Bharat Rakshak

Jyoti Yadav (left), wife of Major Deepak Yadav, and Major Seema Roy, wife of Major Nitesh Roy, receive the Shaurya Chakra (posthumous) during a defence investiture ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday. Yadav and Roy were killed in the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 7, 2008. Picture by Ramakant Kushwaha

Demand to rebuild Bamiyan Buddhas and other Hindu Heritage sites in Afghanistan

OVERVIEW
In the nineties, after the emergence of the Taliban as a ruthless and barbaric force in Afghanistan, hundreds of historically significant religious sites were destroyed within a span of 6 years. Of these the Bamiyan Buddha Statues, have received the greatest worldwide attention.

After the defeat of the Taliban, the people of Afghanistan and the rest of the world expected the immediate reconstruction of not only these monuments, but also the other Hindu and Sikh places of worship. Yet no steps of restoration and reconstruction have taken place. The Afghan government is yet to fulfill their moral obligation to Hindus and the world at large.



We the undersigned, request the Afghan Government to immediately restore the historical monuments of these communities
http://www.change.org/petitions/demand- ... fghanistan

Taliban insurgents dug a more than 1,050-foot (320-meter) tunnel underground and into the main jail in Kandahar city and whisked out more than 450 prisoners, most of whom were Taliban fighters, officials and the insurgents said Monday.

The massive jailbreak overnight in Afghanistan’s second-largest city serves as a reminder of the Afghan government’s continuing weakness in the south, despite an influx of international troops, funding and advisers. Kandahar city, in particular, has been a focus of the international effort to establish a strong Afghan government presence in former Taliban strongholds.

The 1,200-inmate Sarposa Prison has been part of that plan. The facility has undergone security upgrades and tightened procedures following a brazen 2008 Taliban attack that freed 900 prisoners. {After that jailbreak, Taliban captured several villages around Kandahar further tightening the noose around the city} Afghan government officials and their NATO backers have regularly said that the prison has vastly improved security since that attack.

Four of those who escaped were provincial-level Taliban commanders, said Qari Yousef Ahmadi, another Taliban spokesman

The highest-profile Taliban inmates would likely not be held at Sarposa. The U.S. keeps detainees it considers a threat at a facility outside of Bagram Air Base in eastern Afghanistan. Other key Taliban prisoners are held by the Afghan government in a high-security wing of the main prison in Kabul.

A man who Taliban spokesmen said was one of the inmates who helped organize the escape from the inside said a group of inmates obtained copies of the keys to the cells ahead of time.

“There were four or five of us who knew that our friends were digging a tunnel from the outside,” said Mohammad Abdullah, who said he had been in Sarposa prison for two years after being captured in nearby Zhari district with a stockpile of weapons. “Some of our friends helped us by providing copies of the keys. When the time came at night, we managed to open the doors for friends who were in other rooms.”

He said they woke the inmates up four or five at a time to get them out quietly. Abdullah spoke by phone on a number supplied by a Taliban spokesman. His account could not be immediately verified.

The governor of Kandahar province confirmed at least 475 escaped and said that a search operation is going on to recapture them.

India has spent a lot of money and blood in Afghanistan and enjoys goodwill amongst its people. Despite the talk about India having key strategic interests in Afghanistan, the fact remains that India does not have either the necessary resources or the clout to influence developments in Afghanistan. It supports the Karzai government but has little political influence. The occasional talk of sending troops to Afghanistan to stabilize the situation there is dangerous and has no traction within India. Unfortunately, Pakistan and Western experts and officials are perpetuating the myth that India and Pakistan are locked in a deadly strategic rivalry in Afghanistan. This is not borne out by the facts including that of the Indian presence in Afghanistan, which is essentially for socio-economic reconstruction.

Of course, the situation in Afghanistan will not remain static in the next three years. But, at the moment, it seems that Afghanistan may become even more unstable as the foreign troops withdraw without pacifying the Taliban. Pakistan’s greater involvement in Afghanistan is bound to throw up a new regional dynamics. It remains to be seen how Pakistan will fare, as a superpower is yet again on the brink of defeat in Afghanistan.

