Insecurity could spoil Chinese appetite for Afghan lithium

Audio 03:34

General view of the Mes Aynak Valley, 40 kilometers southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan.

The Taliban government is trying to grab China's attention by showcasing its massive and untouched wealth of minerals, including lithium, the silvery metal used in cell phone and computer batteries considered essential to modern life.

AP - Rahmat Gul

By: Heike Schmidt Follow

4 min

How to revive the Afghan economy on land?

The Taliban rely on Chinese money.

It was the Chinese who were the first to roll out the red carpet for them last July.

China covets the riches of its Afghan neighbor: copper, zinc and especially lithium, essential for the manufacture of electric car batteries.

But it is difficult to extract the slightest ton of ore, as long as insecurity reigns in the country.

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Afghanistan, "

 Saudi Arabia of lithium

 "? In any case, this is what the US Department of Defense noted in 2010. Will China get its hands on this treasure estimated at trillion dollars? “

 Indeed, lithium is a strategic material in innovation,

” specifies Emmanuel Veron, geographer and specialist in China. 

It is obvious that the Chinese Communist Party has a medium and long-term target for the exploitation potential of these lithium reserves, as much moreover as for copper and gold, while having uncertainties as to the capacity of extraction.

 "  

Barely installed in Kabul, the Taliban provided special visas to five Chinese companies to explore the country's mines.

In an interview with Voice of America, Zabihullah Mujahid, Deputy Minister of Information and Culture, says Afghanistan wants to attract Chinese investment.

“ 

China is our neighbor and a strong economy,

” he says

.

We want to develop business relations with it.

(…) One of the projects that interests them is the Mes Aynak copper mine.

They plan to invest billions of dollars in it and Afghanistan needs it.

We promised them to secure their investments and their facilities.

 "

Product and facility safety

But several attacks by the Islamic State organization in Khorassan have cast doubt on the Taliban's ability to guarantee security. Already in 2007, Chinese companies had left their feathers there: they had obtained the right to exploit the mine of Mes Aynak, near Kabul, but the project had failed. “ 

It didn't work out,

” recalls Emmanuel Veron. 

There was a first operational component of a gigantic site valued at around 10 billion dollars of investment, which is colossal. Despite this, it had not succeeded.

 "

The geographer explains that this project could not see the light of day “ 

both for questions of infrastructure and feasibility, but also for uncertainties around security;

security of the site itself, security of personnel and securing of the extracted product

 ”

Then how can we transport this product?

Since the Afghan infrastructures are very incomplete and this therefore raises the question of the circulation of products before their transformation into advanced technologies. 

"

The crossroads of the new silk roads

Beijing is far from ignoring it: only a pacified Afghanistan can become a centerpiece of the new Silk Roads. " 

Afghanistan is a transit country which is very important for all the infrastructure, connections and connectivity projects that China is deploying in the region, not only in Afghanistan, but also through Afghanistan,

"  said Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh, professor at Sciences Po and UN advisor. 

To link Afghanistan to the warm seas of the south, to link Central Asia and China to the Middle East. For this, since 2013, China has made a lot of investments. So this is very important for Central Asia, for Pakistan and for China.

 "

All these silk roads pass through the Chinese region of Xinjiang where the Muslim minority of Uyghurs lives. If Beijing is reaching out to the Taliban, it is therefore also to ensure that Islamist terrorism will not be exported to China. " 

The Chinese are afraid of groups that are against the Chinese government and the interests of the Chinese government,

 " said Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh.

 Fighters of the Islamic movement in Turkestan may pose a threat to China's security.

 "

And a security record in the region has reinforced those fears, according to the researcher.

 One example is the attack on the Kunduz mosque in October, which was claimed by the Islamic State group in Khorassan - on behalf of this Islamic movement in Turkestan.

They found the Taliban too close to the Chinese who mistreated the Uyghurs.

So the issue of security in China is transposed to the issue of security in Afghanistan.

 "  

The priority of the moment is therefore the return of order.

The rush on the mining El Dorado will come next.

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