*** Mes Aynak Update *** [View all]

[littlemissmartypants]

Sacking of Chinese Businessman Brings Hope to the Archeologists in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan

Elise BlanchardApril 13th, 2017
Last week, a Chinese businessman who, in 2007, won the right to extract copper, for thirty years, at Mes Aynak, Afghanistan, was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party for corruption. The sacking of Shen Heting, the former general manager of the state-owned China Metallurgical Group Corp (MCC), is potentially great news for Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori and his team.

The MCC executive’s $3 billion project to build an open-pit copper mine will require the demolition of a 5,000-year-old, walled Buddhist city located in Mes Aynak. To save historical artifacts from imminent destruction, the archeologists have been racing against time to complete their excavation.

In an interview with CNBC last week, Brent Huffman, the director of “Saving Mes Aynak,” a documentary on the archeologists’ battle, said that Shen’s expulsion was a “huge development,” and that he hoped “the corruption charges mean the end of the mining project.”

The archeologists working at Mes Aynak, which is located in a district of Logar Province friendly to the Taliban, have already uncovered thousands of Buddhist statues, manuscripts, coins, holy monuments and entire monasteries and fortifications dating back as far as the third century a.d.



http://muftah.org/sacking-chinese-businessman-brings-hope-archeologists-mes-aynak-afghanistan/#.WPGrBcspDqD

More at the link.

Special thanks to all of the wonderful DUers that supported this cause previously.








Many more photos here: http://www.savingmesaynak.com/photos/

Background history here: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10025147841

Thanks so much to everyone.


♡lmsp