Corruption soils Afghanistan's bright blue treasure
- 7 hours ago
- From the section Asia
When David Cameron described Afghanistan to the Queen as "fantastically corrupt" over drinks at Buckingham Palace in April it was widely regarded as a gaffe. But the British prime minister was not wrong.
Afghanistan ranks a woeful 166th out of 168 countries in Transparency International's latest assessment of graft and crooked dealing around the world. And there is no better evidence of just how deep corruption goes than the fate of one of Afghanistan's greatest treasures, the gemstone lapis lazuli.
A two-year-long investigation by the campaigning NGO Global Witness shows that instead of going to the people, the profits from the trade in this extraordinarily beautiful semi-precious stone are being funnelled into the pockets of senior politicians and top officials, and have also become a major source of income for the Taliban and other insurgent militias.
Lapis is a vivid dark blue, like the sky at twilight or the ocean depths. Often it is flecked with specks of pyrite - fool's gold - which sparkle like tiny stars.
The greatest reserves of this "blue treasure" are in Afghanistan, where it has been mined from the same small area of a single river valley in the remote Afghan province of Badakshan for more than 6,000 years.
Lapis pendants mined here decorated the necklaces of the princesses of the first ever city, Ur in Mesopotamia. Ancient Egyptian craftsmen used lapis from the same source to trace out the eyebrows of the young pharaoh Tutankhamun for his magnificent funeral mask.
Thousands of years later it was ground into dust and made into the most prized blue pigments. Medieval monks used the ultramarine inks and paints it created to illustrate exquisite manuscripts. Renaissance painters are said to have reserved its unique colours to depict the robes of the Virgin Mary.
Source of conflict
And lapis is still cherished for jewellery and ornaments today, but, says Global Witness, "an extraordinary national treasure that should be a powerful resource for reconstruction and development has become a major source of conflict and grievance."
And what is happening to lapis is a microcosm of the entire Afghan mining sector.
Image caption A pipe made from lapis on sale on Kabul's Chicken StreetAccording to the US Geological Survey Afghanistan has nearly $1trillion in untapped mineral deposits, enough to transform the impoverished nation's economy.
But illegal mining, operated with the connivance of senior politicians and insurgent groups, is robbing the country of this incredible wealth.
The United Nations has estimated that the income from minerals including lapis is now the Taliban's second largest source of income after opium.
--
Read my blog at http://eclecticarcania.blogspot.com/
My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/derkimster
Linkedin profile: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kim-noyes/9/3a1/2b8
Follow me on Twitter @CalDisasters
__._,_.___
No comments:
Post a Comment