The Independent, in its September 29, 2012 article, reports that Afghan gold fever heats up.
Extract :
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Miners have long known that there is treasure in Afghanistan, as it lies
on the Tethyan Eurasian mineral belt, which starts
in Turkey and runs through Iran to Asia as far as Indonesia. There are other
mineral belts in Afghanistan, formed through the violent collisions of
tectonic plates tens of millions of years ago, which also created the
25,000ft mountains in the north-east of the country.
Then there is a geological survey of Afghanistan, outdated but still
relevant, which was started in the 1950s as the country sought closer ties
with the Soviet Union and abandoned in the late 1970s as friendship with the
Communist bloc turned to invasion.
That survey is what the trillions of dollars of wealth estimates are
based upon, but what is extraordinary is that prospectors feel that the
survey could underestimate Afghanistan's mineral wealth.
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