Afghanistan – The Saudi Arabia of lithium?

The comment below refering to a "highway of death" conveniently forgot that the Iraq army invaded Kuwait. When an army invades another country it should expect to be destroyed. It should be destroyed and the country and people doing the destroying were liberators of the Kuwait people. Here's an analogy in case that's too complicated to you. Say you leave your project and kill someone working uptown. Then you go back to your project and expect to be left alone because after all you're not in someone else's neighborhood or doing anything wrong right now. No, the police should find you in your project and shoot you so you don't murder anyone else. Is that clear?

Muslims in Iraq and Iran spent 8 years killing EACH OTHER 1980-1988. This is their religion -death. Millions, children not even in their teens, killed. Millions dead. Saddam gassed IRAQIS! Liberals brainwashed by the media with nothing to say but parrot the media. "George Bush did it. George Bush did it. George Bush did it." What a display of ignortant mindless followers of such luminaries as Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Castro, Chavez, etc. Oh, but someone in Texas probably did something to someone somewhere at sometime, and that's at least equivalent to tens of millions of Poles and Ukranians blood on Stalin's hands, so just keep on blaming George Bush while you communists get a pass.

And George Bush Jr & Sr, being the capitalists they were, exterminated how many Muslim Iraqis? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_of_Death
If you cannot love communists or capitalists, who's left?

I think this is great news...for the developed world anyway. I'm sure it will be a horrible poison for Afghanistan because no doubt mining operations would not be sterling examples of safety and environmental responsibility.
However, in our quest for better battery life, higher battery densities and more stable high current loading, lithium is an important stop on the way, particularly for robots, UAS, and small electronics. It is scary that Bolivia has so much control over this right now, so a second source (and more overall resource availability) is good news.

Just as communist Bill Clinton killed civilians in Serbia and murdered Milosovik as a favor to his moslem allies in Kosovo, communist Barak Hussein Obama will continue the drive to support terrorist moslem regimes. Obama will allow the taliban to take over Afghanistan.

Just as communist Bill Clinton killed civilians in Serbia and murdered Milosovik for his Moslem allies in Kosovo, communist Barak Hussein Obama will continue the drive to support terrorist regimes. Democrats continually work for evil.

Ask Barak Hussein Obama, he's a communist.

Since the untapped mineral wealth has been known and documented by each successive wave of invaders why is this non-information now headlined?
Perhaps this reiteration of an old wheel is to prepare us for a trade of our debt to the Chinese for Afghan minerals (similar to the trade between Baker and Schevardnaze of Eastern Europe for Central Asia in the not so distant past). If this is the case, let's assume 'our boys' will be pulling guard duty in Logar, Kajaki and way points for some time to come, Karzai or not.
khodahafiz

At one time Afganistan was considered to be our strong allie, but presently it has a problem with some raging maniacs. So it would seem that the best choice for now is to keep quiet about the minerals to be found there. But Silia is certainly right, as is Blevins. Afganistan may wind up being a world economic power due to it's natual resources.
The fact is that batteries matter in many applications aside from EVs.
Presently our consumption of foreign-sourced oil is conserving our own oil, which is becoming more valuable as the rest is consumed. So we may not be as dumb as some say. Besides that, how many of us really are willing to live in a cave and eat dirt?
The problem right now is thatthere are a whole lot of different (hidden)agendas amongst those who are making the most noise.

If they ever can produce from this then the price of lithium will drop which is good. As far s the comment of lithiums in ev's needing to be better not right. I'm running them in my car. The problems are the charging and support end of things. The good quality batteries are pretty good. 200 mile range and I drive amybe 15 miles a day which is more than a lot of people. To replace highway propulsion yup thats going to take something else. Not enough energy density in lithium and still too slow a recharge.

Hey, I would rather have the Afghanistan locals selling lithium than poppy pods!

EVs are no closer to removing the dependence on oil than several other technologies.
Electric vehicles have to be charged. It could be that the long promised fuel cell will generate the power for EVs, but the fuel cells generally convert a petroleum based product to electricity.
The source of most power generated, whether used directly or for charging batterys in EVs, is from coal, petroleum, nuclear, hydro. We can write and read a million articles about EVs and hybrids and battery technology and power distribution and smart grid, but we need to remember that the source of the power has not changed and there is nothing on the horizon even that promises a new source of power.
Solar, wind, geothermal are limited sources. A breakthrough in solar that could take the efficiency of panels from 15% to 95% could make a difference, but that appears as far off as it did twenty years ago, and so the dependence on coal, petroleum, nuclear, and hydro power remains.
It helps to separate out the issues being discussed.
1) cleaning up urban air - this requires a nonpoluting mobile powerplant for vehicles. The power can be stored in batterys or stored in a hyrocarbon fuel for cleaner power generation.
2) New fuel sources. Wind, ocean hydro, solar are often discussed. A very brief investigation shows many of the limitations of these, and part of the limitation is cost, maintenance, environmental impact.
3)Reducing dependence on foreign sources. Why? We import almost everything into the U.S. The middle east is politically unstable due to a religion that demands everyone adhere to it or die. The followers of Mohammed are much like the followers of Darwin. They think death is a good thing. The amount of oil the U.S. imports from the middle east is not as much as many people think. However, reducing dependence on foreign oil reqires more dependence on domestic oil, coal, or nuclear power.
Using EVs alone can not reduce dependence on foreign oil because we would need to generate more power from some source. EVs are not yet economical nor energy efficient. Battey technology is not yet where it needs to be for widespread use in electric vehicles. If someone tells you it is, they're trying to sell you something.
The geo-political premise in your statements ties Afghanistan to the middle east. Afghanistan is not in the middle east. There are many moslem countries in the world where violence breaks out and fanatics may control the countries, among which are Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Pakistan, Somalia, and a host of countries in north africa and north of Iran. But the Moslem countries are not the only ones that are unstable with the possibility of interruption of imports.
Socialism practiced in Europe poses similar threats to commerce. Strikes in France, UK often interrupt travel and commerce. Greece is an example of socialist violence and economic terrorism. Russia is the source of many imports, and of course communist China (remember the tanks crushing democracy advocates in Tianniman square) is our largest import source.
The media likes to manipulate our view and place unwarrented emphasis on issues such as "depleted uranium" and "land mines", and provide fanatical liberals cherished slogans such as "no blood for oil". But government, politics, and technology are not as simple as they would like people to think. Dig into these issues and think them through from a variety of viewpoints. The U.S. is not likely to be independent from the rest of the world, and we should consider how to be a positive influence. Freedom and stability have to be worked for, and they bring benefits of commerce and a greater measure of safety than would prevail without them.

Not to mention tons of Uranium...."depleted" of course.

Not to mention tons of uranium...."depleted" of course.

This is really old news. The Russians did a lot of mineral exploration in the 80's and came to the same conclusions. There are a large number of lithium bearing pegmatites along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border which are the gem and mineral specimen trade have been aware of for at least as long as the Russians. Many of these deposits are at elevations in excess of 5km, and are only accessible for a few months out of the year.

Since batteries in an EV need a 10x performation improvement, it is unlikely that Lithium chemistry will be the future for batteries in EVs. However, it is good to multiple sources for these minerals and I agree that it is good for Afghanistan.

Also fantastic almost unlimited supply of unexploded IUD and landmines!

That's a pessimistic view. More positively valuable mining in Afghanistan could help remove the incentive to allow opium growing and export. It could also help improve the standard of living of the population. It could also help stabilize the region as legal trade and economic ties increase. Chin up Margery.