The Empire Stopper Foreign powers have tried to control Afghanistan

[elleng]

for three centuries. It has not gone well for them. Now the U.S. is digging back in.

'WHEN THE AMERICAN AUTHOR James A. Michener went to Afghanistan to research his work of historical fiction, “Caravans,” it was 1955 and there were barely any roads in the country. Yet there were already Americans and Russians there, jockeying for influence. Later, the book’s Afghan protagonist would tell an American diplomat that one day both America and Russia would invade Afghanistan, and that both would come to regret it.

Michener’s foresight was uncanny, but perhaps that is not terribly surprising. Afghanistan has long been called the “graveyard of empires” — for so long that it is unclear who coined that disputable term.

In truth, no great empires perished solely because of Afghanistan. Perhaps a better way to put it is that Afghanistan is the battleground of empires. Even without easily accessible resources, the country has still been blessed — or cursed, more likely — with a geopolitical position that has repeatedly put it in someone or other’s way.

In the 19th century there was the Great Game, when the British and Russian empires faced off across its forbidding deserts and mountain ranges. At the end of the 20th century it was the Cold War, when the Soviet and American rivalry played out here in a bitter guerrilla conflict. And in this century, it is the War on Terror, against a constantly shifting Taliban insurgency, with President Trump promising a renewed military commitment.

Wars of the last three “empires” to invade Afghanistan coincided with the age of photography, leaving a rich record of their triumphs and failures, and an arresting chronicle of a land that seems to have changed little in the past two centuries.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/afghanistan-graveyard-empires-historical-pictures.html?

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. "Now the U.S. is digging back in." And here's why:

Hat tip, someone.

Afghanistan’s Lithium Wealth Could Remain Elusive

By Henry J. Reske, for National Geographic News

PUBLISHED JUNE 17, 2010

This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge.

Somewhere in the trackless lands that make up much of Afghanistan (map), just to the right or left of the Old Silk Road, there are apparently huge caches of untapped wealth in the form of metal and stone prized in both the ancient world and the modern: gold, copper, and lapis lazuli, to name a few.

In recent days, the U.S. military and geologists working with the Pentagon have pointed to the deposits, whose value has been estimated at about a trillion dollars, as an elixir that promises to drastically alter the troubled Afghanistan economy. The portion of this underground store with perhaps the greatest promise, they suggest, are the deposits of lithium, the soft metal used in the small batteries that power ubiquitous electronics like cell phones, laptops, and iPods, and widely seen as the storage solution that will spur an electric car revolution. Afghanistan could be transformed from a war-torn economy dependent on narcotics trade to the wellspring of a new energy future—the Saudi Arabia of lithium.

However, as with much about the country that is known as the Graveyard of Empires, all is not as it seems.

Afghanistan’s metal and mineral deposits—far from newfound—have been known and fantasized about for millennia. But the ability to harvest the riches does not currently exist. And, in the case of lithium, the market is uncertain.