The international community desperately needs fresh ideas on Afghanistan. The former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill’s radical idea of partitioning Afghanistan would breed further instability. The Indian idea of a regional solution and a neutral Afghanistan will not be acceptable to Pakistan. India ought to be doing serious thinking on the post-withdrawal scenarios that might unfold and how it should respond to them. At present there is little clarity on this even among the strategic community.

Essentially, it is time to wait-and-watch in Afghanistan and hope that the Taliban’s return to power this time around will not be as bad as it was earlier. India, at the moment, has limited options in Afghanistan, but it should not take its eyes off the country and remain engaged through economic reconstruction programmes.

A statement from the Leadership Council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, as the insurgents call their movement, on Saturday declared their offensive would start May 1.

The operation called Badar will target the troops of the United States and its foreign and Afghan allies, said the statement. The focus would be on military centres, airbases and convoys.

The Taliban in their Saturday statement also said they will attack high-ranking Afghan government officials, both military and civilian, members of the cabinet, parliamentarians, senior employees of foreign and local companies, and contractors.

They said members of High Peace Council would also be targeted because it “prolongs the American occupation.”

KABUL: A 12-year-old suicide bomber killed four people and wounded a dozen in eastern Afghanistan today, officials said.

The boy - thought to be one of the country's youngest-ever suicide attackers - detonated a vest packed with explosives in a marketplace in Paktika province, on the border with Pakistan, provincial spokesman Mukhlis Afghan said in a statement.

"The head of Shkin district council, Shair Nawaz, a woman and two other men were killed and 12 others were wounded," the statement said.

If American Afghan policy was a mixture of delusion and arrogance, Indian policy was a matter of simple delusion.

India yielded to the temptation to meddle in Afghanistan and discomfit Pakistan.

In an indication of Indian intentions or cluelessness, the design ignored the overwhelmingly Muslim character of contemporary Afghanistan to evoke the civilization of ancient Ganjara under the Mughal emperors, when India and Afghanistan were part of a single cultural continuum.

India helped enable the aggressive, cross-border counter-insurgency strategy that pushed the Taliban puss deeper into deeper into the wounds of Pakistan's wounded society.

Small wonder if the Pakistani security forces decided to return the favor by unleashing the Lashkar-e-Toiba to inflict the bloody Mumbai horror of August 2008.

However, as Pakistan struggled to cope with its post-Bin Laden embarrassment, China's Foreign Ministry came up with a rare and welcome endorsement of Pakistan's anti-terrorism efforts

India's gains in Afghanistan look to be transitory. But the enmity with Pakistan's security establishment will probably last for a generation.

In a hallmark display of American delusion and irresponsibility, the United States derided Pakistan for harboring Bin Laden and threatened to cut off aid.

India's claims to relevance in Afghanistan separate from the Western military presence appear to rely on exaggerated ideas of what soft power can accomplish in a war zone.

Second, India must collaborate with countries including Iran and Russia, which along with India have previously propped up the Northern Alliance. If India is to tackle a Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, the now-defunct Northern Alliance will have to be revived. Even the Central Asian countries could be a part of such an initiative because of their opposition to the Taliban.

One does not have to buy into the hysteria and calculated paranoia of Pakistan's security apparatus about India's Research and Analysis Wing spreading its tentacles inside Afghanistan to see that India was trying to gain a cheap and easy geostrategic victory in Afghanistan by allying itself with the anti-Taliban, anti-Pakistan power propped up in Kabul by US arms and money.

The Afghan intervention was not simply a matter of Indian support for a regime that denied "strategic depth" to a Pakistani security establishment that probably didn't deserve it. By promoting the anti-terrorism narrative in Afghanistan and making it the basis of its dealings with Pakistan, India helped enable the aggressive, cross-border counter-insurgency strategy that pushed the Taliban puss deeper into deeper into the wounds of Pakistan's wounded society.

Small wonder if the Pakistani security forces decided to return the favor by unleashing the Lashkar-e-Toiba to inflict the bloody Mumbai horror of August 2008.

Six people have been killed and 23 wounded in an explosion at a hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, the Afghan defence ministry says.
An Afghan intelligence official told the BBC that two suicide attackers had got inside Charsad Bestar Hospital.

One had blown himself up in the hospital canteen near the military wing while the other had yet to be found.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said his organisation carried out the attack.

Vikram W wrote:India left standing in Afghan musical chairs

By Peter Lee

Think of Afghanistan policy as a game of musical chairs. When the United States this month killed Osama bin Laden, it stopped the music.

Now everybody's scrambling to make sure they have a seat.

<more barf>

Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Even without a US military presence, Afghanistan has always had enormous strategic significance for other powers in the region. Afghanistan per se is not attractive to outsiders. It is landlocked, poor and has a subsistence agricultural economy – though its unexplored and untapped mineral riches are today attracting Chinese carpetbaggers. Afghanistan matters because of its strategic location. Notwithstanding its tribal and ethnic diversities and rivalries, Afghanistan has traditionally had a distinct identity as the strategic space between India, Iran and Central Asia – a kind of ‘negative security space’ where all its neighbours seek some influence in order to prevent any other power from dominating it.

Throughout history, Afghanistan has survived because of, and learnt how to leverage, its geographical location as the principal overland link between India and the rest of the world. More to ensure their own security than because Afghanistan was a tempting conquest, strong empires in India, Central Asia and Iran competed in Afghanistan and tried to control it. When its neighbours were weak, the Afghans asserted themselves and invaded them. While invading Afghan armies no longer threaten, terrorism, drug trafficking and fundamentalism emanating from Afghanistan remain real threats for its neighbours.

That is why Afghanistan will never be peaceful, stable and prosperous till its neighbours agree with the rulers and people of Afghanistan on the contours of an enduring blueprint for the country.

From an economic perspective too, India is critical for Afghanistan. Afghanistan cannot indefinitely count on massive injections of foreign aid and must become an economically viable state if it is not to be a failed one. Traditionally, the Pashtun belt has been economically anchored to the Indian sub-continent. Afghanistan has floundered in recent times because the roots of its economic life have been sapped by Pakistan’s policy of restricting Afghanistan’s deep-rooted economic, cultural and people-to-people contacts with India. If Pakistan were to cooperate in restoring the traditional economic and transport links to India, Afghanistan can once again become a bridge between South Asia and the rest of the world. This would bring Afghanistan huge benefits – from India’s large market that can absorb any high-value agricultural products that Afghans should be cultivating instead of poppy; from investments to develop its mineral riches and hydropower resources; from transit fees for Central Asian gas feeding the growing South Asian market; and from trade between India and countries to Afghanistan’s west, including Russia and Europe.

Needless to say, Pakistan too would gain immensely. An essential pre-condition is that its leaders must change their traditional mindset and recognize that the existential threats to Pakistan are internal and from the west, not the east. The doles from US, China and Saudi Arabia do prop up Pakistan’s economy and feed Pakistani vanity, but will not bring stability and prosperity to Pakistan; that can only come if Pakistan has meaningful economic integration with its neighbours. Dark clouds line the horizon. US-Pakistan relations have sharply deteriorated and a reset may be more problematic this time.

So far, Pakistan’s policies have merely corroded the country; a few more years of misguided policies could erode it – literally.

Any viable regional solution to Afghanistan has to be within the framework of a ‘grand bargain’ involving the principal players viz. Afghanistan, Pakistan, US, Iran, and India.

Barely days after state-owned companies SAIL, NMDC and RINL stitched together a consortium with private sector biggies Tata Steel, Sajjan Jindal-promoted JSW Steel and Navin Jindal’s Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) to bid for the Hajigak mines in Afghanistan, the Tatas have pulled out. The Tata Steel board reportedly could not make up its mind despite meeting twice.

More interestingly, JSW Ispat Ltd, in which Sajjan Jindal’s JSW Steel holds 49.31 per cent stake, has decided to separately bid for the said mines. This has forced the JSW Group to keep away from the consortium’s bid proceedings since it is potentially a conflict of interest situation, putting JSW Steel in a position wherein it can share the bid price with its sister company JSW Ispat.

