.................4 Jul 2021 23:55
According to the New York Times, a memo from the Pentagon predicted that Afghanistan will be the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium," a way to assert that Afghanistan is able to exceed Bolivia as the first world producer of lithium. The economic impact of this mining discovery is simply enormous: the total reserves represent about 1,000 billion. The two main sources of lithium are hard rock sources in pegmatites and in solution within continental brines, both of which are present in Afghanistan. This might become the backbone of the Afghan economy. Although Afghanistan is recognized as a strategic hub in Central Asia, at the borders of the former Soviet Union, China and Iran at the crossroads of routes for pipelines and significant reserves of oil and gas natural, its enormous mineral wealth and its untapped natural gas reserves have remained completely unknown.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/afghanistan-has-only-one-hope-lithium-18372