Afghan Copper

China’s intense search for mineral resources in Afghanistan, as reported earlier in this column, has drawn its first success.

China’s intense search for mineral resources in Afghanistan, as reported earlier in this column, has drawn its first success. Two top Chinese metals producers, Jiangxi and CMG Corp, have announced last month they are paying a little over US$ 800 million for the right to explore and develop the copper deposits in Aynak valley about 60 km south west of the Afghan capital Kabul. Aynak’s copper reserves are believed to be one of the world’s finest and estimated to be worth nearly US$ 90 billion dollars. Afghanistan’s copper prospects have been known since the time of Alexander the Great. It has now fallen upon a rising China to make them a reality.

The Aynak mines are estimated to have 705 million tonnes of ores and an average copper content of 1.56 per cent, comprising 11 million tonnes of copper metal deposits. Jiangxi says it would buy at least 50 per cent of the copper concentrate products generated upon operation of the mine. The significance of this deal, the largest foreign direct investment in the history of Afghanistan, has been widely noted. When completed, the project is expected to generate nearly US $400 million annually for the government in Kabul. This is nearly 40 per cent of the Afghan government’s revenues. For a country that finds it so hard to mobilise internal resources, the Aynak project is a big boon. Since there is no power supply in the region, China plans to build a 400 MW coal fired plant to run the Aynak mines. The construction and operation of the power plant is likely to generate 5,000 jobs, 90 per cent of which are being promised to the Afghans. The total cost of China’s copper venture is estimated to be about US$3.5 billion. Its impact is bound to be much larger than all the aid that trickled into Afghanistan since the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

Train to Kabul

The Aynak project involves a lot more than a resource-hungry China tapping Afghan copper. It is also about developing a transport corridor deep into Afghanistan. After all coal must be moved in to run the power plant and the copper ore shipped out. This is where the audacity of Chinese plans for Aynak comes into full view. Media reports talk about China’s plans to build a rail link between Afghanistan and western China through Central Asia. Most countries would have backed off from this daunting task. China, however, now revels in realising the seemingly impossible.

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If China does build a rail line to Aynak and Kabul, it would have transformed the geo-politics of Afghanistan. For centuries, the rulers of Afghanistan have preserved their independence against foreign domination, by denying transport links to the rest of the world. They discouraged the building of rail links into Afghanistan and formally barred its citizens from travelling by rail. During the Great Game of the 19th century, the Russians brought the rail line up to Termez on the Uzbek side of the border with Afghanistan. British India extended its rail network up to Peshawar (the Khyber Pass) and Chaman (the Bolan Pass). Afghanistan today has barely 25 km of railway, and all of it on its frontiers. Since 2001, there has been talk about pushing the rail lines from Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan into Afghanistan. It could well be China that brings modern railways into Afghanistan.

Kashgar beckons

China’s rail corridor into Afghanistan will have to begin at the Silk Road city of Kashgar, its western-most railhead. Nearly a decade ago, Beijing had extended its South Xinjiang Railway to Kashgar, which is close to the Chinese borders with Central Asia, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Beijing is already in talks with Islamabad on a grand scheme to build a rail line from Kashgar across the Karakoram Range into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. China has been debating plans to extend the rail line westwards into Central Asia to the Fergana valley — that is divided between Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. From Fergana valley into Kabul and Aynak is a relatively easy road that has been traversed by many an adventurer, including Babur, the great Mogul.

The writer is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore iscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg