Afghanistan is flush with iron, copper, gold, and rare expensive metals used in electronics. Soviet geologists first discovered some of the deposits during their failed occupation. Some Afghans retained their survey maps, which caught the attention of a USGS development team after our invasion. We conducted our own aerial surveys in 2006-7 which confirmed the mineral riches, but didn't act on the data until a Pentagon business development unit (that formerly worked in Iraq) got hold of it in 2009.
There are quite a few challenges, mind you, before Afghanistan becomes the "Saudi Arabia" of metals though. Some of the richest deposits are found in the hostile border regions near Pakistan, where even the NATO forces won't venture into. The deposits require heavy equipment and well trained workers to extract, and may be situated in tough mountainous terrain. Currently Afghanistan lacks even a km of railroad, and has no mining infrastructure (or really any modern infrastructure), so it would take decades of development and billions of foreign investment before they are ready. Yet as we have seen in Nigeria and other unstable oil nations, static industrial targets are easy pickings for insurgents and thieves. If they can attack NATO and UN compounds at will, they can easily disrupt mining production with sabotage or mere threats to workers. We know that we won't really pacify Afghanistan no matter how many surges we send. So if the price is right to justify mining there despite the risks, our security presence will probably need to be permanent, like our bases in the Gulf states.
Another confounding factor is minerals-thirsty China. Although Afghanistan is "our project", the Chinese have already made their presence known by bribing and winning the rights to mine copper in some areas. So it's almost assured that the US and China will raise tensions competing for influence. And lastly, the culture of corruption in Afghanistan would probably just intensify with a new high-value economic sector. The US is among the top 20 least corrupt nations, and look how our MMS and mine safety regulators perform.
"The corruption that is already rampant in the Karzai government could also be amplified by the new [mineral] wealth, particularly if a handful of well-connected oligarchs, some with personal ties to the president, gain control of the resources. Just last year, Afghanistan’s minister of mines was accused by American officials of accepting a $30 million bribe to award China the rights to develop its copper mine. The minister has since been replaced." -NYT
Also a very good Frontline doc summarizing our challenges in Afghanistan: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
We're paying and pressuring the Pakistani government to help us defeat the Afghan Taliban, which is essentially the Afghan wing of the ISI. Yet an even greater regional security concern is the viability of the fragile pro-US regime in Islamabad, with its nuclear arsenal, rivalry with India, and threats from internal Islamist groups. So winning in Afghanistan means weakening our allies in Pakistan, and supporting Pakistan means condoning the Afghan Taliban. How are we supposed to resolve that paradox?
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