The Afghan government, meanwhile, has already started to auction off some of the most promising sites: Ainak, one of the world biggest copper mines, situated in Logar province, a US$ 3 billion project, has been awarded to a Chinese consortium last year, much to the distaste of some in the US who apparently believe that it should be primarily US companies that are rewarded with such contracts.**

The iron ore deposits on the Bamian side of the Hajigak pass, described by the Afghan government as Asia's largest un-mined iron deposit which they say is to generate US$ 1 billion before 2017, are being tendered currently. According to the current Minister for Mines and Industries (MoMI), Wahidullah Shahrani, this is done in a package with the nearby coalmines of Dara-ye Suf in Samangan (the even nearer operational mines of Karkar, at least until recently, belong to the Afghan Investment Company, with Kabul Bank participation) and chromite deposits in Logar province. The Dara-ye Suf high-grade coking coal is supposed to fire a steel production plant that the Afghan government wants to build. It also has been announced that ‘job creation in Afghanistan; infrastructure development, including railroads and power; and the evacuation [i.e. export] of ore and steel to neighbouring countries for the entire duration of engagement, which should be 35-40 years’ is part of the tende

US Embassy, NATO HQ in Kabul Hit by Major Taliban Assault

Updated: Tuesday, 13 Sep 2011, 8:10 AM CDT
Published : Tuesday, 13 Sep 2011, 8:10 AM CDT

(NewsCore) - Taliban militants launched a major attack in the center of the Afghan capital Tuesday, with the US embassy and NATO's headquarters coming under fire from rockets and automatic weapons.

At least ten explosions -- including one at the US embassy -- were heard, FOX News Channel reported.

The sound of heavy gunfire reverberated across the city, and some was coming from the US embassy compound, although it was not clear who was shooting.

In what appeared to be a well-organized operation, attacks were reported in locations across the city, and also on the road to the airport.

Foreign forces were responding to the attacks, with Kiowa and Black Hawk helicopters buzzing overhead.

Helicopters pounded a building overlooking the embassy where gunmen were holed up. At one point, helicopters attacked a group of suspected suicide bombers who were making a beeline for the embassy, the report said.

The US embassy confirmed it was a target, and said there were no casualties.

"The US Embassy can confirm an attack has occurred in the area of the US Embassy, including RPG and small arms fire. We can confirm there are no casualties at this time among Embassy personnel," spokeswoman Kerri Hannan said.

There were a "large number" of civilian and Afghan military casualties, but an exact toll was not available, FOX News Channel reported.

Reports suggested five suicide bombers detonated explosives in various locations, but the number could be higher.

Also under attack was the headquarters of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is near the US embassy. Rockets landed inside the NATO compound.

ISAF confirmed that its headquarters came under attack.

"A small group of insurgents attacked the vicinity of the US Embassy and International Security Assistance Force Afghanistan headquarters today [Tuesday], firing from outside the compound using small arms and RPGs," it said in a statement.

It added, "Afghan National Security Forces and coalition forces immediately responded to the attack, and are still on the scene. Coalition forces are providing air support. There are no reports of ISAF casualties at this time."

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attacks. "Today [Tuesday] at one o'clock at Kabul's Abdul Haq roundabout a massive suicide attack on local and foreign intelligence facilities is ongoing," a Taliban spokesman said in a text message.

KABUL -- Taliban suicide fighters in Kabul have stormed a multistory building that is under construction, taking over the structure and using it as a fortress tower to fire rockets toward several nearby embassies and NATO compounds.

Afghan officials say at least one policeman and two attackers were killed in gun battles within a few hours of the attack on September 13, and that fighting was continuing with several other militants.

The fighting was taking place in what is usually the most heavily protected part of Kabul.

A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility for the violence, saying the targets included the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force, the U.S. embassy and Afghanistan's intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) -- as well as other "sensitive government facilities."

The attack is one of the Taliban's most ambitious commando-style operations to date in its fight to evict Afghanistan's central government from power and defeat tens of thousands of NATO-led troops.

Mehta said the Afghans were expected to send company-sized units of 120 men for training at Indian bases, including a respected counter-insurgency school in northeastern Vairengte.

Afghan infantry units are also expected to train at a high- altitude warfare school in Kashmir, where Indian forces have had plenty of experience battling revolts over 20 years.

Part of the Soviet Union's exit strategy after its disastrous campaign in Afghanistan relied on training troops, and some pilots, in then Soviet-Uzbekistan. Some soldiers were also flown to Moscow in the mid-1980s.

Under the India-Afghan pact, weapons such as rifles, rocket launchers and artillery would help fill equipment gaps and pilots would be trained on simulators in India.

