Afghanistan crisis: Taliban now controls vast $3 trillion worth of natural assets of country - What it means?

China, already Afghanistan's largest foreign investor, is seen as likely to lead the race to help the country build an efficient mining system to meet its insatiable needs for minerals.

A follow-up report by the Afghan government in 2017 estimated that Kabul's new mineral wealth may be as high as $3 trillion, including fossil fuels. To date, the Taliban have profited from the opium and heroin trade. Now the militant group effectively rules a country with valuable resources that China needs to grow its economy, DW reported.

In 2010, a report by US military experts and geologists estimated that Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries, was sitting on nearly $1 trillion in mineral wealth, thanks to huge iron, copper, lithium, cobalt, and rare-earth deposits.

Lithium, which is used in batteries for electric cars, smartphones, and laptops, is facing unprecedented demand, with annual growth of 20 percent compared to just 5-6 percent a few years ago. The Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the Saudi Arabia of lithium and projected that the country’s lithium deposits could equal Bolivia's — one of the world's largest.

Copper, too, is benefiting from the post-COVID global economic recovery — up 43 percent over the past year. More than a quarter of Afghanistan’s future mineral wealth could be realised by expanding copper mining activities.

While the West has threatened not to work with the Taliban after it effectively seized control of Kabul over the weekend, China, Russia, and Pakistan are lining up to do business with the Taliban.

"Taliban control comes at a time when there is a supply crunch for these minerals for the foreseeable future and China needs them," Michael Tanchum, a senior fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, told DW.

One of the Asian powerhouse’s mining giants, the Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC), already has a 30-year lease to mine copper in Afghanistan’s barren Logar province, the report said.

Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan is also set to benefit from Afghanistan’s minerals wealth. The Islamabad government, which supported the Taliban’s first takeover of Afghanistan in 1996, has maintained ties with the group and has been accused by the US of harbouring Taliban militants. Pakistan is also set to be a major beneficiary of China’s infrastructure investment — often dubbed the New Silk Road.

The Afghan ministry of mines and petroleum has too estimated the mines and natural resources of Afghanistan worth $3 trillion. Officials in the ministry said that they have found 1,400 spots possessing various types of natural resources such as natural gas, coal, salt, uranium, copper, gold, and silver, Afghan media reports said.

Natural gas is mostly found in the northern provinces of Balkh, Shebirghan, and Saripol which has been estimated from 100 to 500 billion cubic meters. In the latest investigation conducted by NASA, there are over one hundred zones of oil and gas in Afghanistan.