Supervisor Atta Mohammad watches the cranes swivel and workers at the Naibabad freight terminal rush to unload wheat and construction material from Uzbekistan that’s just arrived on Afghanistan’s only railroad.
The cargo has to be transferred to trucks to reach the rest of the country through the icy passes in the Hindu Kush mountains that loom over the featureless desert because the 75-kilometer (47-mile) railway ends a short distance from the terminal near the northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The short stretch of track is intended to be the start of 3,600 kilometers of rail that will be the key to unlock Afghanistanâ??s mineral riches, including iron, copper and gold. In 2010, the Pentagon estimated that Afghan minerals charted by the U.S. Geological Survey were worth some $1 trillion. In 2011, the Afghan government put the estimate at $3 trillion.
“Actually it’s $30 trillion -- the U.S. knocked a zero off to keep our assets a secret,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai told Indian investors in December. He offered no support for his estimate, and investment in Afghan mining so far has been led by groups from China and India, not the U.S.
All the projections of Afghan riches suffer from the same weakness. They all assume that the minerals can be mined, transported and exported from a country ravaged by decades of warfare and facing growing uncertainty as the U.S. and its allies prepare to withdraw their combat forces by the end of this year.
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