follow-up study released by the Afghan government in 2017, Kabul’s new mineral riches, which includes fossil fuels, may be worth $3 trillion.
German news outlet Deutsche Welle noted specific stores that might be exploited. Lithium, which is used in batteries for electric vehicles, cellphones, and laptops, is in high demand, with current yearly growth of 20 percent. According to the Pentagon document, Afghanistan is the Saudi Arabia of lithium.
Copper, meanwhile, has risen 43 percent in the last year as a result of the post-COVID global economic rebound. Expanding copper mining operations may unlock more than a fifth of Afghanistan’s potential mineral riches.
Michael Tanchum of the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy told DW:
“Taliban control comes at a time when there is a supply crunch for these minerals for the foreseeable future and China needs them, China is already in position in Afghanistan to mine these minerals.”