Consortium led by SAIL, Corporate Ispat Alloys in fray; India seeks to use project to expand engagement in region
Ruchira Singh &
Six companies and consortia, including two bidders from India, are in the race to develop Afghanistan’s 1.8 billion tonnes Hajigak iron ore mines, bids for which will be opened on Tuesday.
Ravaged by a decade-long war, Afghanistan hopes to generate substantial revenue from the mines—located in Bamiyan province, 130km west of capital Kabul—to boost reconstruction efforts. But security concerns and the massive infrastructural expenditure needed to get the remote mines up and running will pose the biggest challenges for miners.
The bidders are an Indian mining consortium led by state-owned Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL); another Indian firm Corporate Ispat Alloys Ltd; Iran’s largest iron ore firm Gol-e-Gohar Iron Ore Co.; Iran’s Behin Sanate Diba Co.; Acatco, a US-Afghanistan firm; and Canada’s Kilo Goldmines Ltd. The bid evaluation will start on Tuesday, with the results expected to be declared in October.
“SAIL has made a consortium. The nationalities of some of the companies (bidders) are Iranian, Canadian, American,” Jalil Jumriany, director general for policy and promotion in Afghanistan’s ministry of mines, said on phone from Kabul.
“In the bids, everything has a weightage. How much financially, royalty will be given to the country, how much infrastructure will be created for the country, are they going to do vertical integration, we will also look at technical and financial capabilities of the players,” Jumriany said.
The SAIL-led consortium, formed at the Indian government’s behest, is comprised of NMDC Ltd, Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd (RINL), JSW Steel Ltd, JSW Ispat Steel Ltd, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd (JSPL) and Monnet Ispat and Energy Ltd. Tata Steel Ltd was initially a part of the consortium, but eventually opted out.
The deposits are attractive for Indian companies as their local expansion plans are hobbled by land acquisition and environmental concerns.
“If we become successful for this bid, it will set the stage for large cooperative efforts between the public and private sector steel companies in times to come in other sectors as well, such as coal,” said C.S. Verma, chairman, SAIL, which is also interested in setting up a steel plant in Afghanistan.
Gol-e-Gohar and Kilo Goldmines did not respond to emails seeking comment sent on Monday.
Global miners such as BHP Billiton Ltd, Rio Tinto Plc of Australia and Vale SA of Brazil were also expected to bid for the project but stayed away.
“These companies have big engagements in different parts of the world,” Jumriany said. “The economic mobilization would be much more (suitable) for countries like Iran and India for this place.”
Analysts said infrastructure costs and worries over security are the biggest impediments for the project.
The country has been facing an insurgency since US-led forces toppled the Taliban government in Kabul in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. Efforts to negotiate with the insurgents are yet to succeed, and US troops are expected to leave the country by 2014, deepening concerns about the security of commercial projects.
Rio Tinto did not bid because of security concerns, said Nik Senapati, managing director of the company’s India unit.
“For the company, safety comes first. No subsidiary of the company is bidding either. A mine in Afghanistan can at best work with the help of a government-to-government deal,” he said.
Vale and BHP Billiton did not respond to emails seeking comment sent last week.
The SAIL-led bid, if successful, will expand India’s engagement with war-torn Afghanistan, where it has already invested $1.3 billion (Rs.nearly 6,000 crore) in rebuilding. India views the country as key to its strategic interests, partly because it is situated between South Asia and energy-rich Central Asia.
India is also pushing the bid for geopolitical reasons. It fears Chinese companies may begin to dominate Afghanistan, having already secured the Aynak copper deposit in 2007.
Afghanistan invited international bids for the Hajigak deposit in January. The country has been promoting its minerals sector to foreign firms in the hope of boosting economic growth and employment. It aims to generate a revenue of $2 billion annually by 2017-18 from the mining sector, including oil and gas, from about $100 million now.
Afghanistan is keen to develop itself as a mining destination, with tenders for four more assets containing copper and gold deposits which will be opened in October. The Afghan government will conduct road shows in Singapore and Canada for the assets at the end of September.
Source,
Livemint.com
Monday, September 5, 2011
'Kiwi Camp' (Bamiyan) a CIA base - Hager
By John Armstrong
9:15 AM Thursday Sep 1, 2011
A new report claims Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed. Photo / AFP
A new report claims Afghan officials caused dangerous delays to a rescue mission where a New Zealand SAS soldier was killed. Photo / AFP
A new book on the war in Afghanistan reveals that the base which has long housed New Zealand soldiers carrying out reconstruction and aid work is also home to covert operatives from America's Central Intelligence Agency.
Other People's Wars - authored by investigative writer Nicky Hager - says the Defence Force has deliberately kept the public in the dark about the presence of United States intelligence staff at the headquarters of New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team in the Bamiyan province.
Hager says "Kiwi Camp" has been doubling as a secret CIA base - one of several across Afghanistan charged with gathering "actionable intelligence" for use in special forces operations and aerial attacks on insurgents.
