Afghanistan is building a vast rail network linking its borders to help attract investors to $3 trillion worth of mining projects, including oil deals, that will drive economic growth, its Mines Minister said on Monday.
Kabul hopes that untapped mineral deposits can help reduce the need to rely on Western cash for bankrolling its impoverished economy and for its soldiers to maintain security when foreign troops draw down numbers.
But ravaged by three decades of foreign interventions and civil war, the central government now faces Taliban insurgency and relies on foreign forces for control of many parts of the vast Central Asian country. “We have come up with a comprehensive programme to build a rail network in a gradual manner,” Wahidullah Shahrani told Reuters in Paris after briefing G8 nations on Kabul’s plans to establish a new railway authority.
“The discovery of the mineral resources which is $3 trillion most of which is iron ore and copper requires the development of the railroad,” he said.
