Copper Mining and Cultural Heritage Extraction at Mes Aynak
The Afghan government signed a deal with China in 2008 agreeing to finance and develop a copper mining operation. The deal also brought Mes Aynak to international attention, launching efforts to excavate and preserve the artifacts as part of a greater world heritage. Yet, even with the heightened awareness of its cultural value, problems arose in maintaining the site. Smugglers took artifacts and sold them to private collectors, and preservation was halted during the escalating conflict that resulted in the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 following US military withdrawal. Extracting Afghan copper has been seen as a favorable source of revenue for the country, but it is also essential to study the history of Mes Aynak and its value to the local people who inhabit it, and to Afghan culture more broadly. The site holds tensions of both mineral and cultural extraction, and decades of attempts at conservation have been interrupted repeatedly by warfare and conflict, leaving the artifacts in states of neglect and disrepair as they sit exposed during these periods of instability.
Mes Aynak: The Heritage Site
Nestled in the heart of the Silk Road, Mes Aynak was home to ancient communities that relied on its strategic geographic location and copper-rich terrain. The site was inhabited from the 1st c. BCE through the 8th c. CE by the Kushan, Gandharan, and Sasanian dynasties. The size of the historic area has been compared to Pompeii and Machu Picchu.3 Artifacts uncovered from the site include evidence of a mining industry, Buddhist monasteries, a fort, and a Zoroastrian fire shrine.4 These artifacts are diverse in material and form: they include wooden buddhas, wall paintings, gilded statues of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and donors, manuscripts written in the Bactrian language, wall paintings, coins, and copper smelting tools.5 Some artifacts, like mudbrick and schist stupas and statues that make up Mes Aynak’s largest objects are impossible to relocate from the site.
Over hundreds of years, accumulating dust, debris and dirt filled in the cracks and protected its artifacts, blanketing another layer of geological time within the history of the site.
The excavation plan for the artifacts included transportation of moveable objects first to the Archaeological Institute of Afghanistan for documentation. Then, they would be relocated to the National Museum of Afghanistan for permanent display. The Czech Embassy also assisted with the recovery of some materials, restoring them at the Náprstek Museum of Asian, African and American Cultures in Prague in exchange for permission to exhibit the items in 2016 as the first European museum to display Afghan Buddhist art.6
Timeline of Conservation Efforts
As a response to control and prevent further looting, and in a rush to save Mes Aynak from destruction by the copper mine development, the Afghan government had worked to formalize projects to protect its cultural heritage. In 2011, the Afghan National Institute of Archaeology was established and partnered with the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan (Délégation archéologique française en Afghanistan, DAFA) to begin work on preservation efforts. The scope of the project grew, and so did international efforts to save the site in the name of global heritage. In 2013, Mes Aynak was recognized as the world’s largest emergency dig site, where 650 laborers were involved in excavation efforts.7 In 2015, UNESCO partnered with DAFA to establish a two-part Afghanistan Heritage & Extractive Industries Initiative: aiming to halt mining until the historical site was properly excavated and documented. Preservation efforts halted in 2019 due to increasing conflict in the region.
Mes Aynak became grounds for military occupation during the Afghan civil war after extensive Soviet explorations of the site were abandoned upon their withdrawal from the country in 1989. In the 1990s, al-Qaeda transformed it to a training site, using the tunnels and structures initially created by the Soviets to explore the potential of the copper deposit.8 Al-Qaeda left behind unexploded land mines that would slow down future excavations and put archaeologists in danger. On one of the Mes Aynak excavation sites, two workers were injured after the explosion of a mine.9 Routes to Mes Aynak were also hazardous: archaeologists were threatened with land mines planted by the Taliban when traveling to the site.10 To what extent does the archaeological excavation and preservation of a site become more important than human life?
Copper Mining
Copper mining, for Afghanistan, has been seen as a source of national prosperity, which in turn, creates economic legitimacy for the nation as a key player in copper’s global supply chain. Various investigations into the geological makeup of the mineral-rich land of Afghanistan have been made by the British, the French, the Soviets, and the Americans. From general surveys conducted by the British during the Great Game to French surveys in the 1920s, extensive Soviet research in the 1970s and 1980s, American USGS surveys and additional British surveys in the early 2000s, the technology used to create more precise and data-rich maps has advanced significantly to enable resource exploitation.
