Afghanistan's great hope?

Apparently Afghans are quite excited about the recent $1 trillion estimate of the value of the country's mineral reserves.

In a news conference primarily with Afghan reporters, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman, Waheed Omar, called the report “the best news we have had over many years in Afghanistan.”

“This will improve drastically the lives of the Afghan people, the economic status of the Afghan people and to see that positively, that will unite the Afghan people,” he said.

It sounds like an awful stretch to me. Leave aside for a moment that the investment preconditions like physical security, governance infrastructure are far from the level required to attract significant private capital, as FP Passport points out. The more fundamental question is how often (other than notable exceptions) has mineral wealth really translated to stability, political unity and sustainable economic growth in developing countries?