Opium to Lithium: Epic Fail

Afghanistan is a pitiful place. It is the Kurukshetra where miffed world powers play the game of suicide checkers. Be it the good ol' US of A, or the Rumbling Russian bear, Afghanistan has been a worthy quagmire for all superpowers, present and past, if in doubt, wiki the First Anglo-Afghan War. For many years, this landlocked swamp of a desert (please note the oxymoron) has lived in abject penury, the economy buoyed by the sales of opium and the rigid tenets of pseudo-Islam, which abhors and eschews all necessities of life, leading to a country that has nothing and is seemingly happy about it, for if I suffer through my whole life, ploughing across miles for a drop of water, bleed through the nose for a square meal throughout my sorry existence, I shall be rewarded by Allah with seventy two virgins in heaven. It's morbidly funny, really, to see a country that's knee deep in the manure they created for themselves, woken up everyday with a suicide blast, only to spend the rest of the day fervently hoping for the virgins; and to make through the day without losing a limb. History has not been kind either, mainly due to its strategic location, leading to its status as a buffer state between the Russian and the British empires, which really means, if any country has a problem, they say, "Alright! You and me! Afghanistan! Now!". Their main export has been opium, for nothing else grows there, and their second largest export is prime battleground real estate. Recently, however, Americans have discovered $1trillion buried under the countless landmines and children's limbs in the form of mineral deposits. If this saves the Afghans from misery, it'll be another middle-east success story, to the likes of Dubai and Saudi Arabia. But lets face it, minerals are not oil; who's heard of the mineral wars, at least their previous export had the honour of world powers fighting over it (see Opium Wars). Most of the metals are recycled, and we're reducing the amount mined every year, unlike oil, which keeps skyrocketing by the minute. Even if minerals could save the swamp of a nation from its impending doom, Afghanistan, at this point boasts of more Western troops stationed in it than its population. With a ghost of sovereignty and economic freedom, there's little the Afghan government can do make money out of it. BP has recently said, quite emphatically, the it stands for Beyond Petroleum, and not British Petroleum, as everyone else thought, and minerals could be the next pie BP sticks its dirty fingers into. If the East India Company of the twenty first century decides to enter Afghanistan, even Uncle Sam could do little to stop that, they've only now realised what BP can do when crossed, with the oil spill and all. In the era of aggressive globalisation, the penniless miner who lost his left hand in the blast that killed no one stands no chance against capital leviathans of the West, he has more to gain by kissing the numerous landmines that dot the derelict landscape. If the mineral deposits could save this little nation, pigs can fly and horse feathers can be used as quills.