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Afghan Mining Minister Presses Ahead with Reforms to Improve Transparency
On Sunday, Afghanistan’s Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani
took steps to improve transparency in the country’s extractive resources
industry by disclosing roughly 200 mining contracts that had previously been
kept secret.
According to The New
York Times, the move is “likely
to please his supporters in the West, including the United States, who made
greater openness in the Afghan government’s financial dealings a condition of
billions of dollars in development assistance and aid money pledged earlier
this year.”
Just two years ago, Afghanistan’s mineral wealth – estimated
to be worth potentially a trillion dollars –promised hope to a torpid economy
plagued by generations of war. “The
previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt,
gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and
include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan
could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers
in the world,” The New York
Times reported in June 2010.
But corruption and a lack of transparency has plagued the
country’s mining industry. Reports say that there are ongoing disputes within
the government over contracts to Afghans with ties to the Karzai family,
including accusations that the government is
steering lucrative deals to companies with ties to the Karzai family to develop
the countries oil and natural gas reserves. Last
month, The New York Times claimed that the country’s mineral sector had been “increasingly
imperiled by corruption, violence and intrigue, and has put the Afghan
government’s vulnerabilities on display,” and may even be helping fund
Afghan insurgents. “A
recent Defense Department analysis said criminal mining
syndicates were smuggling chromite over the border, paying protection
money to the Pakistani Taliban and the Haqqani insurgent network,” The New York Times reported.
www.cnas.org
2012-10-15 13:05:48
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