Kamran Bokhari, vice president of Middle Eastern and South Asian affairs at global intelligence consulting firm STRATFOR, said intelligence sharing would be the biggest, yet least talked-about, part of the India-Afghanistan partnership.

He said military cooperation between the two countries had to be limited because they don't share a border and that a hostile Pakistan lies in between.

"But intelligence is something that doesn't require borders and they can do quite a lot in that area," Bokhari said.

The Taliban emailed the plan — which appeared to carry the signatures of U.S. and Afghan military officials — to news organizations and published it on their website, saying they had obtained it from infiltrators in two government ministries. A spokesman for the Afghan interior ministry dismissed the document as a fake. The plan doesn’t appear to include any highly sensitive information, although it does describe a multi-layer system of security surrounding the assembly site, on a university campus in western Kabul.

The Taliban said that the publication was a response to the hacking of their website in July, when messages were posted claiming the death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, which the group said was untrue. It blamed the incident on the CIA and the National Directorate of Security, the Afghan intelligence agency. Although U.S. officials believe the Taliban has been weakened militarily by coalition operations, the Taliban claim to have infiltrated Afghan government ministries and security forces.

General Khatool Mohammadzai, aged 45, made more than 600 jumps in her 28-year military career, and her precise and daring skydives used to be a regular part of every Independence Day and New Year’s celebration in Kabul.

The Kabul of Mohammadzai’s childhood was a proudly cosmopolitan city. Men and women alike were legally entitled to public education and good jobs; burqas were a rare sight, and young women routinely wore miniskirts or jeans. “In those days it wasn’t necessary for a woman to cover her hair, arms, and legs,” she recalls. The girl was 13 when the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan. Many in Kabul actually welcomed the coming of the Russians; a violent power struggle had erupted among Afghanistan’s Marxist rulers, and the hope was that the December 1979 invasion would stabilize the government. In fact, the effort succeeded, at least in a limited way.

When an Afghan military recruiter came to her high school on graduation day and asked for volunteers to join the Afghan Army, the 17-year-old immediately raised her hand. Her mother was struggling to support the family, and jobs were hard to find—but more than that, Mohammadzai says she craved the challenges of military life. “I wanted to do what was most demanding, strenuous, and athletic,” she says. So she signed up to become a paratrooper. She vividly recalls how she and her fellow volunteers, almost all men, were sent on a two-day, 150-kilometer march over rough terrain from Kabul to the eastern city of Jalalabad with full packs. The young woman slept in the open among the male trainees. A rock was her pillow, and by the time the ordeal was over, her feet were bleeding. “We suffered a lot,” she says. But she aced the course.

In 1989, after nine years of an exorbitantly draining war, the Russians gave up and went home. The Afghan puppet regime managed to survive for three more years before collapsing in 1992. But the victorious guerrillas couldn’t afford to punish Mohammadzai too harshly for having been on the losing side; they desperately needed professional soldiers with her skills. She was named director of women’s physical training for the Air Defense Corps. And yet in many ways the mujahedin’s attitude toward women wasn’t much different from that of the Taliban: they barred her from parachute jumping, and she was required to wear a head-to-toe abaya whenever she appeared in public. Although Mohammadzai didn’t like the situation, she had no choice. She had married an Afghan soldier in 1990, and he was killed in action just a year later, only 40 days after she had given birth to his son.

Life became even tougher when the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996. All women were ordered to stay indoors at home until further notice, and Mohammadzai found herself trapped in her small apartment, with little money and no prospects, forbidden to work or even step outside unless escorted by a male relative. But she and her son survived, and soon after the collapse of the Taliban regime she was called back to active duty with the new Afghan National Army. In her apartment she proudly displays certificates of merit from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Combat Brigade and 82nd Airborne Division, and she’s been awarded paratrooper medals by the United States, Canada, and France.

An Indian consortium led by state-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL) has won the mining rights for three out of four iron ore blocks in Afghanistan.

The win will expand India’s commercial footprint in conflict-ravaged Afghanistan, where it has already invested $2 billion (Rs. 10,400 crore today) in rebuilding the infrastructure. India views the country as key to its strategic interests, especially because it is situated between South Asia and energy-rich Central Asia.

“We will negotiate the actual terms and conditions of the contract now,” said C.S. Verma, chairman of SAIL.

