The Daily Journalist Opinion.
The War in Afghanistan was possibly ‘partly caused’ to the discovery by the Pentagon of vast amounts of mineral reserves found all over the country. When the Pentagon finds mineral wealth, its not by accident. You have to study a landmark before you enter into a war zone, and they knew about the Afghan mineral wealth back in 1979 (USSR’s invasion to Afghanistan) when the CIA explored the region.
The media failed to report the discovery back in 2002 and only focused in the illusive Weapons of Mass Destruction. I remembered a story back in 2010 that dealt with the mineral issue, but it never made the big mainstream headlines (don’t wonder why!) and hasn’t since then.
This great piece of evidence shows the wealth of these reserves and make you question why the media and the U.S. Government alongside other foreign governments kept shut about the existence of such mineral wealth. Unfortunately, interest leads always to war, not exclusively violence. But the Taliban and AlQaeda were bad enough to forget about other important geo-strategic interest that could likewise trigger a war.
By USGS.
INTRODUCTION
This inventory of more than 1000 mines and mineral occurrences in Afghanistan was compiled from published literature and the files of project members of the National Industrial Minerals project of the U.S. Geological Survey. The compiled data have been edited for consistency and most duplicates have been deleted.
The data cover metals, industrial minerals, coal, and peat. Listings in the table represent several levels of information, including mines, mineral showings, deposits, and pegmatite fields.
DATA SOURCES, PROCESSING, AND ACCURACY
Data on more than 1000 Afghanistan deposits, mines, and occurrences were compiled from published literature and digital files of the project members of the National Industrial Minerals project of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The data include information on metals, nonmetals, construction materials, coal, and peat.
Three previous compilations of Afghanistan mineral resources were the dominant sources used for this effort. In 1995, the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific published a summary of the geology and mineral resources of Afghanistan as part of their Atlas of Mineral Resources series.
This document included a summary table and text descriptions of the major mineral mines, deposits, and areas; however, there are numerous spelling and location inconsistencies between table listings and text descriptions. The text descriptions provide geologic and resource information about many of the sites.
A second source compilation for this report was Gemstones of Afghanistan (Bowersox and Chamberlin, 1995), published by Geoscience Press, Inc., of Tucson, Arizona. A table at the end of the book lists mineral occurrences by commodity, including metals and nonmetals, with latitude and longitude. The table contains substantial duplication as sites with multiple commodities are listed multiple times and there are numerous spelling inconsistencies.
The text of this book is largely limited to descriptions of the gem districts of Afghanistan. Many of the individual mines listed in the text are not included in the summary table of this publication, although the major gem districts are in the table. Locations in Appendix A that were identified only in Bowersox and Chamberlin (1995) during the compilation of this table are marked with an “*”.
The descriptions of the starred locations, consisting of a name, commodity, and location, are protected by copyright; the right to reproduce these locations was granted to the USGS by Geoscience Press. The conditions of reproduction stipulate that these rights are non-exclusive world rights and that notice of the title and authors be specified.
The starred locations from Bowersox and Chamberlin (1995) are covered by the following copyright: “No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public use, without written permission from the publisher.”
The most complete compilation of Afghanistan’s mineral resources is Mineral Resources of Afghanistan by Abdullah and others (1977). With few exceptions, the data listed in the ESCAP (1995) publication and Bowersox and Chamberlin (1995) table of mineral resources appear to be excerpted from this earlier compilation; the spelling inconsistencies and typographical errors of Abdullah and others are frequently duplicated in the later compilations.
Both of the later compilations are missing much of the geologic detail contained in the 1977 compilation, but do contain some “new” information not found in Abdullah and others. We should also note at this point that Abdullah and others (1977) is also referenced as Shareq and others (1977).
This confusion arises from the publication having two title pages. One title page begins the list of authors as “Abdullah Shareq, V.M. Chmyriov, …”; the other title page begins the list of authors as “Sh. Abdullah, V.M. Chmyriov, …”. We have chosen to use “Abdullah” as the last name because several citations in the mineral descriptions cite “Abdullah” and none cite “Shareq”.
Also, in the reference list of the 1977 publication, there is an author listed as “Abdullah, S.”, but there is no “Shareq”. Additional geologic and commodity information came from USGS files and about a dozen other published sources. For the most part, all data were recorded as reported in the references there were inconsistencies that could be reconciled from the available data.
Where information reported from two or more sources were in conflict, the authors utilized the information from Abdullah and others (1977) and noted the inconsistencies. The data were checked for duplicates using names, locations, and commodity.
Historic province names were replaced with current province names using latitude and longitude information using a paper map. No attempt was made to identify further errors.
DATA
The mines and mineral occurrences of Afghanistan are listed in a table as Appendix A of this publication. The table is divided into 3 parts; Pegmatite Fields, Named Sites & Deposits, and Sites and Deposits Without Names. The latter 2 categories include deposits, active and inactive mines of a variety of scales, prospects, and showings. The data fields for Appendix A include:
Locality/Deposit Name
Synonyms and Other Names or Spellings
Deposit or District Name
Province
Latitude
Longitude
Commodity(s)
Type of Deposit
Status
Host Rock Age
Host Rock
Significant Minerals or Materials
Deposit Size and (or) Grade
Comments
References
Decimal Latitude
Decimal Longitude
The Locality/Deposit Name field contains the name of the mine, deposit, field, area, or occurrence being described. Synonyms and Other Names or Spellings contains alternative names or spellings for the site. For a deposit or area, this field might also include any specific mine or occurrence names that are known, i.e. “includes Northern and XXX mines”.
The Deposit or District Name field contains the name of any larger deposit, field, or district to which the site belongs. The Afghanistan Province in which the site lies is the next field. Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) spellings were used in Appendix A (National Institute of Standards and Technology, 1995). Table 1 contains a list of all the Provinces in Afghanistan plus alternative spellings and historic names known to the authors.
Latitude and longitude are listed in degrees, minutes, and seconds. Large fields or deposits may have a range specified in the Latitude or Longitude fields, i.e. ” 34-00N to 34-10N”. In other cases, a deposit may have 2 orebodies with differing locations. In this case, the multiple latitudes and longitudes are separated by a semi-colon, i.e. “34-00N; 34-10N.”
The Commodity Field lists the commodities known to occur at each site. A list of commodity abbreviations may be found in table 2. The following field, Type of Deposit, contains a deposit type or style of mineralization. The Status field contains information on whether the site has produced and when or if it is a mineral occurrence or showing.
Host Rock Age and Host Rock contain appropriate descriptions of host rocks and other significant rock units, such as nearby igneous rocks that are related to the mineralization. The main minerals or materials are listed under Significant Minerals or Materials and any deposit size or grade information is listed in the following field. The four remaining fields in Appendix A are a Comments field for any additional information, References, and Decimal Latitudes-Longitudes.
Readers and users of the data should be aware that English spelling of the place names is highly variable within the source materials; many are English translations of Russian versions of Afghani names.
In addition, the use of singular and plurals in the geologic descriptions is erratic. If the source(s) specified a number of veins or our bodies, that number was included in Appendix A of this publication.
In many other cases, it was commonly unclear if there was one or more mineralized areas or bodies. Lastly, there is additional data in Abdullah and others (1977), including the locations of mineral haloes, that are not included in this publication.
The data in Appendix A may be obtained in digital format in the following ways: 1. Download the digital files from the USGS public access World Wide Web site on the internet: http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of02-xxx/
To check all the minerals and keep reading go to: Pg 8, http://geopubs.wr.usgs.gov/open-file/of02-110/of02-110.pdf
