Saving Mes Aynak

Our role here is to provide as much as we can

expertise and technical support to our Afghan colleagues

and also to train them

in order to be able to handle this operation.

Now we know maybe 10% of the site,

and the potential is showing that 90% of the site

is still to be excavated.

So it means that the more interesting thing about this site

are going to be discovered,

even if what have been discovered already

is absolutely stupendous.

A lot of very interesting, well-preserved in this area.

What we have seen already was the top of the iceberg,

and now we are going little by little

down to the bottom of the iceberg.

Mes Aynak, as a trading center,

would have had people coming from China,

from the Mediterranean, from South Asia.

It would have been a crossroads

for everything that we know of the Old World.

Mes Aynak is one of the most important sites in the century,

And I'm involved with research in South Asia and West Asia.

I've been working in China,

and being able to look at the materials from Mes Aynak

is at the top of the list.

Mes Aynak was the earliest major copper-working area.

There's a huge complex of Buddhist monasteries

associated with copper-working.

And there's something on top too?

This type of construction,

I haven't seen this in Taxila area.

This is unique to Afghanistan.

The materials that are coming from Mes Aynak are exquisite.

Walking around the site, I was surprised to see

as much manufacturing debris laying around.

It's a huge piece of slate.

Copper prills or fragments of tuyeres,

the things that you blast air into furnaces with.

Grinding stones that are used for crushing ore.

And they were everywhere.

There were so many of them

that the archeologists just leave them on the ground.

I've never seen wood at a Buddhist site

in Pakistan or any other regions.

This site has preservation on a scale

that no other sites have.

We will be able to remove 10,000 of our troops

from Afghanistan by the end of this year,

and we will bring home a total of 33,000 troops

by next summer.

By 2014, the Afghan people will be responsible

for their own security.

It's very challenging to try to train all these people

and to help them to do their world.

'Cause it is complicated

if you have understand the fact is that,

well, there are many workers,

there are always problem of delays in payment and so on.

It's very challenging both from a scientific point of view

and also from, say, a technical point of view.

And management of the people here, it's quite big issue

and a very interesting one.

The Aynak copper mines will create

direct and indirect job plus/minus 7,000,

and they will develop the area

and they will create a job.

So if you calculate it all together,

the impact in the national economy

is coming about 1.2 billion dollars.

And how does the average person, Afghan

benefit from that?

If you divide it by the population,

that's the average that the people can get it.

Some people, direct, they can get it

through their payment for their wages, salary,

and some people are working in the transportation,

and some people might be involved in other business,

and so anybody can get the benefit from this mine.

The mining industry in China

has taken off since the 1970s,

but regulations to protect the environment and residents

from mining pollution have not kept pace.

China's largest copper producer

is being blamed for water pollution

that's affecting hundreds of thousands of people.

Residents there say wastewater from mining activities

is flowing into a major river,

contaminating farmland and damaging the health of locals.

Chinese have already done a study of the water tables,

and based on that, if they're gonna be

extracting water from the water aquifers,

they're going to be affect 174 villages around Aynak.

There are people, human beings living there.

They're going to be using that water

for drinking purposes, for agricultural purposes and all.

So we're going to be affecting the life of people

in very negative way.

Most of the residents have been either forced

or they have left or they are not allowed to return.

I mean, they are losing everything.

They'll have to be compensated.

They'll have to be brought to the round table,

discuss things with, consulted properly, and then resettled.