On Monday, the New York Times reported on a Defense Department memo claiming that under Afghanistan's hard terrain lays nearly a $1 trillion in mineral deposits. These minerals include large veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium a vital component of computer batteries. But the reality of this story is that it is more of a propaganda campaign or "information operation" than it is real news. Yes it is true that these minerals do exist in Afghanistan but it is by no means news. The U.S. Geological survey made the discovery back in 2007. However, the U.S. government is pushing the story now because the coalition here has been rocked by some particularly bad press here the past week (Ironically from the New York Times. This causes me to wonder if the Times is attempting to buy its way back into the good graces of the Embassy in Kabul.) The most damaging of this press was comments attributed to President Karzai about the West not being able to win in Afghanistan. This story is similar to ones that preceded the Iraq War when the Bush administration claimed that Iraq's oil wealth would pay for all the costs of reconstruction.

The reason why news of these vasts deposits is no need to celebrate is simple. The minerals are worthless unless you can actually get private companies to come in here and mine them. And with the security situation what it is that is not likely to happen any time soon. Afghanistan for instance would be a great country to run oil pipeline through, stretching from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and then on to China as well. However, despite a great deal of effort on the part of a U.S. company called Unocal they were never able to negotiate enough treaties with all the tribes and Taliban to agree not to blow up the lines or siphon oil from them. The one country with a mining contract in Afghanistan right now is China which now owns the largest copper mine here. They don't care about their people dying so it works out well for them.


The Taliban can't really mine anything so we don't really have to worry about them getting this revenue as they simply arent organized enough not to mention the lliterate enough. Furthermore, from this map you can tell that the majority of the deposits are located in Northern, Western and Central Afghanistan, all areas where the Taliban is not strong. The Taliban makes the majority of their money through taxes, which they are pretty good at collecting. They front farmers the money to buy opium poppy seed. They then take a percentage of the farmers cut when he sells his product to the local drug lord. They then also tax the drug lord for the right to move his product through areas they control. It is very mafia like here both in the government and the black market.

The other really bad thing about all these mineral deposits being discovered is that its really just one more thing for the government here to exploit for bribes. The Chinese got their copper mine for a song simply by paying a few million to the right ministers. The mine itself is worth billions.

Beka Feathers
Demagogues and Dictators Afghanistan Parliamentary Analyst

As the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated over the past two years, the public narrative has increasingly resembled a litany of failure: the central government is full of corrupt warlords who are tied to the drug trade, violate human rights with impunity, and are interested in the idea of governance only insofar as they can profit from it. The Afghan National Police are brutal, biased and uninterested in upholding the rule of law. Corrupt officials are becoming more prevalent than opium poppies. As a result, establishing legitimate government has become critical to success in all other areas of the mission in Afghanistan.

In all the fuss about the failures of the central government, however, a surprising success story is being overlooked. The Afghan National Assembly, the country’s highest representative institution, has begun, quietly, to govern. This is a surprise not only because the parliament has long been the forgotten stepchild of the Bonn Process, but also because Karzai and his international allies have done everything possible to prevent the parliament from becoming a strong check to the presidency.

Afghanistan is one of the most centralized countries in the world, and almost everything leads back to Karzai sooner or later. Consider: In Afghanistan, the President has the power to make the budget, pass decrees, hire governors and police chiefs, even to appoint teachers to local schools. Electoral law makes it almost impossible for political parties to operate by forbidding them to organize along any of the nationally recognized identity lines. The international community has largely supported Karzai’s attempts to further consolidate power in his person. The parliament, meanwhile, has lagged behind other government institutions in funding, resources, and capacity.

But starting this year, the parliament seems to have found its feet. Since January, it has challenged Karzai to appoint qualified ministers instead of warlords and cronies, rejected his attempted takeover of the independent Electoral Complaints Commission (the same body that found a third of his votes fraudulent in the election last fall), and refused to serve as a rubber stamp for decrees. In fact, it's been doing what so many outside observers have said is necessary to keep the government from collapsing entirely: serving as a legitimate, Afghan-led check on Karzai's administration.

I finally read James Traub's excellent piece on emerging drug trade routes, "Africa's Drug Problem."  Traub highlights the case of Guinea-Bissau, a small West African state that has become a regional hub for narcotics smuggled from South America into Europe.  The sheer volume being transported is staggering:

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that 40 tons of cocaine, with a street value of $1.8 billion, crossed West Africa on the way to Europe in 2006. The number has now dropped significantly, but many law-enforcement officials view this as a pause before further adaptation. 

Three key issues emerge from this piece.

This first is the maladaptive role governments play in this trade.  In Guinea-Bissau, the state, depending on your level of cynicism, is either impotent to stop drug traffickers or is entirely complicit and enmeshed in illegal activities.  Traub presents strong, although anecdotal, evidence of the latter:

Then, Djata says: “We got a call from the prime minister’s office saying that we must yield up the drugs to the civil authorities. They said the drugs would not be secure in police headquarters, and they must be taken to the public treasury.” A squad of heavily armed Interior Ministry police surrounded the building. Djata said his boss replied, “We will bring the drugs ourselves, and then we will burn them.” Government officials refused. Djata and his men relented, and the drugs were taken to the public treasury. And soon, of course, they disappeared — as did the Colombians. 

In either case, the mismanagement of resources by governments has either created additional incentive for public officials to illegal enrich themselves or has deprived the state of the necessary capabilities to intercept well-financed drug traffickers.  The heart of the matter is the prevalence, and acceptance, of corruption.

Secondly, the insatiable global demand for illegal narcotics provides a powerful financial incentive to criminal gangs. 

Here I was, all set to write a follow-up to my last post about Operation Moshtarak, only to discover that Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal has already written exactly what I wanted to say.  He touches all the bases - the inadequacy of the ANSF, the lack of understand of how governance works (hint: it doesn't come in a box), and the continued corruption by Hamid Karzai.  Seriously, just go read it.  It's good.

Don't worry, you read all those zeros correctly - $2.5 billion.  That's the estimated amount of bribes paid by Afghans in 2009, according to a recent report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

As I wrote earlier, corruption is a major problem in Afghanistan.  It saps what little legitimacy the Karzai government retains and prevents the regime from providing even the most basic services to the populace.  To put that figure in perspective, it constitutes roughly 23% of GNP.  Spending 23% of GNP on a single sector is problematic for any economy, but spending it on bribes in an already faltering and fragile state is disasterous.

Rory Stewart highlighted this problem in a recent article, writing,

The effective, legitimate Afghan government, on which the entire counterinsurgency strategy depends, shows little sign of emerging, in part because the international community lacks the skills, the knowledge, the legitimacy, or the patience to build a new nation.

His whole article is well worth reading, but the takeaway remains the same - no amount of American intervention can succeed without a real government in Afghanistan.