QARA ZAGHAN: After scrambling up a steep mountainside in north Afghanistan, Morad Ali crouches beside a gap cut in the slope and touches some reddish-brown rock. “The gold is in here,” he says.
Ali was one of generations of local men who used chisels and pickaxes to extract small amounts of gold from the forbidding peaks above the village of Qara Zaghan on the edge of the Hindu Kush mountains.
Now a dirt track has been carved up to the spot, and professional surveying is underway as part of efforts to assess how Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth could be exploited as the country seeks a more stable and prosperous future.
“I started mining when I was aged about 12,” said Ali, now in his late thirties. “We would find tiny flakes of gold, or we would crush rocks and then wash the powder to pan out little grains.”
Ali’s knowledge of the landscape and its history of small-scale “artisanal” mining is a valuable asset for Afghan Gold and Minerals (AGM), the Afghan-owned company that in 2011 won the licence to dig for gold in Qara Zaghan.
“We know from the locals that there is gold and our own studies show good potential — now we need to explore further,” said Dusko Ljubojevic, a South African geologist working for AGM.
“Doing the surveying on this type of terrain is like mountaineering, but I am excited. We have only looked at a small part of our licence area so far.”
Any business venture faces major challenges in Afghanistan, ranging from the risk of attack by Taliban insurgents and criminal gangs to poor infrastructure, power shortages and widespread corruption.
Rumours of a “gold rush” attract inevitable attention, and AGM’s convoys use armoured vehicles and gun-toting guards to make the eight-hour journey to Baghlan province from Kabul over the snow-capped Salang Pass — 140km on the map.
The US conducted an aerial survey of Afghanistan in 2006, building on data from the Soviet occupation of the 1980s, and found evidence of $1trn of minerals deposits with particularly strong results for copper and iron.
Such potential wealth offers a glimmer of hope to a country ravaged by decades of war and facing further turmoil as 100,000 international troops fighting the Islamist insurgents head home by the end of next year. “Afghanistan is blessed to sit on such large deposits but unless we are able to explore them, it is worthless,” said Nadari. “That is why we need international partners, expertise and capital.”
The government is also counting on commercial mining as a future source of much-needed income, and a new mining law is due to be passed soon to regulate the industry and encourage investment.
But the legislation is stuck in several drafting stages and it has no date to go before parliament after long delays and disputes between competing ministries.
More setbacks could even push the bill beyond elections next April, when President Hamid Karzai is due to step down after 12 years in power and Afghanistan looks set for a period of political uncertainty.
AFP
