Reactions have been all over the place to news that a Pentagon study has found almost $1 trillion in mineral wealth in Afghanistan. Afghan officials are understandably excited. Meanwhile, Ralph Peters warns: “Assigning the battlefield a trillion-dollar value is not a prescription for reconciliation. Expect ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ scripted by Satan.”
Which side is right? For the foreseeable future, neither. Just because Afghanistan has the potential to cough up vast mineral wealth doesn’t mean that is going to happen anytime soon. There is such persuasive insecurity in many of the areas where mineral deposits have been found, and the infrastructure is so spotty, that it will take many, many years to reap any real dividend. By way of comparison, recall Iraq, which has a far longer history of exploiting its mineral wealth. Nevertheless, the exaggerated estimates of vastly increased oil output back in 2003 are still a long way from becoming reality. Only now are contracts actually being let and work is starting. Afghanistan is years away from reaching that point.
When — or more accurately if — it does get there, no one can predict what the impact of mineral riches will be. Will they spark greater violence and corruption and make government even less accountable to the people? It’s certainly possible that Afghanistan will feel the “resource curse” that has afflicted oil-rich states. But the possibility of a lucrative and legal economic base also opens up hopeful new vistas for Afghanistan. For years Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld refused requests to increase the size of the Afghan security forces because he worried they could not be self-sustaining. Now the security forces are finally being expanded, and the mineral riches give Afghanistan the potential of paying for those forces itself. Moreover, mineral money would give Afghanistan the potential of creating employment that would provide an alternative to the lure of the Taliban’s paychecks.
In the end, it is better to be self-sustaining as a nation and not a perpetual ward of the international community. Afghanistan now has the opportunity to do just that. I don’t want to dismiss the “resource curse,” which is real, but think for yourself: where has counterinsurgency been easier? In Somalia, a land without resources, or in Iraq, a land with vast oil wealth? The question answers itself.
