Afghan mineral wealth $1 trillion: report

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

Originally Posted by Flashpoint

And Africa has some of the richest diamond deposits in the world. It simply isn't helpful when your government can't find it's ass with both hands.

The diamond industry has its own wacky economics.

[Sluggo]

Originally Posted by algernon

Step 1 Nuke mountains and Taliban.
Step 2 Scoop up all the lithium/build schools.
Step 3 ???????????
STEP 4 PEACE.

Took nuclear physics a while ago but I am pretty sure lithium is used to enhance the yield nuclear weapons

Honestly I was hoping this valuable mineral was Unobtanium.

[Cowperson]

Originally Posted by Sluggo

Took nuclear physics a while ago but I am pretty sure lithium is used to enhance the yield nuclear weapons

Honestly I was hoping this valuable mineral was Unobtanium.

Or Tillium.

Then we could re-fuel Battlestar Galactica's fleet when it gets here and puts a beat-down on the the Taliban.

Cowperson

[Huntingwhale]

I was hoping it was Praseodymium.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Flashpoint

And Africa has some of the richest diamond deposits in the world. It simply isn't helpful when your government can't find it's ass with both hands.

Originally Posted by Super Nintendo Chalmers

The diamond industry has its own wacky economics.

I don't think that the economics of the industry are the sole reason here. No investor is going to put money towards these projects with no certainty of getting their money back. Mining is risky enough, never mind the geo-political issues to work against you.

[HOZ]

10 bucks says China offers up troops to "defend Afghanistan against extremism" so they can regain their monopoly on these key metals

[CaptainCrunch]

Funnily enough, the last thing that the Taliban would want to see is the Chinese Military there. They would fight with a certain ruthlessness that the current troops on the ground are unwilling to engage in.

The chinese wouldn't have the hearts and minds of the civilian population in mind if they were there. If they tracked insurgents back to a village they would arrest every villager, interrogate them all ruthlessly and execute a few of them to encourage the others.

[Flames Fan, Ph.D.]

This discovery is old news as it appears to be based on a 2007 report.

Put me in the camp of people that thinks this is the US government holding shiny objects in front of the public to distract them from the real problem in Afghanistan.

[Super Nintendo Chalmers]

Originally Posted by Slava

I don't think that the economics of the industry are the sole reason here. No investor is going to put money towards these projects with no certainty of getting their money back. Mining is risky enough, never mind the geo-political issues to work against you.

It's certainly not the sole reason. I'm just commenting on an industry that managed to turn an otherwise cheap mineral into a desirable commodity. There's no way you can turn around a country with diamonds without crashing the market for them.