Let the looting of Afghanistan begin.

[KanadaHye]

Afghanistan opens bids for gold, copper deposits to generate revenue for war-torn nation

KABUL, Afghanistan � Afghanistan opened bids Tuesday on billions of dollars worth of copper and gold deposits in four areas of the country that together are roughly half the size of the Grand Canyon.

Despite ongoing violence, Afghanistan has high hopes that its budding mining industry will generate billions in revenue to help rebuild the nation after 30 years of war. For Afghanistan, a landlocked country with virtually no exports, the minerals are a potential windfall but it will require international investment, a better transportation network and improved security.



Geologists have known for decades about Afghanistan�s vast deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and other prized minerals, including rare earth minerals used in cell phones, hybrid car batteries, defense industries and wind turbines.

The U.S. Defense Department put a startling $1 trillion price tag on the vast mineral reserves, but the Afghan minister said other geological assessments and industry reports estimate the nation�s mineral wealth at $3 trillion or more.

The Afghan Ministry of Mines invited investors to bid on multiple contracts to unearth copper and gold hidden beneath 846 square miles (2,191 square kilometers) in Badakhshan, Ghazni and Herat provinces and a fourth area that spans both Balkh and Sar-e-Pul provinces. The tender offers were posted on its web site.

Afghan Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from London, where he was speaking at a mining conference, that the value of the deposits was �in the billions.� He did not give a more specific estimate.

Afghanistan plans to sell the rights for up to five mines every year until 2014, when most international combat troops are to have left the country, Shahrani said.

Shahrani has been traveling extensively to woo investors to bid on mining contracts. Though the war continues, Shahrani said he was optimistic that investors are interested and that a mine protection force has already started work at several mining sites around the nation.

In late 2007, a $3 billion contract was awarded to China Metallurgical Group Corp. to mine copper at Aynak in Logar province, 21 miles (35 kilometers) southeast of Kabul. The mine is thought to hold one of the world�s largest untapped copper reserves.

Mining the copper could create 4,000 to 5,000 Afghan jobs in the next five years and hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the government treasury, according to the ministry. The project also includes construction of two coal-fired electric power plants, a segment of rail and a roadway from the mine to Kabul.

In December 2010, Afghan officials approved a multimillion-dollar contract to mine gold in Dushi district of Baghlan province. It was the first mining project in Afghanistan backed by private investors from the West, who pledged $50 million for the project.

Last month, the Afghan government gave investors from India and Canada permission to mine an estimated 1.8 billion tons of iron ore in Bamiyan province, projects that government officials hope will reap revenue for the nation and jobs for its unemployed.

With rising revenues from mining projects, customs and taxes, the Afghan government predicts it can increase the ratio of revenues to its gross domestic product from 11 percent to 15 percent within four years and to 20 percent by 2025, according to the Ministry of Finance.

Still with the planned withdrawal of most international combat forces and an expected decline in foreign assistance, Afghanistan is facing a fiscal crisis.

At an international conference on Monday in Bonn, Germany, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that Afghanistan would need the financial support of other countries for at least another decade beyond 2014.

Afghanistan estimates it will need outside contributions of roughly $10 billion in 2015 and onward, slightly less than half the country's annual gross national product, mostly because it won't be able to pay for its security forces.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...eYO_story.html

[retro]

Re: Let the looting of Afghanistan begin.

Afghanistan has oil, gas and ores. However it's problem is that it's infrastructure is very poor and it can't reach the Indian ocean without keeping in with Pakistan.

[KanadaHye]

Re: Let the looting of Afghanistan begin.

The Anti-Corruption Charade By JAMES BOVARD

If there’s free money to steal, there will be more stealing

In much of the world, governing is a synonym for looting. Unfortunately, American and European foreign aid has a long history of accelerating the looting. Foreign aid created a generation of kleptocracies—governments of thieves—in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. Mercedes-Benz automobiles became so popular among African government officials that a new Swahili word was coined: wabenzi—”men of the Mercedes-Benz.”

A 2009 Council on Foreign Relations report noted that “many public officials in Africa seek re-election because holding office gives them access to the state’s coffers, as well as immunity from prosecution.”

Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo, author of the recent book, Dead Aid, wrote: “A constant stream of free money is a perfect way to keep an inefficient or simply bad government in power.” Numerous other studies over the past dozen years showed that countries that receive more foreign aid tend to have higher corruption.

