Progress with Afghanistan extractive industries: Will the country know resource success or failure evermore?

• Most recent progress with developing of mining in Afghanistan.
• Focus on sustainable development and resource corridors in Afghanistan.
• Recent changes in mining law bring fears for local people and transparency, but foreign mining companies heartened to renew mining or renegotiate contracts.
• Mineral mafias and armed gangs in enclave mining are also possible.
• New government has difficult but potentially fruitful road to successful EI development.

Extractive industries (EI) in Afghanistan have never been a major economic force in a country where the state owned all mineral rights and operated all mines. Reorganized now into the ministries which will ostensibly facilitate the EI so that domestic and international companies can submit bids to tender offers, the factors for desired success with the new EI include robust plans for sustainable development and resource corridors. Contentious mining law in Afghanistan has been seriously revised several times in the past decade, with the principles of EI transparency initiatives being variously weighted as Afghanistan is a candidate for admission to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) group of nations. Recent revised mining law has been touted as being friendly to foreign companies, as well as to mining mafias and armed gangs rather than the protection of local people and the environment, although the intent to use the EI to support governmental revenues is paramount. The new government of Ashraf Ghani has an opportunity to either oversee the rise of a viable set of EI processes in the country, or the failure of a perhaps flawed endeavor.