0:15 good evening tonight a special investigation into what may turn out to be the greatest inside job in Afghanistan's history perhaps one of the saddest ironies of Afghanistan today is that while the country is poor po economically geologists have recently determined that underneath all those mountains and high deserts rests perhaps trillions yes trillions of dollars inv valuable Metals the rush to mine those Metals is going full bore the Afghans don't have the technology to do it themselves but there is no shortage of companies from other countries willing to step in and help the outcome of the first big contract was supposed to be an
1:01 example of how foreign investment will help Afghanistan get on its feet economically but turning Metals into money hasn't exactly gone as planned it's a dangerous ride our reporting team of Mara axelon and Lucian Reed are being driven out to the desert to see the future of Afghanistan 20 mi south of kabell in logar province is the largest foreign investment project in the country it's never been seen by Western reporters before this
1:47 trip we are riding in what becomes a heavily armed Convoy Afghan National police escort us to a Dusty Hilltop the place is called mesan guarded by a special unit of the Afghan police this unremarkable looking patch of hard scravel is seen as key to Afghanistan's future not because of what's on the surface but what's underneath copper nearly 2 billion tons of valuable ore according to geologists it Bears repeating that the country is desperately poor one of the poorest on Earth there's virtually no
2:33 industry to speak of other than maybe the Opium business so the huge potential for this untaped wealth could be a game changer but only if it ends up making life better for the average Afghan if we fail in our Collective effort to ensure this wealth benefits the Afghan people then Security will be a problem if if there was any question about how seriously the Pentagon takes its role of developing Afghanistan's mineral resources Deputy under Secretary of Defense Paul Brinkley's recent press conference in kabell made things explicitly clear our belief and this is experiential is that work that benefits
3:21 people in local communities that creates jobs and schools and Health Care secures itself local people do not attack things that benefit them Brinkley and a team of us geologists had just completed a year-long assessment pouring over old Soviet era maps and heading out into the field to conduct new surveys and those deposits if developed will generate billions of dollars their conclusion Not only would the discovery of this potential wealth benefit Afghanistan it would have profound implic ations for the United States war effort the mineral wealth the Staggering nature of the mineral wealth uh is the way forward if
4:08 there is a prosperous Afghanistan to emerge as a trading partner both in the region and internationally it will be based on a responsible development of its mineral assets and the mzc mindsight is only the beginning hidden beneath the vast mountain ranges all across the country are enormous orous veins of precious metals including gold and lithium a mineral used to make batteries for cell phones and more copper it's a motherload of minerals worth trillions of dollars brinkly says all that ore will help stabilize the country so US troops can return home it all seems like the perfect good
4:55 news story Afghanistan becomes prosperous and American forces can go home but one American geologist who worked in Afghanistan says there's a big problem a Chinese company won the bid for the mine historically if you look at how they've developed projects in other countries they bring in their own labor force they bring in their own materials from China there's no secondary suppliers so consequently the supply chain is vertically integrated with the Chinese whereas if it was a western company we'd have to seek suppliers people would have an opportunity to set up businesses you would see an expansion of the economy uh that would be based on resource development Jim Jager is an American geologist with 35 years of
5:41 experience working around the world in the mining business he's now a manager at a gold mine in the Central Asian country of Tajikistan but a few years back when the bidding for the Afghan copper mine came up he had a front row seat jger was hired by the world Bank to help the Afghan Ministry of Minds learn how to properly conduct the bidding process and he was worried that the desperately poor Afghans living around the mine in logar Province were going to end up with nothing well I think the most important thing is that the people have jobs that the the money goes to the people you know that the community of logar has developed that the other communities that have mining will in fact benefit
6:27 greatly from it and and and the the money should go down you know to that level but so far despite a slew of promises from the Chinese jger says there is no mine and few jobs L zingu runs the copper mine operation in Afghanistan we had been eager to hear what the Chinese mining officials had to say about allegations from joerger and others and we were surprised and appreciative when we were allowed to
7:14 visit Lou was eager to tell our reporters that he and his Mining Company MCC owned and operated by the Chinese government are going to bring Economic Development to this desperate region it's c at a small press conference for a few Afghan journalists and our reporters the M officials insisted that they were working with the locals to build a brighter more prosperous Afghanistan but many Afghans are
