Mineral Wealth Estimate Excites Afghan Officials - NYTimes.com

Mineral Wealth Estimate Excites Afghan Officials - NYTimes.com:

Here's a game-changer! If mineral assets in Afghanistan are worth a trillion or more dollars, economic opportunity may soon trump radical Islam as the driving force determining the future of the country.

Wouldn't the radical Islamic fundamentalists love to get their hands on this wealth to fund their jihad against the West! The stakes in the Aghan war just rose dramatically!

"According to the report, which was described Monday in The New York Times, Afghanistan has at least $1 trillion in mineral deposits that have yet to be unearthed. It is a potential income source so vast that if it were tapped and the wealth handled in a way to benefit the whole population, the country could be transformed. It would also turn Afghanistan into a mining center.

That would, however, require a substantial change in the country’s circumstances, since many of the reserves were found in politically unstable areas, said Mr. Omar, the Mines Ministry spokesman.

“Mining is not like a shop that you can open and immediately take advantage of,” he said, adding that it would most likely take five to 10 years before the country could begin to use those reserves."

The full Times story is here.