(In Hindsight 42/Jun 22-27, 2010)
People used to say the Afghan war was one of the few modern wars not being fought for oil–not least because we didn’t think the place had any of that disgusting stuff in the first place, nor much mineral wealth of any kind. But now we’re told (in a reported Pentagon report) that Afghanistan could be ‘the Saudi Arabia of lithium’. As if this weren’t bad enough, it’s being suggested that country may ALSO have hundreds of billions of dollars worth of oil and gas, among other buried treasure. Will we now see another urge to surge (or gush)? Will lithium-ion factories replace opium fields in the Golden Crescent, if not the Golden Triangle? Will the area be renamed the Lithium Trapezium? Will Saudi Arabia be reduced to the ‘Afghanistan of hijabs (with a bit of oil too)’?
Not quite. The fossil fuel reserves don’t compare and, according to a US mining association representative, “Sudan will host the Winter Olympics before these guys get a trillion dollars out of the ground.” In that case our only hope would be a big lithium spill along the lines of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But that would be ionic.
More than a fresh surge of foreign forces with lithium in the cranium, it’s beginning to seem there’s a real danger of the Taliban swarming back to power. Even the Afghan president, who was seen as one of their staunchest opponents and an advocate of modernity, has done an about-face and threatened to join the Taliban if he comes under further pressure (and if he takes the next logical step and starts wearing a niqab himself we might not even detect his about-faces and veiled threats in future).
For those who are mystified by this turn of events, please don’t forget that President Karzai is a politician. W.R. Hearst once burst out, “A politician will do anything to keep his job–even become a patriot!” (But then Mr. Hearst was a media magnate, and they’ll say anything to sell newspapers.) The Pashtun-dominated Taliban unrest, too, might arguably be redefined as an ethnic struggle to do a job on the Tajiks and other groups with unpronounceable names: whack the Wakhis, bash the Qizilbash, etc.
The Pakistani government, like the Afghans, is preparing for talks with the Taliban. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before even the US president decides to sport a headscarf. This would have no link with malicious pre-election rumours about his religion (it shouldn’t matter whether anyone is Muslim or Christian or worships Billy Idol) but, on the positive side, would help to hide his asinine ears.
Digging for lithium in the Afghan hills is as difficult as exploring what’s under an Afghan woman’s burqa–though at first you might not be turned on by what looks like a blue version of Monty Python’s Black Knight. The Afghan form of that garment renders a woman truly formless, so that her hills and valleys wouldn’t tempt you. It’s unlike in Iran where women often wear form-fitting chadors and exhibit strands of hair, or flash you a dangling earring. But if you get too excited then take some lithium for its traditional function as a mood stabilizer, because things are likely to go downhill in Afghanistan for a while.