President Donald Trump and his Afghanistan counterpart Ashraf Ghani met Thursday and agreed to have U.S. companies help in the development of Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals reserves, in spite of dreadful obstacles to the country’s industrial mining.
The agreement, Reuters reports, comes with the latest string of comments where both U.S. officials and Afghanistan’s government have put an accent on the potential value of Afghanistan’s vast and largely unused mineral reserves.
Both Ghani and Trump also restated their commitment to Trump’s new strategy to battle terrorism in South Asia. However, after 16 years in Afghanistan, the U.S. is looking for ways to offset the billions of dollars spent every year in propping up the government in Kabul and mining is increasingly being seen as a way to do that.
“They agreed that such initiatives would help American companies develop materials critical to national security while growing Afghanistan’s economy and creating new jobs in both countries, therefore defraying some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more self-reliant,” the White House said.
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