Late in the afternoon of June fifteenth, I received yet another visit from Khus Dihugami Dadamizo, Special International Policy Emissary of His Excellency President Hamid Karzai for the Embassy of Afghanistan to the United States of America. As has been his usual routine since he began visiting my office, he spent the first twenty minutes or so nodding out, which is fine by me. If a client wants to pay my hourly rate while I watch him float around on Cloud Nine, well, it’s his consultation, isn’t it? When he finally came out of it, though, slowly remembering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, I have to admit that this time, Special Emissary Dadamizo at least had something interesting on his mind.
“What,” he began, “is this beryllium I keep hearing about?”
“Oh, that,” I nodded, “yes, a very important metal for… ah, strategic purposes – rocket nozzles, satellite surveillance telescope mounts, specialized ordnance, hypersonic aircraft, that sort of thing.”
“So what good,” he wondered aloud, “would having some beryillium do me?”
“Probably not much,” I speculated. “Beryllium is actually rather toxic, especially if you inhale the dust. But put a little bit of it in with other metals, and boy howdy, have you got some incredibly hard and durable alloys! There are just scads of neat industrial applications for the stuff.”
“And lithium?” Dadamizo pondered. “It’s used to make cell phone and laptop computer batteries, right?”
“Sure,” I confirmed, “and if electric cars become practical, it’s pretty likely they will need lots more lithium for their batteries. That’s where the big money would be, presumably.”
Dadamizo pursed his lips contemplatively. “Your Pentagon says Afghanistan is going to be the Saudi Arabia of lithium.”
“Well, it could be a pretty big player in a world lithium market if the demand took off. But actually, the demand that consumes most of the lithium currently produced – ceramics, glass, lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and, yes, even lithium-ion batteries – has slipped precipitously since 2008, in lockstep with the huge worldwide economic downturn. And even if Afghanistan managed to develop a significant lithium production capacity, it would have two very stiff competitors – Chile and Bolivia.”
“Competition?” Dadamizo winced. “For lithium? How stiff?”
“Quite stiff,” I advised. “Chile has been in the business for nearly a hundred years. They have all the infrastructure in place – railroads, mountain tunnels, water, electrical lines, that sort of thing. If the demand for lithium skyrocketed, all the Chileans would have to do is run more cars on their trains and maybe build out their production capacity a bit. Plus, unlike either Bolivia or Afghanistan, Chile has a seaport, which is a very handy thing to have if you want to be competitive in hard rock mineral commodities.”
“But your Pentagon,” he protested, “says there is a trillion dollars worth of minerals in Afghanistan. If they…” Suddenly realizing, Dadamizo stopped mid-sentence and gave me a puzzled stare. “How much money is a trillion dollars, anyway?”
“A trillion is ten to the twelfth power,” I replied, “so that would be one million millions.”
“Which is how many billions, then?”
“One thousand billions,” I answered.
“The English,” Dadamizo mused, turning the pinpointed pupils of his eyes toward the ceiling in thought, “usually say ‘million,’ but not ‘billion,’ or ‘trillion.’ They say, as you just did, ‘thousand million’ and ‘million million.’ But now sometimes I hear them talk like the Americans, though. What do Americans say comes after a trillion, then?”
“Quadrillion,” I told him. “Ten to the fifteenth – one thousand million million. And after that, a thousand times larger, is a quintillion – ten to the eighteenth – one million million million.”
“And then?” Dadamizo asked as he lowered his gaze to look at me.
“Sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion, undecillion, duodecillion, tredecillion…”
“You Americans,” he interjected dazedly, “like to think big.”
“We are big,” I assured him. “Why, if that trillion dollars you’re thinking about were evenly divided among us, we’d only have about three thousand dollars apiece. On the other hand, divide a trillion bucks evenly among your people, and each one of them would have about thirty-five thousand dollars each – that’s about one point six million Afghanis apiece.”
“I would not,” Dadamizo sighed wistfully, “bother converting the dollars to our national currency. But how many ounces of gold is that?”
“As of yesterday, about thirty-five,” I informed him.
“Thirty-five ounces of gold for every person in Afghanistan,” he whispered. “Tell me, then, what should we, in the Karzai government, do?”
“In order,” I presumed, “to ensure that the trillion dollars of mineral wealth the United States Geological Survey says is locked in the rocks of Afghanistan contributes the intrinsic economic value embodied in thirty-five ounces of gold to the betterment and advantage of every man, woman and child in your country?”
Junkies have a certain laugh. It chills the blood, like the howls of a feral dog pack floating over the freezing winter wind in an abandoned Detroit neighborhood. Dadamizo let one fly, straight through my heart – at least I got paid well to endure it. “No, no, my friend Tom, you misunderstand. I meant, what does the Karzai government have to do in order to steal it from them?”
“I beg your pardon?” I beseeched. “Did you say, ‘steal it from them?’”
“Of course,” he smirked. “Look at the worthless peasants we members of the Afghani ruling class have to deal with. All we can get out of them now is opium. A caveman could grow opium. Do you seriously mean to suggest, however, that such people could get up out of the mud and filth of their own ignorance and medieval religious bigotry to participate in a modern economy? That they could possibly rise above their prehistoric tribal traditions, forget the festering clan feuds that have been the only thing to give their miserable lives meaning for the last six thousand years, and work side by side forty hours a week without pulling out knives during tea break and slitting each others throats?”
