By Um Yoonsun
US officials have said Afghanistan has mineral deposits worth at least one trillion dollars and that the vast untapped riches carry the potential to lift the war-ravaged country out of its deep poverty.
US geologists over the last year have confirmed reserves of valuable minerals on a larger scale than previously believed, and the Kabul government faces a likely gold rush by foreign mining companies, officials said.
American advisers and World Bank officials are working with the Kabul government to ensure the country takes advantage of the opportunity while avoiding the pitfalls seen in some other resource-rich nations, officials said.
International auditing firms had teams working with the Afghan ministry of mines to prepare for bids by major mining firms in coming months, said Paul Brinkley, head of a Pentagon task force looking at Afghanistan's economy.
"We hope that as early as late this year, there will begin to be tenders offered for public bid," Brinkley told reporters via video link from Dubai.
"We want those companies to know there will be internationally acceptable, transparent, accounting practices used within the (mining) ministry," he said.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said in January that the deposits could help one of the world's most impoverished nations become one of the richest.
The value of the minerals -- including iron, copper, gold, niobium, mercury and cobalt -- was estimated at 908 billion dollars, according to findings by the US Geological Survey (USGS).
Analysts worried the country, hobbled by rampant corruption and a weak central state, was not ready to manage its potential mineral wealth.
"I highly doubt it will be able to either properly manage these resources or use the riches to build a more peaceful and prosperous Afghanistan for all Afghans," Janan Mosazai, a political analyst.
The State Department acknowledged Afghanistan would face a challenge in ensuring the profits did not enrich only a few.
It will be crucial "that there be an effective plan so that the revenues that are generated from this are for the benefit of all Afghan citizens," spokesman Philip Crowley told reporters.
"Certainly, we're very mindful of the fact that around the world you have a number of countries that are blessed with natural resources that may become a source of conflict and corruption."
US officials, anxious to lay the ground for US troops to begin withdrawing, see the mineral resources as offering a way ahead for the Afghan government without having to continue as a "charity state," dependent on foreign aid.
Afghan officials meanwhile had only recently begun to grasp the scale of the mineral wealth that lies underground, Brinkley said.
In the past few months, US officials have briefed Afghan leaders on the latest work by the geologists, which followed an initial assessment in 2007.
"Voluminous data" on mineral deposits collected by the Soviets during their occupation of the country in the 1980s served as a basis for the US scientific work, said Jack Medlin, an international programs scientist with the USGS.
After using satellite imagery and gravity and magnetic measuring equipment to assess the Soviet data, the Americans and Afghan experts are taking samples from the ground to further verify the information, he said.
He said scientists are collecting samples from dry lake beds where they believe there are large deposits of lithium, a lightweight metal in growing demand to make batteries for mobile phones and laptops.
Afghanistan may have deposits as large as those of Bolivia, which currently has the biggest known reserves, and could eventually turn into the "Saudi Arabia of lithium", according to a Pentagon document, quoted by the New York Times.
The country's iron and copper deposits are also large enough to make Afghanistan one of the world's top producers, and China has already won a contract to develop a major copper mine south of Kabul.
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