The United States toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan and drove out al Qaida but the rebuilding process is going very slowly and government officials are ignoring critical scientific and environmental issues to focus on the country's mineral wealth.
Afghanistan has perhaps the world's largest deposit of copper. It contains the planet's fifth-largest lode of iron ore. Before the Soviets withdrew in the late 1980s, they had calculated the country's proven natural gas reserves at about 5 trillion cubic feet and its oil reserves at about 95 million barrels. The country also has about 73 million tons of coal.
The problem is that having resources is not the only issue, according to Akin Oduolowu, an energy specialist and economist with the World Bank. "If it were, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo would top the list of (priorities of) the world's developed countries."
Jack Medlin, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's International Programs office, described how, at the urgings of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., USGS put together a proposal for Afghanistan's reconstruction focusing on the Earth science and environmental issues in which the agency specializes.
"We started out basically identifying resources as one of the areas that we might make a contribution in," Medlin said.
Agency staff in February met with Robert Finn, who was confirmed in March as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. USGS had identified several critical areas it concluded were essential to address in any effort to rebuild the nation: environmental issues, earthquakes, capacity and institution building -- modern bureaucratic code for training -- and oil, gas, coal, mineral and geospatial work.
"In the original briefing we gave Ambassador Finn, we outlined water, environment, oil and gas, coal, minerals and earthquakes," Medlin explained. "At the close of the meeting, he requested on the proposal that it address oil and gas, coal and minerals."
The list of areas of concern is critical, he continued, because "it sets the stage for how the whole reconstructive effort is being viewed by different groups within our government. By taking basically the oil and gas and coal and minerals, it (became) pretty obvious that the ambassador was interested in those things which would spur the economy and spur international investment into those sector in Afghanistan."
The unspoken message is issues such as water resources development, and environmental cleanup and protection -- that require funding but produce little or no return on investment -- are relegated to the background.
Medlin said although there is some interest in water development in the country, especially in the face of drought there, no one has yet expressed a desire to clean up Afghanistan's "environmental disaster." Furthermore, things are likely to grow worse because resources are being extracted without any environmental protections -- and the effects are visible, he added.
Science has been able to show a link between environmental pollution and infant mortality, and the rate in Afghanistan is 149 deaths per 1,000 live births -- only Angola is worse. Life expectancy among Afghan men is 46.6 years and, for women, 45.1 years, according to CIA data. This is 206th of 223 nations measured.
Meanwhile, there is the question of how to export minerals or energy resources. Afghanistan is a landlocked country about the size of Texas. As Oduolowu explained, Afghanistan does not have a port so "to develop anything, they have to have good relationships with their neighbors," which include Iran, Pakistan, the former Soviet states of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and a sliver of China. "The war has caused problems all along its borders," he said.
Even distribution within the country is questionable at the moment. Afghanistan is broken into eight political regions, each with its own warlord, none of whom trusts the others or the national government. The infrastructure has been destroyed and nearly all the experienced professional and technical people have left or been killed.
Medlin said even something as basic as building roads cannot be done without a thorough seismic analysis.
"Before you start looking at the infrastructure, you need to look at the earthquake risks," he said.
These risks are not hypothetical. The country has been rocked by three major quakes just in the past four years, the most recent one last spring. In February 1998, 2,323 people were killed in a quake along the Afghan-Tajikistan border and 4,000 more died in the same area during a quake in May of that same year. The northeastern area, where most of the known mineral resources are located, is the most earthquake-prone section of the country.
Politicians and policy makers frequently decry "bad science" and "bad data" when it suits their purposes, but here is a case where science and data have some concrete assistance to offer but few seem to want it.
Jack Schroder, a University of Nebraska professor of geology and geosciences, and a consultant to the State Department, issued this caution: "Afghanistan is very aware of being exploited ... we could do this very well. The U.S. government is not moving very fast. We are losing the peace. The Afghans are very unhappy with us now."
Medlin added, "We still have not gotten to a step where people are talking about reconstruction."
Given the current focus on Iraq, and America's notoriously short-term memory, it is entirely possible the plight of Afghanistan soon will be forgotten.