“The win is very important not only from the economic and commercial perspective, but also from the strategic viewpoint. Since Afghanistan is on a negative list, we plan to get a sanction from our government for assistance for some portion of the investments,” he said, referring to problems in raising capital for the project.


India recently signed a strategic partnership pact with Afghanistan that aims to deepen trade, security and cultural links, and under which it agreed to take on a bigger role in training Afghan troops and security forces.
“After this we will start the contract negotiations, which will have to be approved by the cabinet,” Jalil Jumriany, director general for policy and promotion in Afghanistan’s ministry of mines, said on the phone from Kabul, speaking about the next step regarding the iron ore mines.

The blocks B, C and D, for which the Indian consortium has won rights, have iron ore reserves of around 1.3 billion tonnes and are located in the Bamiyan province, 130km west of Kabul. The Indian consortium had also bid for the fourth block (block A), but lost it to Canada’s Kilo Goldmines Ltd. Chinese firms did not bid for these blocks.

The other members of the Afghan Iron and Steel Consortium (Afisco) formed at the Indian government’s behest are NMDC Ltd, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd, JSW Steel Ltd and Jindal Steel and Power Ltd. Tata Steel Ltd was initially a part of the consortium, but subsequently opted out of it.

“They (winning bidders) will build the infrastructure that they have committed for building in their bid. This includes an 800 megawatt power project and a seven million tonne steel plant. The plant will be built in two stages and it should be ready by 2020,” Jumriany said.

Afghanistan hopes to generate substantial revenue from the mines that will fund its reconstruction efforts. Security concerns and the huge cost of getting the remote mines up and running, however, could pose a challenge, experts said.

Six companies and consortiums, including the SAIL-led one, were in the race to develop the deposits. The other firms were Corporate Ispat Alloys Ltd; Iran’s largest iron ore firm Gol-e-Gohar Iron Ore Co.; Iran’s Behin Sanate Diba Co.; Acatco LLC, a consortium of American and Afghan firms; and Canada’s Kilo Goldmines.{So the Chinese were not in the race}

“The development of Hajigak (deposits) by Kilo and Afisco is expected to bring billions of dollars in mining investment and thousands of new jobs to Afghanistan. The companies have also pledged substantial support for railway, power and other infrastructure development within the country, as well as major support for education and training programmes,” said Afghanistan’s mines ministry in a press statement.

Though Afghanistan is still battling insurgency, the deposits are attractive for Indian companies looking to grow overseas even as their local expansion plans face hurdles over land acquisition and environmental clearances. The US has discovered nearly $1 trillion of untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan. The deposits contain iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium.

An expert said the Indian consortium would find the going tough. “It is going to be a very big logistical issue. To operationalize mines and even to build a steel plant in Afghanistan would be a very big challenge. There won’t be an immediate upside to the companies who have won the bid. This can at best be a medium- to long-term story,” said Ashish Upadhyay, associate director at Fitch Ratings.

Afghanistan is keen to develop and promote its mining resources and will soon open tenders for four more blocks containing copper and gold deposits. It aims to generate revenue of $2 billion annually by 2017-18 from the mining and exploration business, including oil and gas, from about $100 million now

New Delhi, Nov. 28: The Hamid Karzai government today awarded an Indian consortium mining rights to develop three of the four blocks of Afghanistan’s huge Hajigak iron ore deposits, signalling a greater role for Delhi in the war-torn country.

Till now, India has mainly focused its aid to Afghanistan in developing smaller infrastructure projects like culverts and roads.

Sources said the contract awarded to the Afghan Iron and Steel Consortium (AFISCO), led by state-run steel maker SAIL, had the potential to become the landlocked country’s single-biggest foreign investment project.

In a statement, Afghanistan’s ministry of mines said the development of the blocks was “expected to bring billions of dollars in mining investment and thousands of new jobs to Afghanistan”.

The statement said the companies had also “pledged substantial support for railway, power, and other infrastructure development within the country, as well as major support for education and training programmes”.

The Hajigak blocks, in the mountainous Bamyan province 130km west of Kabul, are one of Asia’s largest iron ore deposits that are yet to be mined. According to a 1960 estimate, the blocks hold an estimated 1.8 billion tonnes of iron ore.