8:00 wondering where are all the jobs it's been more than 3 years since the Chinese won the bid and digging has yet to begin even the Chinese acknowledge that largescale development for the local economy is at least another five or 10 years away but they insist it is coming oh according to the mining contract we of course uh should the responsibility to benefit all the Village around this part for now however the so-called economic future of Afghanistan is only a series of prefab outbuildings and while there are quite a few Chinese workers at the site fing the
8:45 cafeteria and wandering around the barracks spotting in the Afghans here is pretty difficult joerger's prediction that the Chinese would renig on promises for local jobs and development work seems to be coming true and he wasn't the only one saying that Michael Stanley is a mining engineer with the World Bank and with the massive untapped underground potential at mazanek and across the country he's spending a lot of time in Afghanistan these days there's no question that these are some very large resources undeveloped and in a world that is on something of a a Razor's Edge right now in terms of supply and demand these deposits will be highly contested and Stanley believes
9:32 other countries will soon be following the Chinese lead into Afghanistan the growth in Mineral demand is correlated to population and it's also highly correlated to industrialization so I mean you've probably seen that everyone is discussing China we we tend to discuss Brazil Russia India China as those big countries industrialize the demand for mineral products goes up with them so the global now in the industry is for more Frontier exploration in places that previously didn't see a lot of exploration but Stanley has been working with the Afghan government trying to make sure that new mining operations in the country are done right he said there was a time when Western mining companies
10:18 would scour the world looking to exploit Resources with little benefit to the local population but there's been a change of thought in the last decade it was really only about the year 2000 that the industry really understood the importance of sharing benefits with Community having consultation making the community your partner and making sure that you explain to them what's happening and that they really feel that they have ownership in the operation because then you'll have a more successful viable operation but if you're in conflict with your local community you really have a very serious problem and that's beginning to be the case in Afghanistan the Bedrock of Economic Development finding jobs for thousands of Afghans to work at the mine still hasn't happened and after waiting
11:04 3 years the locals have had enough what would a normal person living in a village would say if he doesn't get his rights he would immediately say I want to pick up guns that's the only skill they have learned in the last 30 years jaid Nani who works with a group that investigates corruption in the Afghan government took our reporters to meet some of the villagers living around the mine to hear their griev is firsthand they showed him formal letters of protest they had sent to various government officials and since many of the locals are illiterate they signed with thumbprints they said their concerns have been ignored and nuran gave us a rough translation we have people of H and we we had this we have been living
11:51 here and um we have documents uh but uh our land we need compensation for the land that we have they said they had lost their Homeland and the Chinese efforts to resettle the villagers were falling short concerns like these are not what the West wants to hear the United States almost desperately believes projects like Miss need to work for Afghanistan's young democracy to survive we asked to see the specifics of the Chinese contract from the Afghan
12:37 Ministry of Mines but after saying they would show us they ultimately refused nurani says what is most worrisome is that according to leaked documents he's seen most of the skilled workers at the mine are supposed to be Afghan even though there are few trained miners in the country and the government is also not bothered you know to train them they you know the best they can tell you well we have sent some five people you know to China on scholarship to to do to come back and then they fill up those position five people come on cannot fill up you know a project that requires 4,000 people he expects that in the end the Chinese will just bring over more Chinese to work the mine filling
13:23 the barracks that already have been built on the site they argue well you know saying we don't have the kind you don't have the kind of people we require for the work and the government says yes we don't have it so what was the ne next thing you know they will be importing a lot of people from outside so how is going to benefit the local Afghans bottom line is the financial proposal was only 25% of the whole proposal in his report Jim Jager cautioned that while the Chinese bid was indeed for the most money other factors were supposed to have been considered during the bid process they won the financial side no question they also won everything else even if the fact that they were just going to extend five scholarships to China other than what what Hunter
14:08 Dickinson was going to do on on you know really providing an educational opportunity for Afghanistan Hunter Dickinson is a Canadian mining company that bid on the mine and jger said that while their bid was lower they would have done a lot more to train and educate locals Hunter Dickinson in their proposal would set set up a uh junior college or some kind of an institution right in logar Province to train the workers to train the miners to train the engineers and work with the university to to provide the you know the advanced curriculum and classes so that you could have these professionals and really you know uh provide jobs for the Afghans and the Chinese mining operation according to jger won't win any awards for being
