Posts tagged Afghanistan

Afghan mines and railways

By Martin Saxer | April 12, 2012

Quil Lawrence (NPR) reflects on the future of mining in Afghanistan. In 2007, state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) won a concession to mine copper in Aynak:

The Afghan government has relocated residents from Ainak to make way for the development of the mine. And once again there is the promise of jobs.
But five years after MCC won the contract, there is no sign of the railroad the company pledged to build to get the copper out.
“It will obviously be built before 2014, because they have to start commercial production somewhere in 2014,” says Tamim Asey, director of public affairs for the Afghan ministry of mines. He says that by 2014 the Chinese company will have built not one, but two railway lines, as guaranteed in the contract. But the fact is the Chinese contract has not been made public. A secret U.S. embassy cable published by WikiLeaks quotes Chinese officials as calling the promise to build railways “flexible.” Mining experts in Afghanistan are wondering what else in the contract might be flexible, says Haseeb Humayoon, a partner at QARA Consulting in Kabul.

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Farming in Tajikistan and Afghanistan

By Martin Saxer | February 23, 2012

Mark Vinson for The Jamestown Foundation (via Asia Times online) on a Chinese agricultural project in Tajikistan:

Chinese officials have pledged US$2 million of direct investment, including new technology and technical assistance in an effort to revitalize the land, which in recent years has become non-arable through poor management. According to the agreement, the Chinese will only be allowed to sell crops produced on that land in Tajik markets.

Sounds like a reasonalbe deal. However, Tajikistan has handed over more then 1,000 square km of disputed territory to China last year and there is a strong opposition against the current deal. Critics suspect that the companies coming in will privilege Chinese workers:

Faromarzi Fosil, a Tajik journalist, in an article entitled, “Tajiks go to Russia and Chinese come to Tajikistan?” expresses this sentiment, “It is clear that Chinese companies [in Tajikistan] give privileges to their fellow countrymen. What should the people of Tajikistan do? And another question: if the Chinese and other foreigners build all the roads, power plants, companies, and farms then why do we even need our own ministries?”

Similar Chinese investments in the agricultural sector have recently been announced in Afghanistan. The plan is to refurbish and old, unfinished irrigation system. Farid Behbud (Pukhtoonistan Gazette) writes:

The Chinese-initiated project would irrigate thousands of hectares of farmland in Parwan and neighboring Kapisa and Kabul provinces, said some local people.

The logic in both cases is that poor management and poor infrastructure diminish agricultural output. That might well be the case. What I wonder, however, is whether and how both projects approach existing local systems of water rights.

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Afghan oil and Orientalism

By Martin Saxer | January 6, 2012

On 25 December, Hakeem Naim published a long article on how Orientalist rhetoric is over and over recycled in Afghanistan:

The myths of Afghanistan perfectly reflect the ontological conception of today’s Orientalism. Afghanistan has been the exotic land of beauty, romance, courage, and unconquerable tribes. She is rich, resourceful, and “pretty promising.” She can be “modern”, “free”, and “democratic” as long as the “west” conquers her, controls her or is in bed with her.

A day later, the Afghan cabinet agreed to let China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) exploit natural gas and oil in country’s northeast. On 29 December, the deal was signed; according to CNTV it could earn Afghanistan $7 billion over the next 25 years.

American blogger Ron Beasly was quick to ask: “Is US blood and treasure making Afghanistan safe for Chinese exploitation?” His suggestion is that America should now withdraw and leave the problem of Afghan security to the Chinese. Pakistani analyst Syed Fazl-e-Haider (The National) writes that China is indeed working on a plan to defend its Afghan investments in resource projects (they are learning from their experience in Sudan).

Naim, Beasly, Fazl-e-Haider – three very different worlds of thought. I wonder if they read each other.

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A “New Silk Road” bypassing China?

By Martin Saxer | October 29, 2011

Ideas of a “New Silk Road” through Afghanistan, linking Central Asia with Pakistan, have been floating around in American thinktanks for a couple years. In view of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the plans seem to become more concrete. Hillary Cinton and President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov discussed the matter last week. A pipeline bringing gas from Turkmenistan to South Asia, improved road and rail links, and an Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement are on the agenda. An upcoming meetings in Istanbul on 2 November is designed to promote the idea. Dawn/AFP quote an American official: “It’s part of a wider effort to help to build up the Afghan private sector, to help create sustainable economic development in Afghanistan, to create this economic integration between South and Central Asia”.

In Pakistan, however, an other dimension of the upcoming talks is highlighted, namely the absence of China and what that means for Pakistan. Yesterday’s editorial in the Express Tribune summarises these reservations and puts them into perspective:

Some commentators in Pakistan are looking at this development as a strategy to cut China off from Central Asia and bring the United States into the region ‘by other means’. Pakistan therefore is being presented as a victim of an either/or situation: join the Northern Silk Road Project and ditch China or keep out of the project and prove its strategic loyalty to China who is presumed to be an outsider opposed to the project. This is a wrong assumption because China is very much there in Central Asia and any Silk Road Project will redound to its regional advantage. The project may at best be negatively described as a plan to diversify the rapidly developing economic domination of China in the region.

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Mining and heritage in Afghanistan

By Martin Saxer | July 23, 2011

Yesterday, General Mirza Aslam Beg, a former Chief of Staff of Pakistan’s army, in Daily Times:

China now stands solidly behind Afghanistan to protect the civilisational heritage so ruthlessly trampled by foreign invaders.

No details on what that means. But I wonder if he allures to that conflict of interest between China Metallurgical Group (MCC) and archeologists over the remains of a 2,600-year-old Buddhist monastery at the site of a prospective copper mine. Back in November 2011, Heidi Vogt wrote a piece on the topic for the Huffington Post and The Washington Post:

China Metallurgical Group, or MCC, which is backed by the Chinese government, wanted to start building the mine by the end of 2011. But under an informal understanding with the Kabul government, it has given archaeologists three years for a salvage excavation [...]

Marquis [a French archeologist and advisor] said MCC has been cooperative and has helped the archaeologists, hauling dirt away and asking what more needs to be done.
Zakir, the Afghan archaeologist, laughs. “Yes, they are very helpful. They want to help so that we can finish quickly. They want us gone.”

 

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