China plans to destroy ancient Buddhist city to get copper bonanza
State-owned companies will build open pit mine at Mes Aynak in Afghanistan, according to documentary
Two Chinese state-owned mining companies plan to destroy an ancient Buddhist city in Afghanistan in order to get the copper underneath it, according to a new documentary.
According to the film Saving Mes Aynak, Metallurgical Group Corporation (MCC) and Jiangxi Copper are in the initial stages of building an open-pit copper mine 40km southeast of Kabul. The location is home to a walled Buddhist city that dates back 5,000 years.
According to the Afghan Ministry of Mines and Petroleum, the site is also home to the world’s second-largest copper deposit. China is an importer of copper and a major global refiner of the industrial metal.
In 2007, under the administration of then-president Hamid Karzai, MCC agreed to pay Afghanistan US$3 billion to lease the Mes Aynak area for 30 years.
MCC plans to extract more than US$100 billion worth of copper that is directly beneath the Buddhist city, according to the documentary. Archaeologists are trying to save the site.