After the award for copper extraction was given to the Chinese Metallurgic Group in 2008, an emergency operation began to salvage the artifacts on the site. In ten years, over 3,500 artifacts were identified, and dozens of statues and wall paintings were moved to safety. A pause in excavation efforts in 2019 resulted in extensive decay of artifacts that were left exposed on site. As of 2021, the United States had spent approximately $962.6 million dollars to fund mineral surveys, regulatory reforms, and capacity development in efforts to support Afghanistan’s extractives industry since 2004. However, reports by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) have revealed that as of 2023, these efforts have “not resulted in the intended widespread economic benefits.”11 In 2021, China signed a pact of non-aggression with Afghanistan. The following year, the Metallurgic Company resumed talks for restarting the mining efforts.
Preservation in service of world heritage and universal values [...] needs to be critiqued for its universalization of culture and where value is being placed.
The Tensions between Cultural Heritage and Mineral Extraction
Mes Aynak was only globally acknowledged as a “heritage site” once the proposed copper extraction was seen as a threat to its destruction. But its history of looting and excavation have already become a forceful act of displacement and dispersion. Mes Aynak’s artifacts, assuming they will be either placed in a museum or sold off to international private collectors, will forever lose the context from which they are excavated. As soon as they are uncovered, they breach locality and belong to the world.
The treatment of ancient sites in Afghanistan, especially those that are linked to traditions outside of Islam, have been repeatedly ignored. In 2001, the Taliban demolished the monumental Buddhas of Bamiyan. After a rocket struck the National Museum of Afghanistan in 1994, the BBC declared “Afghanistan may have buried its children but should not be burying its culture.”12 When interrogating the role of the archaeologist in times of war, Susan Pollock asks: “Should they be advocates for sites, monuments, museums, and objects? Or for living people? For both? Or neither?”13 Preservation in service of world heritage and universal values, especially in times of conflict and warfare, needs to be critiqued for its universalization of culture and where value is being placed. Where are these artifacts going? We must interrogate who archaeological excavation services.
Conclusion
The buried wealth of Afghanistan has been prized since antiquity. The violence of extraction, both cultural and mineral, has consequences at the local and global levels. By interrogating both as commodities and scarce resources, we begin to compare how both are valued from different actors. As the artifacts continue to decay, local populations are displaced, and the site once again becomes a site of extraction, Mes Aynak’s histories become defined by everything left uncovered.
Author’s Statement
My parents left Afghanistan in the 1980s during the Soviet-Afghan war and never returned. Although I haven’t set foot on the land of my ancestors, I still hold hope that one day I might walk freely between the mountains. From afar, I grapple with ways to connect with my cultural heritage – the image of the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan remains seared into my memory, compelling me to ask questions about the role of art and architecture in identity, politics, and cultural heritage. There is a quote hanging above the National Museum of Kabul that I hold closely to my heart: “A nation stays alive when its culture stays alive.” In this piece, I hope to highlight the tensions within cultural heritage and mineral extraction in Mes Aynak, a site near the capital, Kabul.
Notes
1. Guillame Pitron, “The Geopolitics of the Rare-Metals Race,” The Washington Quarterly 45, no. 1, 135–50 (2022).
2. “History of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan | Heritage of Afghanistan,” accessed October 30, 2023.
3. Hans Curvers, “Mes Aynak (Afghanistan), Global Standards, and Local Practices,” 2017, 263–83.
4. Daniela Lazarova, “Unique Exhibition Spotlights Afghanistan’s Buddhist Period.” Radio Prague International. 2016.
5. Saving Mes Aynak, Documentary, 2014.
6. Lazarova, 2016.
7. William Dalrymple, “Mes Aynak: Afghanistan’s Buddhist Buried Treasure Faces Destruction.” The Guardian. 2013.
8. Ann Marlowe, “Rescuing Afghanistan’s Buddist History | DAFA at Mes Aynak | By Ann Marlowe.” Wall Street Journal. 2010.
9. Marlowe.
10. Saving Mes Aynak, 2014.
11. “Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) | Audits,” Office of Inspector General, United States Department of Defense. N.D.
12. Fredrik T. Hiebert and Pierre Cambon, Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World (London: British Museum Press, 2011).
13. Susan Pollock, “Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare,” Annual Review of Anthropology 45, no. 1 (2016): 215–31.