14:54 green either the Chinese have the oldfashioned Smoke Stack burn it up the chimney it goes where uh both Hunter Dickinson and Freeport had technology that was much cleaner much more environmentally friendly and much more efficient but nobody scored that to say that they were better than than the chines but in fact they were in the meantime many of the local villages we talked to said that they are disillusioned an ominous sign for Americans who hope that Economic Development from mining would lead to Greater
15:50 security when we return a final bit of irony to our Afghan story that's next so stay here with us according to us diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks and given to us by the Norwegian newspaper Aton Poston there were grave concerns about the economic development at mazanek within the US Embassy one note said communities near the mine are frustrated few jobs are available another added that despite prom proes of hundreds of jobs during a recent visit to the mine few Afghan workers were visible and a Chinese
16:38 mining official is quoted as saying the company is training local farmers to grow Chinese vegetables but he could offer no other examples of community involvement projects but what had joerger even more Disturbed was how the Chinese ended up with the mine in the first place he says he became suspicious during the bidding process that there was something fishy going on when the Chinese company scored in the 90th percentile and the other companies scored within the 60th percentile something just didn't look right with the numbers when the Chinese were awarded the mine joerger did not believe they want it fair and square and he says he felt compelled to act this is a rather major event that really was
17:23 underneath the radar screen and it was just dropped after the Chinese got it and everybody thought it was you know uh completely hunky dory well that wasn't the case joerger and other foreign observers wrote a 78 page report that was startling it detailed numerous problems in the bidding process for example the report says no one individual company showed an advantage in every evaluation category but curiously a number of evaluators gave MCC the Chinese company quote a perfect scope score in all categories it's an anomaly I look at data all the time and something is wrong with that nobody will write a perfect proposal well it
18:09 indicated that there is favoritism being played to the Chinese I mean you know that was how I'd interpret the data and jger told us it went beyond favoritism he suspected bribes as it happened his hunch may be right The Washington Post quoted a Us official is saying the Afghan minister of Mines accepted a $30 million bribe from the Chinese and that accusation was backed up in another Wikileaks document we obtained from the Norwegian newspaper in it an unnamed us Diplomat quoted a source saying the in copper mine was quote 100% corrupt and that Afghan officials saw the Chinese company as
18:54 quote a cow to milk for bribes all of these week we go through you Embassy just after jager's report was released the minister of mins accused of the bribe Ibrahim Adell was fired former mining Minister Adell living outside couple denied accepting anything uh there is not any place for bravery I was not the only man and the Chinese manager the mine also denied that there were any payoffs it's important to note that the Chinese
19:40 insist that they are innocent and the United States government has not publicly pressed any accusations of bribery and for those who are busy working on building Afghanistan's struggling economy many say that you can't expect Western standards of operation in this part of the world according to the pentagons Paul Brinkley what's important is that investment is taking place I do believe we have benefited from the fact that a major Chinese company has come and invested in a mine here has helped our efforts to encourage International companies to come in a broader sense I think it is completely healthy for Afghanistan to have commercial Partnerships with all of the surrounding Nations and with the
20:27 International Community uh so that everyone has a stake in the security of Afghanistan Paul Brinkley has recently resigned his position at the Pentagon this after Congress tried to move his job and his staff to the state department it should be noted that the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff complained about the move saying Brinkley and his team were essential to the war effort now when we return on the program an ominous sign for Americans who hope that Economic Development from mining would lead to Greater
21:25 security it is sometimes called red gold and for the last several years copper in production and price has been going through the roof worldwide the value has more than quadrupled that's because demand is also up well not only is copper used in everything from Plumbing to wiring you can also find it in cell phones and laptops the average car has more than 50 lbs of copper wiring the United States has long been a world leader in Copper production welcome to elely Nevada this open pit is one of the largest copper mines in our country
22:10 billions of pounds of ore have been pulled from this area for more than a century and that's the problem most of the easily mined copper deposits around the world have been found but the market demands more and that's especially true in the hyper economy that that is China with 38% of the market share the Chinese have become the world's largest copper consumer and that's why you see the Chinese going to all corners of the globe and to extraordinary lengths in search of untapped minerals which brings us back to mic