The book quotes unidentified former soldiers who have served in Bamiyan during New Zealand's eight-year deployment as saying half a dozen plain clothes American intelligence officers live on the base full-time and are privy to intelligence gathered by New Zealand troops when they go out on patrol across the region.
The book includes a photograph taken last year in Bamiyan of one American intelligence chief with gun and holster.
Under the deal with Washington by which New Zealand took over the base, the CIA operatives receive protection, meals, medical assistance and logistical support courtesy of the Defence Force.
Hager says the camp has also been used by America's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping on electronic communications worldwide.
He also claims that under a secret agreement with the United States, New Zealand intelligence personnel have worked out of Bamiyan following training by the National Security Agency.
Hager - best known for his expose in The Hollow Men of the inner workings of the Don Brash-led National Party - points to what he sees as a glaring gap between the official picture of the provincial reconstruction team's work in Bamiyan and the reality of a deployment long "entangled" with the American military's strategy for countering the Taliban.
New Zealand has had a provincial reconstruction team of up to 140 personnel in Bamiyan since 2003. According to the Defence Force, the team is tasked with maintaining security, providing advice and assistance to the provincial governor and the Afghan National Police, and managing New Zealand aid projects in the region.
Hager, however, accuses the Defence Force of running a continuing public relations campaign concentrated on producing "rosy stories" showing friendly New Zealand soldiers building schools, sinking wells and handing out gifts to smiling children.
He obtained copies of confidential reports which reveal the Defence Force has sought to "generate and maintain public support" for the deployment through a "continuous flow" of positive commentary.
This "pro-active strategy" was considered necessary to assure the New Zealand public that Defence Force personnel were "not going to war", that the focus of the mission was reconstruction and that Kiwi Camp was very much a New Zealand operation.
The book, however, questions just how much successful aid and reconstruction work has been carried out by New Zealand soldiers in Bamiyan, quoting one Army commander as saying there was no long-term view of what the provincial reconstruction team was trying to achieve.
Hager also claims that some of New Zealand's SAS soldiers were privately unhappy about being deployed by the current Government in frontline operations in Kabul against suicide bombers and that being used as a signal of National's "pro-American loyalties".
Hager's latest book, which chronicles New Zealand's near-decade long involvement in Afghanistan as part of the post-September 11 "war on terror" and examines the last Labour Government's struggle to stay out of the Iraq war, is the result of interviews with military officers, defence and foreign affairs officials, Beehive-based political staff, intelligence operatives and other insiders. He also obtained thousands of pages of classified documents from a variety of sources.
The book was delivered to retailers this morning without any prior publicity for fear that authorities might seek a court-imposed injunction to block its sale because of security sensitivities surrounding its contents.
While it is expected that attempts will be made to discredit the book and its author, the veracity of the findings of Hager's previous investigations, which include a landmark expose of New Zealand's security and intelligence organisations in the 1990s, has never come under serious challenge.
His Seeds of Distrust, which covered Labour's political management of the vexed issue of genetic engineering, had a major bearing on the 2002 election campaign.
While both Labour and National may be embarrassed by Hager's findings, Other People's Wars is unlikely to have the same impact on this year's election. The work is instead highly critical of New Zealand's defence and foreign affairs bureaucracy for crossing the line into politics in its desire to see a resumption of the strong security ties the military enjoyed with the United States and Britain prior to New Zealand's adoption of the anti-nuclear policy in the 1980s.
Other notable features of the book include:
* Defence Force staff responsible for the deployment of Orion aircraft and Anzac frigates to the Gulf in the "war against terror" ignored instructions from then prime minister Helen Clark to keep their operations separate from those being conducted by the United States against Iraq. The book quotes unidentified officials and former diplomats as agreeing that Clark - lacking a strong defence minister - fought a lone battle against neverending efforts by the Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries to rewrite Government policy and buy military equipment which would enable New Zealand to build bridges with the United States.
* a New Zealand Defence Force signals intelligence officer
working alongside the Americans at Afghanistan's Bagram air base tracked Taliban insurgents in Pakistan which were later the targets of attacks.
* another New Zealand intelligence officer seconded to Bagram joked on his Facebook page about not finding Osama bin Laden but added he had "widowed a few wives, though".
* New Zealand SAS soldiers deployed to Afghanistan in the early stages of the "war on terror" got fed up with the gung-ho "killing terrorists" mentality of the Americans and their treatment of captured or suspected insurgents.
* the Ministry of Foreign Affairs drafted a letter on behalf of the Kabul-based government and got it signed by the Afghan president to maintain the pretence that New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team had been "invited" to come to Afghanistan.
* New Zealand diplomats resorted to underhand tricks when they did not get their way with the last Labour Government. For example, when Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials did not like a particular Government policy decision, New Zealand's ambassadors in Washington and Canberra were told to sound out the views of the local bureaucrats. The ministry would then tell Government ministers that the Americans and Australians had made it known they were very concerned and there could be "relationship implications".
* senior officers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars using the Air Force's 757's to fly themselves to international air shows and take part in international study tours.
Source,
NZ Herald
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