In the Mood for some Lithium?

For those who are into heavy metal, lithium most certainly isn’t. It’s a soft chalky metal that you can cut with a knife, lightweight that isn’t found in nature in its pure state and easily flammable when left exposed to air or water. It has some pretty amazing values: “Lithium has multiple uses in the modern world, including as a mood-stabilizing drug, but its first serious industrial use was during the second World War as part of high-temperature greases that were perfect for use in aircraft engines. The U.S. was the world leader in lithium production from this era until the 1980s when vast South American deposits began to dominate.” FastCompany.com (June 14^th) The biggie is, of course, batteries: “Batteries based on lithium technology are the most popular rechargeable batteries at the moment. This is because they're light, reliable, they don't lose charge quickly if not used, and they have no memory effect (the degradation in performance seen after many charge-discharge cycles that plagued NiCAD batteries before lithium took over).” Ibid. Cue the bunny!

Thanks for the chemistry lesson, Peter, but like why does this matter? Because in country with unchecked government corruption, torn apart by tribalism and religious militants and sucking down American dollars and lives (with a whole lot of innocents) like a black hole, it could change the balance of power on this planet in ways that could be terrific or horrific. The June 13^th New York Times: “The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials… The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.”

But that quest for lithium to supply the world’s electrical storage demands might have limited value where scientists are looking to newer and more elegant solutions to battery storage capacity that might not involve this element. So Afghanistan has to move fast to take advantage of a market that is strong at least for the foreseeable future. Can it? Will favoritism and corruption lead to a few rich barons with strong government connections hording the stash and cleaning up on the value? Will ordinary Afghans ever seen any real benefits other than as cheap labor toiling in dangerous mines? And what’s worse, will religious militants find enough economic value in these vast riches to fund their anti-Western terrorist activities beyond their wildest dreams? Is the money for a nuclear device that could level New York City sitti ng in the ground in some barren Afghani wasteland?

For Afghanistan, the bad news is time. Building the infrastructure to begin to tap these wide resources will take years, made much more complex because of violent tribalism, the Taliban insurgency and a wildly corrupt government. To make this work efficiently, to create the economic success that just might take everyone’s mind off religious and tribal destruction, is most certainly beyond the American military capacity to linger, and even if we did, think of the local reaction if we were to use those riches to pay us back for what our war has actually cost us. Might have a new and improved war. Maybe American companies can establish a foothold in these nascent industries, but will the U.S. Army be there to protect them? Does the wealth belong to all Afghans or just those tribal leaders in the areas where the minerals are deposited? Are they willing to fight to the death to hold on?

“‘There is stunning potential here,’ Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on [June 12^th]. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.’… The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion… ‘This will become the backbone of the Afghan economy,” said Jalil Jumriany, an adviser to the Afghan minister of mines.” The Times.

Iron ore and copper are the most abundant, but they also offer the greatest risk to environmental damage if ecological values are not considered as the earth is opened to extract these valuable minerals. The potential for real economic and political progress is most definitely there… in theory, but if regional history is any reasonable teacher, Afghanistan may be structurally incapable of taking advantage of that wealth, and even if such a possibility were to take place, it is doubtful that we might see an even-handed distribution of any resulting wealth any time soon.

The potential for serious misuse of such resources cannot, however, be underestimated.

I’m Peter Dekom, but this mineral wealth is hardly likely to keep us in Afghanistan for the decades necessary to make it work.