Brent Huffman, a documentary filmmaker and assistant professor at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, is currently working on a film about a Chinese state-owned copper mine in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. The mining operation, which Huffman says is a precursor to potentially $1 trillion worth of extraction potential in the country, uncovered a 2,000 year-old religious site with over 200 Buddha statues, devotional temples called stupas, and a monastery complex.
In the following account, Huffman gives an update about the historical site under threat in Mes Aynak, as well as the dangerous environment the mine has created for archaeologists, Chinese workers, and local Afghans. The piece adds to Asia Society Blog's ongoing coverage of the site.
The Buddhists that picked the location of a religious center in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, some 2,000 years ago did so in part to make ornaments and coins from the copper at the site. Today, a Chinese mining company may destroy what they left behind to extract that same resource.
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