Global Witness' Mistake on the Afghanistan Mining and Gem Trade: There's No $1 Trillion There

Jun 8, 2016 | Tim Worstall
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There’s much to admire in the latest report from Global Witness into the mining of lapis lazuli and other semi-precious stones in Afghanistan. The level of detail provided is for example exemplary. However, there’s also a rather glaring mistake made about the larger economics of the matter. They use, in part, the feudal nature of power in the provinces (and comparing matters with European feudalism is about the right way to think about these things. Today it might be AK 47s instead of who had the biggest broadsword but the underlying reality that the local warlord controls the local area is the same) to illustrate what is happening with those semi-precious stones: that’s entirely correct. Yet they then go on to project the greater economic impact of other mineral resources and that’s incorrect. For there’s an assumption out there that Afghanistan has some $1 trillion in such minerals. And the reality is that the country has no such thing. There just isn’t a $1 trillion stash anywhere, it simply doesn’t exist.