In Afghanistan the old meets the new in a bizarre fashion. At an archaeology site where a 2,600 year old Buddhist monastery is being excavated, a Chinese company waits in the wings to exploit the copper mineral resources below. The archaeologists are working on top of the second largest unexploited copper mine in the world in Mes Aynak.
Mes Aynak was once an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. It was located in an abandoned Soviet copper mine near Kabul.
The Chinese company is keen to invest in the mine in Afghanistan but is being held up by the slow progress made by the historians. There are $3.5 billion from Beijing at stake over the mine. It is the largest foreign investment that Afghanistan has seen so far. As per Laura Tedesco, an archaeologist the site is so massive that it is easily a 10 year campaign.
However the China Metallurgical Group Corp are keen to begin building the mine by 2011. As of now the government in Kabul has granted the archaeologists a three year period in which to salvage what they can from a major seventh century B.C. religious site along the famed Silk Road.
Unfortunately the salvage effort is lacking funds and the proposed mine does not. The memory of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001 are making it difficult for the Chinese to push with too much force for the mine.