To Stabilize Democracy; Give Afghanistan's Mineral Wealth to the Citizens in A Public Stock Issuance

The Obama administration has an opportunity in Afghanistan to direct that the recently announced mineral wealth of that nation be owned directly by the people of Afghanistan in a public company with all shares owned by the people. The Bush administration passed such an opportunity in Iraq with Iraqi oil dooming the United States to seven more years of nation rebuilding more expensive than most wars. Without public ownership of mineral wealth or oil in second and third world nations inevitably corrupt, exclusive government owning elites dominate the natural resource wealth and are opposed by low-level popular insurgencies.

When a new government is created along democratic lines a rational concern is who will own the natural resource wealth of that nation. If the people own it in private shares that are tradable after several years like any other publicly listed corporate stock, then the government will have popular support and the equally important denial of resource control by exclusive and corrupt elites will occur.

The Obama administration of course will most likely fail to insure that the minerals of Afghanistan will be quickly given to the citizens of Afghanistan through a general stock issuance in The Afghanistan Mining Company. The Afghanistan Mining Company would be managed in the interim by an initial board comprised of N.A.T.O. member nations and Afghanis. One of its duties would be to put out to bid for development the natural mineral resources of Afghanistan. The Afghan citizen shareholders of would receive a 70% royalty of all wealth extracted by the winning developing corporation who would receive thirty percent of the profit from sale of the resource.

If the Iraqi’s had formed a similar public corporation for the initial ownership of Iraq’s oil fields it is likely that peace through broad popular support for the stock issuing government would have occurred by 2004 or 2005 permitting the U.S. to withdraw more military forces earlier. It would be a doubly stupid error for the Obama administration to repeat the Bush II administration’s mistake.

President Obama does have the leverage over the Karzai Government to bring about the populist stock issuance of an Afghanistan Mining Company and he should. The United States and N.A.T.O. countries cannot afford to have continuing protracted incompetence in military financial outlays that could be avoided through implementation of foreign policy in support of democracy and democratic values instead of those of corporatism and corrupting global extraction industry corporations. If democracy is not supported through plain fair public ownership of natural resources in second and third world countries, domestic and international terrorism forms to revolt against those governments. The United States in support of global corporations operating in second and third world nations then intervenes to reinforce corrupt dictatorships. That is a wrong policy side to be on.

From British Petroleum and its history as the British Iranian Oil Company and C.I.A. support for the overthrow of the Iranian Government to bring in the Shah so The forerunner of today’s BP could keep their oil from being nationalized, to Anglo-American Mining with plans to develop a Pebble Mine in Alaska on the headwaters of the Bristol Bay salmon fishery with their history in South African Diamond mining global extraction industries have in such a way that they are often conflict with local populist political concerns. President Obama should support democracy in Afghanistan instead of protracted defenses of corruption and foreign corporate mining interests if he ants a reasonable opportunity for a stable Afghanistan to form such that the taxpayers of the United States will not need to have more trillions wrested from them to spend in central Asian military boondoggles.