“For a diplomat,” I observed, “you don’t appear to have much confidence, in your nation’s people. Haven’t those same people been mining there in Afghanistan for those same six thousand years?”
“Certainly,” Dadamizo conceded, “there have been mines in Afghanistan since the dawn of time – gem stones, copper, salt, sulfur – that sort of thing; grubbing rocks out of shallow holes in the ground with picks and shovels, carrying the stuff out in sacks on donkeys. But tell me, Mr. Collins, do you actually believe wealthy Afghans could form companies that run mechanized mining operations and get a bunch of barefoot, illiterate, toothless, inbred mountain villagers, stinking of stale sweat and tobacco smoke, to successfully operate the machinery? That such pathetic bumpkins could hold down jobs driving huge ore trucks or be trusted to use explosives without blowing themselves – or, more importantly, expensive equipment – to high heaven?”
“Well,” I offered, “I can state with a certain degree of confidence that yes, we Americans have done exactly that.”
“Really?” Dadamizo squinted at me skeptically. “Where?”
“West Virginia. Although,” I allowed, “we do have occasional… problems. But they’re nothing our industrialists can’t…”
“Excuse me,” Dadamizo interjected. “May I use the rest room?”
It was a bit early for him to ask that – he always does, of course, at some point. “Sure,” I replied cordially.
In a trice, he was gone. Twelve minutes later, he returned and sat down, this time on the couch, and took another twenty minute trip to Atlantis. Then, at last, he came up for air.
“So, even if we could do with our… what do you call them? Oh, yes – our ‘hillbillies’ – what you have done with yours, and turn them into modern miners, you say that we would, like Chile, need access to the ocean?”
“The importance of having a suitable port,” I advised, “depends on your long-term industrial strategy. The more concentration, smelting, refining and manufacturing you do in Afghanistan, the less important it will be to have access to a place where you can load ships with large quantities of raw materials for export. As a matter of fact, I have developed some very powerful linear programming and mixed-integer algorithm optimization software which we could use get a fairly accurate general idea what mix of open pit and deep shaft mineral and coal mining, rail transportation networks, processing plant, foundry, heavy and light manufacturing, electrical and water utilities…”
“All that,” he quietly moaned with a pessimistic shake of his head, “certainly sounds much more complicated than growing opium and selling it to the highest bidder.”
“That’s because it is much more complicated,” I affirmed. “Opium is a simple agricultural product which, because of artificial external price supports, is so valuable on a weight basis that virtually all the constraints on profit vanish, rendering…”
“What are you talking about,” he pressed, “when you mention these ‘artificial external price supports?’”
“What I am talking about,” I explained, “is the international drug laws that prevent people here in Washington, DC, for example, from growing their own opium in their back yard for practically nothing if they wanted to. Without those laws, opium from poppies wouldn’t be any more valuable than the poppy seeds baked in the lemon muffins we eat with a cup of coffee for breakfast.”
Dadamizo pondered my analysis for a few moments. “Could Afghanistan perhaps get your President Obama to make some more laws that would give us these artificial external price supports for our minerals?”
“Actually,” I corrected, “it’s Congress that makes laws here in the United States. But exactly what is it you think having laws like that would accomplish?”
“Like you said,” he smiled, “make the lithium so valuable, we won’t need to build any railroads, electricity plants, water works, factories or things like that.”
“Make lithium illegal?” I could scarcely believe my ears.
“You said it yourself, did you not? Lithium is a pharmaceutical – just like opium. If your Congress makes lithium illegal because it is a dangerous drug, then your DEA can shut down the lithium mines in Chile and Bolivia, just like they shut down the coca fields. But in Afghanistan, they won’t be able to do any more about lithium than they can do now about opium.”
“And your President Karzai,” I concluded, “would put one of his relatives, or his friends…”
“Yes, yes,” Dadamizo enthused, “and I am sure, if I gave Afghanistan such an opportunity, President Karzai would quickly become a very good friend. Also,” he noted with obvious satisfaction, “it would solve the problem of how to steal that trillion dollars from the Afghan people. Thanks to the opium trade, we already have everything in place to collect and launder the money.”
“Sounds like a long shot,” I warned, “but what the hell.” After quickly constructing an appropriate ad hoc query of my proprietary congressional database, I submitted it to the SQL engine. In moments, my computer printer sprang to life, producing a three page list of names, office addresses and telephone numbers. “Here,” I told him, “is the contact information for the senators and representatives most likely to be interested in a… proposition such as the one you have in mind. Use it as you wish – I have only one request.”
I proffered the printout. Dadamizo accepted it. “What might that be?”
“If they ask who suggested you discuss this… idea… with them, first tell them he demanded you keep his identity secret. Then, only if they insist on knowing, say it was Paul Wolfowitz.”
“Okay, no problem,” Dadamizo assured me as he perused the list. “But do you think any of these people will have trouble believing that?”
“No,” I assured him, “they won’t.”