Who funds mining in Afghanistan?

When he landed in Baghdad for a meeting with Iraq's oil minister, the minister asked, "What are you here for?"

"I'm here to make five new Iraqi billionaires every year for the next 10 years," Hannam said with a twinkle in his eyes. It was an effective icebreaker...

Remember Afghanistan's $1 trillion in mineral reserves? Meet the JP Morgan investment banker who is catalyzing financing for their development. Not very critical, but pretty interesting.

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?