The price of peace...

One hundred years ago, places like Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia were considered damn-near worthless to American political and business interests. Fifty years earlier than that, Afghanistan was considered the biggest waste of time and money the Brits ever spent a bullet on.

Since WWII and the establishment of the post-war Middle East map as we know it today, the oil reserves discovered in Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia have made them regional (if not global) security players on the international political scene. The whims of a select few in Saudi Arabia, for example, can have repercussions that echo across the globe as crude oil supply increases or decreases.

Israel, on the other hand, has no oil, and has very limited mineral resources. Water supply is a problem for the frontier areas of the nation (as it has been since it was controlled by the Canaanites). Port facilities on the Mediterranean coast must be man-made (as Herod the Great knew all too well) and require constant maintenance and upkeep. Natural defenses are limited, so national security is an ongoing concern for Israeli leadership even if all surrounding nations weren't sworn enemies or potential belligerents.

What Israel has is the "Holy Land" of three of the world's most influential religions... Christianity, Islam and Judaism. What was once considered by all three faiths to be the "center of the world" could still rightly be described as just that: the center of the world. If there is a flash-point on the globe that could conceivably bring about another global conflict, that place is in Israel.

Iraq has oil... lots of oil. Iraq has access to the sea in the form of natural, easily utilized sheltered waters on the Persian Gulf (although, currently, Iraq owns only 36 miles of this coast). Iraq has vast amounts of water (compared to many neighboring states), both surface and subsurface, and while much of the land area is desert, Iraq boasts a very sophisticated national irrigation plan that allows a full 21% of its area to be farmed profitably, in one way or another.

Now let's talk about Afghanistan...

Historically, Afghanistan has been important because it is the region where trade and communications between the Far East met with routes to India and the sub-continent and the Middle East in Persia (now Iran). The famous "Silk Road" ran through Afghanistan (now mainly employed by opium smugglers taking the poppies into China), and it was this route that the Brits so wanted to control that they fought no fewer than three major conflicts there.

So, why is it important now? We started the war there to remove the threat to world peace that was the Taliban, as we all know... but why the commitment to remain? I don't deny that there are those in the halls of power that understand that even pseudo-functioning democratic governments in Islamic regions are good things, and that keeping that area safe and secure benefits all of humanity as well as the locals, but I also know that real change and development come at a price, and where is the profit in spending billions upon billions of dollars securing Afghanistan to the states that are taking all the risk?

Recently, it has come to light that the powers-that-be in places like Washington DC and Moscow have long known that Afghanistan is a "sleeper" investment of monumental proportions. Conservative estimates now go no lower than $1 TRILLION dollars in reserve mineral wealth within the current borders of the nation, with some especially nice "gems" like the fourth largest (estimated) reserve supply of uranium on the planet, enough coal to power all existing Afghani power plants for the next 280 years non-stop, more gold, silver, copper and lead than all of California, Nevada and Arizona COMBINED have ever mined, and the second biggest salt dome on the Eurasian continent (with more exposed salt deposits than Israel has around the Dead Sea). Newly reviewed Russian (probably Soviet-era) estimates put the figure at far closer to $3 TRILLION... a staggering amount of resource wealth.

Today, I read the first of what will undoubtedly be MANY articles about the evils of using this mineral wealth as the means by which Afghanistan's future is guaranteed. It recounts the evils of imperialistic greed that drove empires like Great Britain to colonize place like Afghanistan in the first place, but I think these are very short-sighted views in the modern era. True, wrongs were done in the name of "empire" in the past, and there is no greater proponent of the historical perspective than I, but in today's "global neighborhood", the prospects of another imperialistic movement developing from America or Europe and taking control of all that is good and valuable in Afghanistan is very unlikely. Furthermore, one can see multiple examples of material wealth and development stemming from "commercial" exploitation of mineral wealth and natural resources.

Look at the oil industry in Saudi Arabia, for one. That entire nation's ability to find, drill for, produce and refine crude oil came from the commercial knowledge of American and British companies working under contract for the Saudi government between 1948 and 1971, and it is now one of the richest nations (per capita) on the face of the earth. Mining interests from the West could easily work at a HUGE profit in Afghanistan under strict license to the Afghani government, employing civilian labor and reinvesting some profits back into the local economy, without "raping" the natives.

The Christian Science Monitor estimates that $2 billion is needed by the Afghani government to modernize and get back into production the nation's irrigation system (used to control the vast amounts of melt-water from the mountainous north that annually floods the lowlands and valleys), and this sort of funding could be made up (LITERALLY) with one contract for gold, silver or coal mining rights for 10 years... less time (almost) than the Taliban have been gone. With that one contract, the Afghan government has quadrupled the square miles of land being used for agriculture, increased its national revenue, and ensured the gainful employment of upwards of 15,000 otherwise unemployed young men who would otherwise be more inclined to shoot at government officials to pass the time. All that, with ONE contract. Do you see what I am driving at here? Removing the Taliban was the easy part... ensuring a secure, democratic regime to take its place is what drove Rummy and the boys nuts, and is still giving NATO headache after headache.

In both Germany and Japan the push of American "rebuilding" was mainly on getting those nation's industrial capabilities back on-line, and it was done with shocking success. Both Germany and Japan have proven to be manufacturing superpowers in the years since their utter defeat at the hands of the Allies, and there is no reason (NONE) that the same can't be achieved in places like Afghanistan, either. It simply must be shown to be a profitable venture for BOTH the Afghani people and the Western companies that will be investing in Afghanistan itself.