Will Afghanistan be transformed by mineral wealth?

Afghanistan has for decades been little more than a mountainous no-mans-land where Superpowers do battle. The Soviet Union lost a war there. The United States is now fighting a war there. The geography has done little more than to isolate ethnic tribes and frustrate Western powers. But now, those same mountains may transform the nation.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

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 United States officials believe.

There be a great irony if the greatest legacy of the Afghan War is not the vanquishing of the Taliban, but the discover of great wealth to empower a people.