23:02 tonight we've been looking at the debate surrounding Afghanistan's mesc M from allegations of bribery to what it means for the fate of the local Afghans themselves Chinese but we conclude our story with a final twist uh on the left we have um a place which had been probably mined during Antiquity you see this region is steeped in history as well as copper on a bright risk winter day our reporters once again headed out to the mine site this time in the company of Philipe Marquee he directs a team of archaeologists funded by the French government and they are in a Race Against Time the monastery is divided in three parts there is here an open
23:48 courtyard smack dab on top of the M sight at missc Marquee and his team are busily Excavating a Buddhist Monastery and surrounding structur pies that suggest a thriving Community was here just after the time of Christ and here we are entering the center of the of the monastery and they have found evidence that people were living here even earlier the roof of The Square Room was supported by wooden pillars it was an important stop along the famed Silk Road the trade route linking China and India to Europe and then you have this uh moldings here for CES the ruins here were untouched and largely forgotten but soon these ancient bricks and all they
24:35 contain will be blown to dust by The Miner Dynamite that's right when mining begins all of this will disappear so this is Parts where so this you see this green stones this green color is due to the fact that there is a copper in it it's very easy to notice this kind of of color and uh all of mountains you see that there is huge places where you can see this green stone from what Marquee is unearthing it looks like what Drew people here in Antiquity is the same thing that's bringing them here now copper and it's not just a trace of green in the Rock he's found enormous amounts of slag The
25:21 Telltale byproduct of copper production so it's really tons and tons of SLS left and it means that it was t tons and tons of copper which had been processed here the archaeologists have discovered A Primitive Mining and processing operation that they believe was conducted on a grand scale imagine this part of the mountains swarming with people extracting the copper and then here maybe an area where people are processing the copper much of what they find at the site is brought here to the Afghan National Museum the pieces are studied and cleaned and some of the pieces like this lamp are made out of that precious copper it was like a oil l a curator
26:08 showed us copper coins discovered at the Mind site more evidence that a rich and vibrant culture existed there for centuries the kinds which we discovered from Miss HX here we can see at the rivers of the kinds differ goddess it means that during that times different religion were in Afghanistan back at maek it's not exactly clear how much time the archaeologist have Marquee told us that to do everything properly would take about 10 years but it's clear that the Chinese will not wait that long Marquee told us recently that they would give him three years hopefully the ministry of mind didn't tell us about this
26:53 information the Chinese say they weren't told about the archaeological site when they bid on the mine they told our reporters they are now waiting on the archaeologist to come up with a plan so for the specific at the press conference Lou the Chinese mining official had this to say the Chinese say they now expect that to
27:39 be in 2014 but there's no question what will happen to this place once mining begins this is open pit you know sorry open pit pit it's going to be an open pit mine like the one we saw earlier in Nevada and that means this ancient landscape will change forever nothing will exist none of this will exist and that is the great irony of the msac mine Millennia ago copper brought this place wealth it supported a complex and organized Society now the mineral is once again seen as the means to a vibrant economy but mining The Ore will mean destroying a cultural heritage
28:27 Afghanistan at time was a rich country with um I would say um organized political structure I think that we we can guess that this copper which was produced there during Antiquity it was exported in such country as today India or Iran or even China and Marquees excavation now employs hundreds of local Afghans injecting money into the economy yeah working for Afghan government yes yes employed by Ministry of culture and are coming from The Villages all around here but he says the workers are earning more than just money they are gaining new pride and a sense of History we are providing them with something which they never had before it's a a kind of
29:13 education about their history and when you discuss with them they're very proud of it to say okay yes we have been a great country look the statue we were able to build look the building we were able to build look the way we have been mining this all this Mon and it's uh and they are proud of it and they are right to be proud of it and as to the global competition for resources it's important to note that in addition to our war effort in Afghanistan the United States has poured in billions of dollars of Aid building schools roads and so forth and we provide such Aid to countries around the world the policy of the United States is to do so without tying that Aid to our
29:59 company's winning contracts but the Chinese with their state-run businesses operate differently Afghan government officials told us they would prefer to give contracts to countries that have contributed to their country's stability but the process is the process and many people we talk to say that Western companies will not be able to compete with this new reality when we come back the man responsible for giving out billions of dollars after the Great Gulf underwater oil Crusher is facing many tough questions you'll want to hear what he has to say