Former President George W. Bush responded by creating the Millennium Challenge Corp. to reward foreign governments for moderating their greed (see “Bribing for Honesty,” Editorial Commentary, Barron’s, Feb. 21, 2005). Bush proudly though incoherently announced: “We won’t be putting money into a society which is not transparent and corrupt.” (He probably meant “corruption-free.”)

But the Millennium Challenge Corp. quickly became another garden-variety foreign-aid program, not posing a real challenge to corruption. Governments such as those of Georgia, Paraguay and Mozambique received MCC windfalls, despite their well-deserved reputations for venality and theft. MCC’s rhetoric didn’t deter the Bush administration from lavishing foreign aid on notorious regimes such as those that ruled Nigeria, Bangladesh, Tajikistan, Indonesia and Kyrgyzstan.

Easy Promises
Afghanistan is the latest exhibit for foreign aid as a political weapon of mass destruction. In a January 2002 speech at Georgetown University, newly designated Afghan ruler Hamid Karzai gave personal assurances that foreign aid his nation received would be properly spent: “We have to promise that we will not cheat our own people. If there is cheating, corruption, I will stop it.”

More than $50 billion of aid poured into Afghanistan in the following years. The flood made Afghan politicians far more rapacious. Economists in the 1990s had dubbed this tendency the “voracity effect,” and, according to Mohammad Yusin Osmani, chief of the Afghan government’s High Office of Oversight, the surge of aid helped intensify corruption throughout the country.

Between 2005 and 2009, Afghanistan’s “corruption rating” went from merely bad to worst in the world (except for Somalia, which doesn’t have a government), according to Transparency International, a highly respected campaigner against corruption. Average Afghans believe that corruption has doubled since 2007, according to a recent survey by an Afghan-based nonprofit, Integrity Watch.

A United Nations study found that most Afghans identified corruption as the nation’s biggest problem. Foreign aid-spurred corruption is turning average Afghans against the Karzai government. Most Afghans in a recent survey declared that the pervasive corruption was helping the Taliban’s revival.

U.S. military officials tout Kandahar as the most important battleground in the Afghan campaign. But the governor of Kandahar denounced his own government officials and police officers as “looters and kidnappers,” according to the Washington Post.

Easy Applause
The Obama administration has responded with huffing, puffing and posturing. In late 2009, President Barack Obama gave Hamid Karzai a six-month deadline to “eradicate corruption,” according Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After his re-election campaign was caught stealing more than a million votes, Karzai promised, “Fighting corruption will be the key focus of my second term in office.”

In May 2010, President Obama hailed Karzai at a White House ceremony for “the progress that has been made, including strengthening anticorruption efforts.” In June, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder visited Kabul, and proclaimed that “we applaud” President Karzai for his anticorruption actions. Yet Karzai’s complaints led to the scuttling of U.S.-backed anticorruption teams that were nailing tainted Afghan officials.

The popular uprisings against Arab dictators earlier this year are further evidence of the failure of U.S. aid to promote good governance or political decency. The U.S. has provided more than $40 billion in aid to Egypt over the past 30 years—roughly equivalent to the personal fortune possessed by Hosni Mubarak when he was driven from office a few months ago. Regardless of how brazen the Egyptian élite’s thefts became, U.S. taxpayers were still forced to bankroll Mubarak and cronies.

Easy Policies
Foreign aid will continue to be toxic as long as politicians continue to be politicians. Imagine how Americans might react if some foreign entity foisted trillions of dollars of free spending money on the U.S. president and the ruling party in Congress. Yet we are supposed to believe that carpet-bombing a foreign nation with dollars is benevolent.

American leaders are far more concerned with buying influence than with safeguarding purity. Foreign aid is often little more than a bribe for a foreign regime to behave in ways that please the U.S. government. One large bribe naturally spawns hundreds or thousands of smaller bribes, and thereby corrupts an entire country.

There is no bureaucratic cure for the perverse incentives created by flooding foreign nations with dollars. It would be far more honest if American politicians openly admitted that aid corrupts recipient nations, but that such damage is justified when it underpins U.S. foreign policy. Taxpayers suffer enough without also having to endure politicians’ bogus humanitarian boasting.

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2011/12/12...an-corruption/